translation from Swedish newspaper
http://www.dn.se/livsstil/jose-mujica-det-ar-varldens-alla-andra-presidenter-som-ar-konstiga/
José Mujica: "It's all the other presidents in the world who are strange."
José "Pepe" Mujica is a former guerrilla leader who became a political phenomenon. The 79-year-old is known for his ascetic life, his drastic reforms and its unusual candor. The Saturday magazine goes to the Uruguay's president place.
The highway runs from Montevideo past the large container parks where beef and soybeans - Uruguay's main export goods -are loaded . Once we have left the city of millions behind us we turn on a country road that eventually becomes a dirt road. Agricultural fields lying fallow, the smoke from the chimneys from farms stoves. It is winter in the southern hemisphere. Six plus degrees. Two road cones and a parked police car is the only thing that signals that we arrived at the President's residence: a scrubby little cottage with a roof of corrugated iron.
It's nine o'clock in the morning and the President's wife disappears off into a used, blue Toyota Corolla. Lucía Topolansky is a Senator in Congress, and was also included in the guerrilla group that revolted against the corrupt regime in the late 1960s. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and sat thirteen years before the government gave amnesty to guerrilla members. José Mujica was imprisoned for the same time, but was serving two years in a dark isolation cell without seeing any other human being. The only ones he could talk to were the ants, frogs and rats in the cell.
We have been warned for his morning mood and photographer knocking gently on the door.
- Can we come in? she wonders.
- Just step on. The door is open, we hear the president answer.
I bend down because of the low doorframe and step into the entrance hall. Three pieces of wood burning in the stove, otherwise it is dark in the cottage which is not more than 60 square meters. The photographer can not find the president and goes into the kitchen. She is greeted by a roar.
- Get out! What do you have to do here !? yells Mujica behind a door.
Presidential press secretary waves nervously with his hands.
- Come, come. We go out again, he says.
We place ourselves outside the cottage and the press secretary wonders what went wrong.
- I'm sitting on the toilet. You may wait a bit, responds Uruguay's.
José "Pepe" Mujica is not like other heads of state. He donates nearly 90 percent of his salary to charity, has scars from six bullet holes in the body and has robbed several banks. He is still living in her country cottage, where he lived since he left prison 30 years ago. He is behind the world's toughest tobacco laws and the world's most liberal cannabis laws. "El Pepe" as he is called, has drawn his country on the map and is loved by his people. But he has a bad morning mood. Only when we hear him flush we venture into the house again. A bicycle leans against one wall of the entrance hall and gadgets and books are crowded on the shelves. It feels more like we come home to an eccentric ragman than a beloved president.
Mujica sits down in his black office chair and I wonder why he didn't take the chance to moved to the state presidential palace overlooking the Rio de la Plata, when he became president.
- The majority of the people in my country live like this. Why would I live differently? I'm their representative. It is all the other presidents in the world who are strange. They live like kings, although the majority of their voters does not, he replies, and folds up the sleeves of his fleece sweater.
- I'm also an old man. At night, I get up and urinate several times. Had I lived in a palace, I had had servants, and had to get dressed. Here I can go up in my underwear.
When José Alberto Mujica Cordano was born in 1935 Uruguay was one of the most modern countries. The State had separated early from the church and the country was one of the first to offer free, secular education for their residents. Uruguay was a social democratic model in Latin America and the first country to give women the right to vote and to be different. Uruguay got also an early state control of alcohol sales, and introduced the eight-hour workday. Residents lived well on the country's exports of wool and beef and had the same average income as in France. Uruguay called "La Suiza de América" (America Switzerland) and arranged the world's first World Cup, which their national team also won.
When Mujica was twenty years the country ended up in an economic crisis that changed everything. The State took on heavy debt and entrepreneurs gathered piles of money. Income inequality rose and began to recall the rest of Latin America. Some students were inspired by the Cuban revolution and began to rob food shipments to distribute goods to the poor. The group grew to urban guerrilla Tupamaros who robbed banks to give money to the poor, and support their struggle to overthrow the regime. One of the leaders in the guerrilla was José Mujica who was the group's expert in robbing banks.
In the early 1970s he was imprisoned, but freed by a spectacular escape from Punta Carretas Prison, where over a hundred prisoners escaped through a tunnel that has been dug by other members of the guerilla. The fight against the guerrillas intensified and the United States sent an expert to Montevideo to teach police the best way to torture and obtain information. Tupamaros responded by murdering FBI agent and José Mujica was suspected of plotting the murder. He went underground and hid in various basements in the outskirts of the capital. In one of these cellars he met Lucía Topolansky, a 28 year old architecture student from the upper middle class who was a guerrilla expert at falsifying ids. During an intense month the couple slept only one night at a place. In June 1973 thepolice chase ended. The couple was arrested and put in prison.
To put an end to the violence the governmentthreatened to assassinate Mujica unless the resistance immediately ceased his attacks. It was the end of Robin Hood guerrillas and a week after the president gave power to the military. Just like its neighbors Argentina and Brazil Uruguay became a military dictatorship and Mujica was in solitary confinement. In order not to perish in the dank cell, which had previously been a watering hole for horses, he wandered along the walls several hours a day and built machines in his imagination. Although the guerrillas laid down their arms, he was tortured regularly. There are those who argue that his morning mood originates from this time.
I wonder what he did to manage his time in solitary. Mujica opens his eyes that almost covered his eyebrows.
- I was looking for life. Every living thing I could find. I studied how the frogs jumped around on the well. How ants organised their work and how rats communicated with each other. Just to see all living life helped me, he answers.
After sitting completely isolated for two years he was transferred to a regular cell. After another six years he met his fellow prisoners for the first time and received his first letter. It was from the blonde architect student with whom he had shared the basement before he was arrested. The couple resumed contact and began to write romantic letters to each other that their lawyers smuggled between cells. The correspondence continued until March 1985 when the military eventually handed over power to a civilian government. Guerrilla Members received amnesty and the day after Lucía and Mujica moved into the scrubby yard outside Montevideo where we are now sitting in front of the hot stove.
During the military dictatorship, Sweden was one of the few European countries that received political refugees from Uruguay. During the twelve-year dictatorship almost 5,000 Uruguayans came to Sweden where they were granted residency. Those who came as UN refugee quota also received in their hand a welcome letter by the then Prime Minister Olof Palme when they landed.
- Palme was a thinker. A man ahead of his time. It was a shame that we never got to meet. He was murdered just a year after I got out of prison. I liked his critique of communism in the Soviet Union. According to me he built the best society that can be built in a capitalism, said Mujica.
When guerrilla members were given amnesty in 1985 they decided to try to change society in a democratic way instead. Several minor parties joined forces in the coalition Frente Amplio, the Wide Front, and succeeded ten years later winning the mayor of Montevideo. Ten years after the party won its first presidential and broke the monopoly of power that divided the two parties since Uruguay was founded 1828. The first thing the new government did was to erect a statue of Olof Palme in a square in Montevideo.
- We owe him our respect, said Mujica.
Uruguay is a windswept country sandwiched between the great nations Argentina and Brazil. The surface of the country is as large as the state of Florida in the United States, but has only 3.3 million inhabitants (in Florida live 18 million). Uruguay is as sparsely populated as the province of Medelpad in Sweden and half of the population lives in Montevideo. The other half is scattered across the countryside that consists for 60 percent of pasture for cows and sheep.
When Argentina's economy crashed in 2002 crisis ripples swept across the border river Rio de la Plata and Uruguay was hit hard. Nearly 40 percent of the population was poor, and many of the young generation left the country. After almost ten years in power, the Frente Amplio set the economy again in motion and managed to reduce poverty to 12 percent of the population. José "Pepe" Mujica took office in 2010 and surprised the world by turning down the statutory presidential salary at theequivalent of 8200 Euro per month. He announced that he survived with 1000 Euro per month and gave away the rest to organisations. His basic salary means that he is called the world's poorest president.
- The most important thing in your life is not economics. You don't fall in love with economics. You do not create children for economic reasons. Yet everyone is talking about money. The key is time. It creates your freedom. But if you constantly have to work to pay off everything you bought, you are not free anymore, he says.
The only thing he owns is an old scooter, a Volkswagen car of 1987 and some greenhouses, where he and his wife grow chrysanthemums which they used to sell at the flower market in Montevideo when they had come out of prison.
- I prefer a simple life. Too many things just creates problems, he says.
One hundred years after Uruguay was the shining exemple in Latin America the small socialist country surprises again. Besides José Mujica voluntarily reduced his salary, he has managed to break three Latin American taboos. He has given women abortion rights, has given homosexuals the right to marry and has broken the organised crime drug monopoly. Next year, the State takes over the sales and creates a kind of shop for dealing cannabis in Uruguay.
- We are not some marijuana activists, if anyone would believe it. Marijuana is bad. What we want is to settle a problem. The worst thing is to forbid it and create a black market. Our idea is to steal the market from the organised crime . Drug cartels are much more dangerous than the drug itself.
Legalisation also give the State the ability to treat people who smoke too much.
- If I take a glass of whiskey every evening there is no problem. But if I drink a bottle every day I need to go to the doctor. Then I am an alcoholic and need care. The same applies for marijuana.
Isn' t there a risk that the use may increase?
- I don't think so . Prohibition creates mystery. If it's legal, it is not as exciting anymore.
Mujicas three-legged dog Manuela limps into the room and lies down in front of his master. The heat spreading from the stove and master's bad morning mood is gone. "El Pepe" is smiling and joking, and I take the opportunity to ask about the speech he gave at the UN environmental conference on sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro 2012. The world heads of state for several days have not agreed on anything during the conference, but spent time going shopping in Rio's luxury department instead. The last day of the conference Mujica had enough.
In ten minutes he vomited bile of the heads of State's disinterest at to the root of the cause of environmental degradation: the consumer society. "It's not that we're going back to the Stone Age, or we are in danger of being left behind. We just have to realise that we are cannot endlessly let ourselves be guided by the market when it is we who should control the market. "Heads of state turned on when he came to his conclusion. "The cause of climate change is the civilisation model that we have developed. We must begin to look at how we live, "he said. For the world's billion voters that was a self-evidence he came up with, but not for the heads of state. Ashamed, they looked at each other.
I wonder if his ten minute speech was spontaneous anger or planned. Mujica put his hands on his knees.
- It was spontaneous. I had angered me that the problem with our world is not organic. It is political. There is no political will to change. The heads of state think about other things. They do not solve what they are elected to solve. Look at Obama. He is a good man, but his hands are tied. He must constantly compromise between interests, interests and interests. Man has lost control of himself. We can not solve the simple, most obvious things because we are afraid to disturb the "interests". We are the only creature on earth which is equipped with a consciousness. We are the only ones who can protect life on the planet, but we don't.
Uruguay's president believes that we live in a cynical consumer society.
- You have ten pairs of shoes, but you want to have thirty. When you have thirty pairs of shoes do you have fifty. Shopping rush never ends. Do you know what the Aymara Indians of Bolivia used to say? he asks, looking me in the eye before he answers the question:
- Poor is the one who constantly needs more.
Mujica does not accept that government managers have the tools in their hands, but do not use them.
- None of the governments of the major countries care about the important issues. They think only of the next election. The philosophy is gone. It has become massive propaganda of everything.
For the second consecutive year, José "Pepe" Mujica was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and hailed for having democratically managed to introduce abortion rights and gay marriage in the otherwise very conservative Latin America. Last year an organization in the Netherlands nominated him for the Nobel Prize. This year it's a group of German lawyers. For a long time he was the top-ranked on the major betting companies' lists, but a few months ago, he was overtaken by a candidate from archrival Argentina. Pope Francis, who lives almost as spartan as "El Pepe", is now the top favorite.
- A pope has never won the Nobel Prize. It would be good if he got it. I'm not so stupid that I will compete against God's representative on earth. For me it is an honor to be nominated. That's enough for me.
Two Norwegian parliamentarian has also nominated the whistle-blower Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- I support that too. Snowden raised an important issue on the agenda, although now they will never be solved. "Interests" are too strong.
Mujica pats on his three-legged Manuela.
- But if I had to decide I had given the peace prize posthumously to Gandhi. It is men like him we need today with all this madness, when Israel is allowed to bomb into Gaza.
The sun shines in between the dirty windows and mirrors in the portrait of Fidel Castro on the bookcase.
This fall there are elections in Uruguay and Mujica enjoys a nearly 60 percent support. But since he can not participate, the Constitution does not allow re-election, it will be the party colleague Tabaré Vázquez instead, who was president between 2005 and 2010, that will take part in it again, His vice-presidential candidate is Raúl Sendic who is the son of legendary Tupamaros founder of the same name. Their main challenge is demographic. Uruguay has largely elderly who will soon retire. The young generation who would bear the tax revenue has moved abroad. The number of births replaces only the number of dead. Uruguay have the same invasion of immigrants as the country had in the 1940s and 1950s, when many families came here from Spain.
The focus now is to attract immigrants from the rest of Latin America. Any citizen of the trade union Mercosur automatically receives a residence permit if they move to Uruguay. This means that the Argentines, Brazilians, Paraguayans and Venezuelans can find work and settle in the country without complicated visa procedures. Uruguay is also very liberal when it comes to refugees. To show that it practices what it preaches, the government has just given the green light to receive 140 orphaned refugee from Syria. The first 40 kids arrive in September, and the government has already prepared the homes for them. The remaining refugee children are going to arrive in January. The government will provide language classes and social services, and also receive family members of refugee children. When Mujica was on a state visit of Barack Obama to the White House in May, he announced that Uruguay also were willing to accept detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Right now is preparing a movement of six prisoners who will be granted refugee status and be able to live in freedom in Uruguay. A visa will be even granted to their relatives.
I wonder if the country can afford. He does not like my question.
- What many do not understand is that the problems arising from immigration creates jobs. And it's a job we need. There's nothing to be afraid of. Countries can not isolate themselves. When the dies of the.
Uruguay second major headache is to create jobs. A few years ago Finnish paper company UPM built the one of the world's largest pulp mills in Uruguay and now is the factory for 3 percent of its GDP. Three months ago Stora Enso inaugurated an almost equally large mill in Uruguay, and plans to build another.
Another initiative is the construction of Uruguay's first technical college which Mujica began when he became president. The Utec college is located in the border town of Fray Bentos, in the heart of cattle production, and was inaugurated the 2012. To accelerate development Mujica would initiate an exchange with the Norwegian College of Buskerud and Vestfold, outside Oslo.
- We need to get better at technology development. We produce food for 30 million people. We would have been able to produce food for 300 million people. What we need from Europe is not the money. It's the knowledge.
Before Mujica departure on March 1st, 2015, he plans to visit the college in Norway and give a lecture to students.
- I want to talk to the students about how we live our lives. In the future, between 80 and 90 percent of the world's population will speak English. The digital language has become universal. We live in an online community. For better or worse. And we're spending two million dollars every minute on the weapon. And most of our fresh water run out to while people die of thirst in Mexico. We have the tools to change that. But it requires a public opinion to change.
During the left parties in Venezuela wre sold shirts with Mujica portrayed as Che Guevara, and in Argentina and Brazil, he was honored for the way of life he teaches. During the global summits all would take a selfie with Mujica and when he was in Rome last year the Pope Francis broke protocol and sat with Mujica for nearly an hour, although the heads of state and celebrities usually get only a quarter. Serbian film director Emir Kusturica call Mujica for "The Last Hero" and is now working on a documentary about him dubbed "El Presidente de la Gente", "People's President".
Are you becoming more a pop star than the president?
- I do not care about it. People need symbols. Today it is me. Tomorrow is another. Such is man. I mostly laugh about it, said Mujica, smiling.
It strikes me that maybe it's all just marketing. The small country on the Rio de la Plata River Estuary shall not perish when the older generation passes away, the former guerrilla leader claimed responsibility to fill the country with new people. He tries to portray Uruguay as the most wonderful country. In Latin America, he may in that case have already succeeded. There are few of the new generation who do not embrace the country that legalized marijuana, abortion and gay marriage in less than one term.
Mujica does not like the question either.
- No, I was not 14 years in prison without a book and talked to the ants to do the marketing. I didn't struggled through a presidential campaign to do marketing. It would have been a very costly marketing in that case. We have not created this marijuana law to get people here. What we want is to regulate something that is dangerous. There is no freedom thing.
But why Uruguay is seen as so sympathetic in the world?
- We are a small country. Small countries always arouse sympathy.
I wonder how he sees the football team's success and failure in this summer's World Cup. Uruguay has sent home earlythe two world champions Italy and England, but it's Luis Suárez bites we remember. The entire Uruguay rallied behind Suárez and did not see what the rest of the world did that made that the small country unsympathetic. Even Mujica was drawn into denial, saying that because the judge did not sentence when the bite occurred, it was not to punish Suarez afterwards. Two months after the bite of Natal Mujica has calmed down.
- It was stupid of him. Something is wrong in the kid's head. The intelligence is not in the brain. It is in the feet, he admits.
What "El Pepe" however is against is Barcelona that, after all the commotion caused by the bite, could pay 850 million dollars for Luis Suárez. Mujica also think it's strange that FIFA could turn him from football stadiums for several months.
- I'm the president. If I have to get someone convicted of this country, I have to go to court. There are no other roads. But Fifa, which is a private company, can decide how they want without the need to go through a court. It is very strange.
Mujica, who had been restrained during the interview (except for his brief outburst in the morning), can no longer contain himself.
- Fifa is fascists! Football is no longer football. It's business!
Press secretary shows with his hands that the interview is over and I get up in the entrance hall. The fire has died down and Mujica throw in a log before the glow disappears completely. Then he goes up to the photographer and glosses over that he yelled at her in the morning.
- You were on their way into the kitchen. There can only be there if you cook, said the president.
The photographer takes advantage of the situation to get him to put up some pictures outside the cottage. The sun is shining and it has been fifteen degrees. Mujica will fall towards its greenhouse where the couple grows their flowers and tomatoes. His faithful companion, Manuela, will follow. The president opens the gate to a large storage room and shows six boxes filled to the brim with ripe tomatoes. He'll give them to a friend who sells them on the market in Montevideo. When we are relaxed in the sunshine and looking out over the fields I take the opportunity to ask a question which I know he does not like to answer. I wonder how he sees time as a bank robber in the Tupamaros.
He looks down at the ground and start walking.
- It is not convenient to talk about it now, says Mujica and moving on.
I insist. A few steps further on he pauses.
- We can not judge the Spartan troops with today's eyes. Just as we can judge what happened in the 1960s with today's eyes. It was a different time. We did so then, but would not have done so today.
Do you have any message to the hundreds of Uruguayans living in Sweden?
- Scrape the money together and came home. It is not wrong to die near the place they were born, says the 79-year-old president and goes towards his cottage again.
Manuela limps after.
