everything about the poorest and fairest president of Uruguay Jose Alberto part 444
everything about the poorest and fairest president of Uruguay Jose Alberto part 4
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00:00THE POOREST AND FAIREST PRESIDENT OF URUGUAY, JOSE ALBERTO, HIS LIFE AND EVERYTHING ABOUT
00:06HIM
00:07Part. 4. We continue to tell a stage of the life of the President of Uruguay, Jose Alberto,
00:13his life and everything about him. Uruguay's Jose Mujica lives in a tiny house
00:18rather than the presidential palace, and gives away 90% of his salary. He's legalized marijuana
00:25and gay marriage. But his greatest legacy is governing without giving up his revolutionary
00:30ideals.
00:31Giles Tremlith
00:32Giles Tremlith
00:33Thursday, 18 September 2014, 6 o'clock, British Summertime
00:37Last modified on Thursday, 30 November 2017, 8.43, Greenwich Mean Time
00:42241 Emo Manis was just 16 when he met Uruguay's current president, Jose Mujica.
00:49On a spring day in 1969, Manis was at home alone with his sister, Beatriz, when the
00:55future president burst out of the lift outside their penthouse in Montevideo with a pistol
00:59in his hand.
01:01Turn around, shut your mouth and keep your hands above your head. He barked. Manis immediately
01:08recognized the pinched eyes and thick, wavy brown hair of one of the most notorious members
01:13of the daring, violent Tupamaro guerrillas.
01:17After his initial sense of panic subsided, he recalled, he felt strangely calm.
01:22I remember telling the young gunman who was with him not to worry, that I wasn't going
01:27to do anything, the 62-year-old travel agent told me when we met in his favorite Montevideo
01:32bookshop, a short distance from the murky waters of the immense river Plate.
01:36Sister, who suffered from polio and used a wheelchair, was taken off to another room.
01:42Don't worry Vejita, Mujica told her, you'll be fine. This has nothing to do with you.
01:49The colloquial, affectionate Vejita little old lady was a typical Mujica touch.
01:55Manis's stepfather, Jose Pedro Purpura, was a notorious judge, with ties to Uruguay's
02:00far right and a stock of pistols.
02:03After the gang had left, taking documents and weapons, Manis told his relatives that
02:08he was only upset that the Tupamaros had stolen a typewriter he used for his schoolwork.
02:13The following day, the phone rang.
02:16It is us, the same people from yesterday, a voice said.
02:20He suddenly felt scared again. Somehow they knew about the typewriter. If he wanted it
02:26back, the voice told him, he could find it in the lobby of a nearby building.
02:31Sure enough, it was there, he said. They had left a typed message in it for my stepfather.
02:38It read.
02:40We are watching you.
02:41The following year, a Tupamaro unit sprayed their building with machine gun fire in an
02:46attempt to assassinate Dr. Purpura.
02:49Five years ago, in Uruguay's last presidential election, Manis cast his vote for Mujica and
02:54his broad front party, a coalition of left-wingers that first displaced the dominant Colorado
02:59and national parties in 2005, with the election of Mujica's moderate predecessor, Tabar Avascus.
03:07I might be expected to feel bitter about him, Manis told me.
03:11But he is the only one who practices what he preaches. A former revolutionary who still
03:16professes anarchist ideals has run Uruguay's government and its booming economy ever since.
03:22Mujica remains popular, but presidents cannot serve consecutive terms. The next election,
03:28on 26 October, will nevertheless represent a referendum on his pragmatic left-wing government.
03:34I'm an old man made of flesh and bones, with nerves and a heart.
03:39I put my foot in it a lot, but always in good faith he has gained international renown as
03:44a truculent truth-speaker. Speeches lambasting rampant consumerism at the Rio Plus Two Oh
03:49conference in 2012, and at the United Nations in New York the following year, have garnered
03:54three million YouTube views.
03:57What would happen to this planet if Indians had the same number of cars per family as
04:01in Germany?
04:03He asked the audience in Rio. How much oxygen would be left? At the UN, he told the delegates
04:09to stop going to wasteful, expensive summits that achieve nothing. Some call him Latin
04:15America's Nelson Mandela, recalling his 13 years in jail. Others see a groundbreaking
04:21social liberal, who has introduced the world's most innovative cannabis legislation as well
04:26as gay marriage and legal abortion. Mostly, though, he is famous for the way he lives.
04:33The man who most Uruguayans call El Pepe drives a 25-year-old Volkswagen Beetle, lives in
04:38a tiny house on a rural smallholding, and gives away 90% of his salary. His deliberately
04:45coarse but pragmatic style delights Uruguay's poor, but also works for part of its middle
04:50classes, a trick that other populist Latin American leaders, invoking the great liberator
04:55Simón BolÃvar, have conspicuously failed to turn.
04:59His critics claim that Mujica is more style than substance, a charming old man who put
05:04aside both his gun and his revolutionary ideals. In a continent that has become the world's
05:09biggest laboratory for alternative left-wing regimes, each claiming to have found the magic
05:13formula, many still cannot decide whether he is a hero or a sellout.
05:18In the summer of 1969, a police officer knocked on the door of a small Montevideo investment
05:24bank, which was partially owned by a government minister. The employees let him in, only to
05:30discover he was a Tupamaro. Several other guerrillas followed. They took the equivalent
05:36of $100,000 in today's money, but also demanded the bank's account ledgers.
05:42One of the employees, Lucia Topolansky, had tipped off the Tupas that the bank was doing
05:46illegal currency deals. Her twin sister, Maria Ilia, was one of the guerrillas who conducted
05:52the raid. The Tupamaros dropped off the ledgers at the home of a public prosecutor, and some
05:58of those involved in the illegal trading were subsequently jailed.
06:02It was an example of their trademark armed propaganda style. Violence was fine, but best
06:07when proven to do good. The Topolansky sisters were from a well-off
06:12family in the upmarket Positos district.
06:15Uruguay has riquillos, not ricos. People who are well-off, not rich, Lucia told me in her
06:22office at the Parliament in Montevideo, where she is now the senior senator.
06:27Silver-haired with beaming brown eyes, she has a remodeled nose given to her by a Tupamaro
06:32surgeon who tried to change her appearance after she broke out of jail.
06:36She married Mujica in 2005, after 20 years of living together, and 13 years of separation,
06:43and they were imprisoned in separate jails. When he became president, it was her task
06:48to swear him in.
06:49The army regiment that had arrested both of us stands guard at the Legislative Assembly
06:54building, she said.
06:56Our friends were there, laughing and shouting. It's about time they honored you.
07:02Topolansky's girlhood nickname was La Flaca the Skinny One but the Tupamaros called her
07:06La Tranca the Log because she was so tough.
07:10Mujica was raised by a similarly strong-willed woman, his mother, Doña Lucy. His father
07:16died in 1943, when Mujica was only eight. Soon he was delivering for a local bakery
07:23in the semi-rural Paso de la Arena neighborhood, and selling arum lilies cropped from the creek
07:28behind their house to help the family make ends meet.
07:32Uruguay had a dazzling start to the 20th century, sending wool and beef to hungry, war-torn
07:37Europe. By 1930 it was one of the world's dozen wealthiest nations by per capita income.
07:43Tiny Uruguay enjoyed enlightened social legislation, with eight-hour working days and maternity
07:49leave, some called it the Switzerland of Latin America. It even won the World Cup in 1930
07:55and 1950, though its population has never gone above 3.5 million.
08:01But as Mujica grew up, the miracle began to collapse. As a young man, Mujica went to work
08:07for Enrique Uro, a popular left-wing politician, but had a political epiphany when he met Che
08:12Guevara in post-revolutionary Cuba.
08:15As much of Latin America fell victim to crisis and decline, it was a Uruguayan writer, Eduardo
08:21Galeano, who penned a new bible for the continent's left wing, the open veins of Latin America.
08:27"'The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret,' Galeano wrote, in 1971.
08:34Every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that
08:39have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth.
08:42With Uruguay suffering rampant inflation and a stagnant economy, Mujica and his comrades
08:47decided to follow Cuba's example, destroying the old order and trying something new, though
08:52it was never clear what that should be.
08:56Uruguay had no mountains to hide in, with the city of Montevideo dominating a fertile
09:00plain full of sheep and white-faced Hereford cattle, so they became urban guerrillas, taking
09:05their name from an 18th-century Peruvian rebel, Tupac Amaru II.
09:10The Tupamaros were a broad movement.
09:13One section was led by a priest, and unafraid of experiments, even costly ones.
09:19Trial and error, rather than dogma, would mark their history.
09:23It still does.
09:25They soon gained a reputation for daring theatrics.
09:28A raid on the town of Pondo saw them ride down the main street disguised as a funeral
09:33procession.
09:34After a heist at the Casino San Rafael in Punta del Este, a plush resort town, they
09:39sent back the employees' pool of tips.
09:43Time magazine dubbed them the Robin Hood guerrillas.
09:46But people with guns end up using them.
09:49Six people died in the Pondo raid.
09:51In March 1970, Mujica was identified by a policeman in a bar.
09:57El Pepe drew his pistol.
09:59Two police officers were wounded, and Mujica was shot six times.
10:04He was sent to Punta Caretta's jail, which would later be turned into a glitzy mall looking
10:08out over the river plate from Montevideo's southernmost point.
10:12Mujica broke out of it twice.
10:15Impressionable teenagers like Manis joined student demonstrations, hurling stones at
10:20the police as protests spread across what had long been regarded as the region's most
10:23tranquil and moderate country.
10:26Then it all went wrong.
10:28Kidnappings, bombings and cold-blooded executions left the Tupameros' romantic reputation in
10:33tatters.
10:35The army was called in and, in under a year, the Tupas were annihilated.
10:41Mujica was one of the last to be caught, in August 1972, while sleeping rough with an
10:46Uzi machine gun and a grenade under his coat.
10:49In June 1973, an authoritarian cattle rancher president, Juan Maria Bordaberry of the Colorado
10:56County, led a civilian military coup, closing down democracy.
11:01Many blamed the Tupameros.
11:03Nine Tupamero leaders were removed from their prison cells and sent to army camps as hostages
11:08to be killed if the group sprung back to life.
11:11The poet, novelist, and playwright Mauricio Rosenkopf spent 11 years in a tiny cell next
11:17to Mujica.
11:19For many years, Rosenkopf told me, the hostages could only communicate by tapping morse code
11:24on their cell walls.
11:27Allowed to use the toilet just once a day, they urinated into their water bottles, allowing
11:31the sediment to settle and drinking the rest, because water was also scarce.
11:36Allowed to use the toilet just once a day, they urinated into their water bottles, allowing
11:41the sediment to settle and drinking the rest, because water was also scarce.
11:46It was even worse for Mujica, whose bullet wounds had seriously damaged his guts.
11:51Solitary confinement drove them half mad.
11:55Pepe became convinced that a bugging device was hidden in the ceiling.
11:59Its imaginary static deafened him.
12:02He would put stones in his mouth to stop himself from screaming, Rosenkopf, now 81, told me.
12:09Mujica fought to obtain the one item he needed most, a potty.
12:14Hostages were allowed occasional family visits, so Doña Lucy brought him one, but the guards
12:18refused to give it to him.
12:21One day, when his jailers held a party, Mujica began to scream for it.
12:25The commandant, embarrassed in front of his guests, relented.
12:30Mujica clung to his sole possession, a symbol of victory over his jailers, each time they
12:34were moved to a new army camp.
12:37He refused to scrub it clean, Rosenkopf recalled.
12:41We all have ticks left from that time.
12:44When Pepe came out, he came with all that baggage.
12:47The main road leading out of Montevideo towards Mujica's chacra, or smallholding, takes you
12:52through industrial suburbs, over a polluted river and past flat expanses of small, squat
12:58homes.
12:59They are poor, but not decrepit.
13:02There are relatively few signs of the aching poverty that afflicts other parts of Latin
13:06America, though a developing world debt crisis drove many to penury at the beginning of this
13:11century.
13:12Old nags are tethered to the roadside, nibbling at the wide green verges.
13:17A rough, hand-painted sign on a tin shack beside a potholed asphalt road points to the
13:22dirt track leading to the farm.
13:25An excited pack of dogs rushes out to meet visitors, then rushes back to chase a van
13:30delivering gas bottles.
13:32Cockscrow and partridges strut through nearby fields, food for stealthy farm cats.
13:38Men in white rubber boots cut chard in a field belonging to the farm.
13:43Mujica emerged from his tiny house dressed in a fawn fleece and gray trousers with sandals
13:48over socked feet.
13:50The fleece is an improvement, which can be credited to his 2009 campaign team, who weaned
13:55him off tattered jumpers.
13:58Age has made his features both more pinched around the eyes and fleshier around the edges.
14:03His thick shock of graying hair was neatly brushed, another habit he acquired while running
14:07for president.
14:08Manuela, a three-legged mutt, hopped gamely along.
14:13The one-story house lies half hidden by greenery, its corrugated metal roof resting on pillars
14:18around a narrow, cement walkway full of dusty crates and jars.
14:23Winter rain had highlighted the patchy plasterwork.
14:26Mind the mud!
14:27The president warned by way of greeting.
14:30The narrow, elongated front room contains a cheap office chair and desk, bookshelves,
14:35a small table with two uncomfortable wood-backed chairs, a roaring log stove and an ancient,
14:40immaculately restored Peugeot bicycle.
14:43I've had that bicycle for 60 years, he said proudly, recalling his days as an amateur
14:49racer.
14:50The other two rooms in the house are familiar to Uruguayans, who have seen them on YouTube.
14:55The president once showed a Korean television team his roughly made bed and the contents
14:59of an old refrigerator before inviting them to shots of Johnny Walker and Uruguayan cane
15:04spirit.
15:05Cobwebs, heavy with dead flies, hung above our heads.
15:10Mujica sat stiff-legged on the office chair, easing his joints and ready for verbal combat.
15:16Mujica could live in the presidential palace, a hundred-year-old mansion in the old Money
15:20Prado district, but he would rather be here.
15:24We think of it as a way of fighting for our personal freedom, he said.
15:28If you complicate your life too much in the material sense, a big part of your time goes
15:33to tending that.
15:35That's why we still live today as we did 40 years ago, in the same neighborhood, with
15:39the same people and the same things.
15:42You don't stop being a common man just because you are president.
15:46Mujica has a mouth to match his rusticity.
15:49At a speech to trade unionists in Montevideo the previous day, the audience hung on for
15:54the quickfire, crude phrases that he claims to have picked up in jail.
15:59S. La Joda.
16:00What the fuck?
16:02Provoked a squawk of delight from a woman behind me.
16:04I know what our people are like, Mujica told me.
16:08Some more cultivated people have a stereotype and think El Senor Presidente has to be like
16:13a statue, totally inert.
16:15He cannot be like any other person.
16:18But I am an old man made of flesh and bones, with nerves and a heart.
16:22Yes, I put my foot in it a lot, but always in good faith.
16:27It was even worse for Mujica, they urinated into their water bottles, allowing the sediment
16:32to settle and drinking the rest, because water was also scarce.
16:36It was even worse for Mujica, whose bullet wounds had seriously damaged his guts.
16:42Solitary confinement drove them half mad.
16:45Pepe became convinced that a bugging device was hidden in the ceiling.
16:50Its imaginary static deafened him.
16:53He would put stones in his mouth to stop himself from screaming, Rosenkopf, now 81,
16:58told me.
16:59Old nags are tethered to the roadside, nibbling at the wide green verges.
17:04A rough, hand-painted sign on a tin shack beside a potholed asphalt road points to the
17:09dirt track leading to the farm.
17:12An excited pack of dogs rushes out to meet visitors, then rushes back to chase a van
17:16delivering gas bottles.
17:19Cockscrow and partridges strut through nearby fields, food for stealthy farm cats.
17:25Men in white rubber boots cut chard in a field belonging to the farm.
17:30Mujica fought to obtain the one item he needed most, a potty.
17:34Hostages were allowed occasional family visits, so Doña Lucy brought him one, but the guards
17:39refused to give it to him.
17:42One day, when his jailers held a party, Mujica began to scream for it.
17:46The commandant, embarrassed in front of his guests, relented.
17:51Mujica clung to his sole possession, a symbol of victory over his jailers, each time they
17:55were moved to a new army camp.
17:58He refused to scrub it clean, Rosenkopf recalled.
18:02We all have ticks left from that time.
18:04When Pepe came out, he came with all that baggage.
18:08The main road leading out of Montevideo towards Mujica's chacra, or smallholding, takes you
18:13industrial suburbs, over a polluted river and past flat expanses of small, squat homes.
18:20They are poor, but not decrepit.
18:23There are relatively few signs of the aching poverty that afflicts other parts of Latin
18:27America, though a developing world debt crisis drove many to penury at the beginning of this
18:31century.
18:32I stop at this point today.
18:35Until next time, stay curious.
18:38Stay informed, and keep exploring the world's incredible stories.
18:43Soon we will publish.
18:44Part 5.
18:46For watching.