Spring in Montevideo

Once again Montevideo welcomes me with open arms. This time it feels warmer than ever, for I had only seen the city in winter. The change is notable. Two things strike me: firstly, the light; the sun is much higher and daylight lasts much longer in these last days of the Austral spring than in August. Secondly, the trees; the platanus were naked in winter, now they are dressed in live green and give the streets a completely different aspect, full of live.

I land in Montevideo three days after the run off to the presidential election. The majority went to the electoral ticket of the Frente Amplio, the coalition of the left led into power by the outgoing president, Tabaré Vázquez. The President elect is Mr. José Mujica, “el Pepe”. 75 years old, former member of the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional - Tupamaros, the urban guerrilla that operated in Uruguay in the late sixties and early seventies.

Pepe Mugica is a very controversial character, the kind of charismatic person that leaves no margin but to love or hate. Obviously his past as a guerrilla leader earns him numerous detractors. Yet there is more. Pepe continued to live in his chacra even when appointed minister of agriculture with president Vázquez. Pepe speaks the language of the people in the street, even consciously reproducing typical grammar mistakes people make. Pepe does not wear suits, just ordinary shirts, sweaters and jackets. A number of Uruguayans do not think his image allows him to represent the country in a proper manner and reckon international representation should be left to Danilo Astori, the vice-president elect and minister of economy with Tabaré. They reckon he is too plain, too raw, they think he has no style, he looks too much like a peasant. Besides, the country cannot afford being represented by a former guerrilla leader.

El Pepe used to appear daily in an early morning radio show that I used to listen to when I lived in Montevideo. He would comment on daily matters, on the economy, on politics… I was always struck by the deepness of his thinking combined with an enormous pedagogic capacity; he would be able to explain complicated things and convey complex messages in a totally intelligible and compelling language. Having heard him several times nobody can convince me that he is simple. Quite the contrary.

On the other hand, I do not think anyone should make a fuss about his past as a guerrilla leader –a terrorist, to use a term hugely connotated in Latin America well before 9/11-, all the more when he spent fifteen years in jail. He does not resemble any of the former guerrilla leaders now in power in the region. He is not like the Castro brothers, who maintain Cuba in a surreal economic system that creates poverty and despair rather than wealth; he is not Daniel Ortega, who turned the Sandinist revolution into a parasitarian cleptocracy. And in terms of the present Latin American left, he is much closer to Lula than to Chávez.

If I were Uruguayan, would I be proud? I do not know. I am sure I would not be ashamed, though. El Pepe won the presidency talking plain politics and economy to the people, while most of the world lives in the era of showbiz-like politics, where the real issues are often hidden by a spin of action where appearing to be constantly doing something becomes much more important than actually achieving anything –from Blair to Sarkozy through Zapatero, Cristina Kirchner or Abdulaye Wade-. A model sublimated by Berlusconi, the biggest master of diversion whose presence into politics responds mainly to his search to protect his own personal wealth and nothing else. If I take these other examples, some of them better than others, I can say as humbly as firmly that in my opinion Uruguayans should not be ashamed. Rather, they should be proud.