Jose Mujica
Jose Mujica
José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordanois a Uruguayan politician who was the 40th President of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015. A former urban guerrilla fighter with the Tupamaros, he was imprisoned for 13 years during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. A member of the Broad Front coalition of left-wing parties, Mujica was Minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008 and a Senator afterwards. As the candidate of the Broad Front, he won the 2009 presidential...
NationalityUruguayan
ProfessionStatesman
Date of Birth20 May 1935
CountryUruguay
If I worried about pollsters, I wouldn't be president.
I'm not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live,
Businesses just want to increase their profits; it's up to the government to make sure they distribute enough of those profits so workers have the money to buy the goods they produce. It's no mystery - the less poverty, the more commerce. The most important investment we can make is in human resources.
No country can solve climate change alone, we have to take global measures.
I have a way of life that I don't change just because I am a president. I earn more than I need, even if it's not enough for others. For me, it is no sacrifice, it's a duty.
Uruguay is a country which has grown from immigration, people from all over. That is our origin.
Between madness and sanity, there is a shifting boundary. It is impossible to explain. Time slows down and you have to try to fill it. You don't have anything but solitude.
I'm not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live. My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I'm the son of my history. There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress.
What was my great sin? To have revealed the private property of the bank - well if this is being a criminal, then maybe I'm a great criminal.
Worse that drugs is drug trafficking. Much worse. Drugs are a disease, and I don't think that there are good drugs or that marijuana is good. Nor cigarettes. No addiction is good. I include alcohol. The only good addiction is love. Forget everything else.
We applied a very simple principle: Recognize the facts. Abortion is old as the world. Gay marriage, please - it's older than the world. We had Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, please. To say it's modern, come on, it's older than we are. It's an objective reality that it exists. For us, not legalizing it would be to torture people needlessly.
This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself,
A president is a high-level official who is elected to carry out a function. He is not a king, not a god. He is not the witch doctor of a tribe who knows everything. He is a civil servant. I think the ideal way of living is to live like the vast majority of people whom we attempt to serve and represent.
I was no assassin. I got out during the amnesty because I had not committed any violent crimes.