For more than a decade, José “Pepe” Mujica lived an extreme confinement that few could endure. Since 1973 and for twelve years, he was one of the nine “hostages” of the Uruguayan dictatorship. Political pesos of the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement to which the military decided to break physically and mentally.
His story was portrayed in the movie “The 12 -year -old night” (2018), directed by Álvaro Brechner, where the psychological torture to which he was subjected with his companions Mauricio Rosencof and Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro is shown. “As we cannot kill them, we will go crazy,” was the slogan of the regime. Mujica did not go crazy. It was transformed.
“They treated us as animals, but they failed to take away our dignity. It was then that I realized that freedom is not just a physical state, but a mental state,” says another of their repeated phrases. “For years, we could only communicate by typing Morse code on the walls of our cells,” he recalled in another interview.
That period, far from leaving a thirst for revenge, was the origin of a humanistic philosophy. Instead of repeating hate patterns, Mujica chose to build from reconciliation. “I am not addicted to look back,” he said once, summarizing in a phrase the way he turned the dungeon experience into a simple, austere and compassionate life doctrine. He never became a nostalgic armed struggle or a replicator of militaristic logic. He was a survivor who opted for democratic policy, negotiation and service.
Freed in 1985 after the recovery of democracy in Uruguay, Mujica reinstated the institutional system as leader of the Broad Front. He was a deputy, Senator, Minister of Livestock and finally President of the Republic between 2010 and 2015. On that tour he definitely abandoned the revolutionary route, but not his social convictions. He ruled without ostentation, donating most of his salary and living in his farm with his wife, Lucía Topolansky.
“The 12 -year -old night” portrays the years that molded that character. The actor Antonio de la Torre embodied a young woman, marked by resistance and fragility, showing how the confinement destroys, but also reconvisces. The film recognized at International Festivals, which also participates by the Chinese Darín, is not only a complaint of the crimes of the dictatorship, but a lesson on human resilience and the ability to reinvent itself.
Democratic
Unlike other Latin American ex -American people who retained trench speeches and authoritarian drifts, Mujica was a compound. He knew how to weave agreements, listen to the adversary and assume errors. And embrace democracy. His passage through the presidency was marked by progressive laws (the legalization of cannabis, abortion and equal marriage), but also by an atypical leadership style: without marketing, based on the word and example. In a Latin America frequently shaken by corruption scandals, excessive ambitions and narcissistic leaders, the figure of José “Pepe” Mujica was erected as a counterpoint.
Since his modest farm on the outskirts of Montevideo – who never abandoned, even during his presidential mandate – Mujica rehearsed a form of counter -moan leadership with the global average: austere without being demagogic, radical without being sectarian, and ethical in his most daily gestures. He donated almost 90 % of his salary as president and asked that they ask for nothing more when, in his last days, he chose the intimacy of the retirement.
Legacy
His life story – Exguerrillero, political prisoner, “hostage” of the Uruguayan dictatorship for more than a decade, escaped from the prison, survivor of torture, inveterate reader, self -taught, farmer, president, president – contains all the elements of a Latin American epic.
But Mujica never used it to victimize or build a cult of personality. He was, on the other hand, a leader with awareness of his limits and intelligence to retire on time. “I’m dying. The warrior has the right to his rest,” he said in January this year. Neither martyr nor hero. Only a crazy old man with “the magic of the word”, as defined with pride.
Today, which accumulate leaders who do not know how to retire, who appeal to the messianism and polarization as the only way to sustain, Mujica’s death remembers something elementary: you can live with little and give a lot. Perhaps that is why, despite his contradictions and errors – as the winding dictatorial past or the appointment of Guido Manini Ríos at the head of the army – the Uruguayan people will remember it with genuine affection.
Pepe Mujica was not a perfect politician, but it was a persistent example of integrity. And in times where those who cling “to the cake” are left over (reference that the former president dedicated to Cristina Kirchner in 2024 about his inability to take a step to the side in favor of new generations), he chose to release. That lesson, silent, vital and incorruptible, is worth more than a thousand speeches and promises of greatness.
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