“At the end of the day, let them take away what I danced.” With those words, José Mujica closed the press conference he offered this Monday morning in Montevideo to announce that a tumor had been detected in his esophagus. Mujica spoke serenely, touched by the circumstances, but with his humor intact. “In my life more than once the grim reaper walked [muerte] rondando he towards [cama], but he continued to shepherd me all these years (…) This time he comes with the scythe at the ready,” he said. The announcement lasted just over five minutes, which was followed by a silence that was not known in the appearances of the most talkative of Uruguayan politicians. “Come on, Pepe!” said his companions from the Popular Participation Movement (MPP), a leftist group of which Mujica is the historical leader. “Do you have any questions?” the former president told reporters. There were no questions, nor many comments.
“I enjoy poor health,” Mujica explained to this newspaper a little over a year ago, before beginning a two-hour talk. On the farm where he lives, west of Montevideo, he chatted relaxed, surrounded by loquats, seedlings and thrushes. That day he had woken up at five or so in the morning to work the land; Then he had drank mate and talked via Zoom with the historian Yuval Harari. During the midday break, he had had lunch with Lucía Topolansky, his lifelong companion, former senator and former vice president of Uruguay. In broad strokes, that is the quiet life that the 88-year-old former Uruguayan president continues to lead today, as people close to him explain to EL PAÍS. In their house in Rincón del Cerro, where the farm is located, they both cook, read, and listen to the radio. They also receive visitors from all corners of the world, who continue to make pilgrimages to the house attracted by Mujica’s way of life and ideas. In addition, the couple is actively involved in the Frente Amplio (center-left), participating in campaign events with their sights set on the national elections in October 2024.
“It is something very complicated and doubly complex in my case, because I have had an immunological disease 20 years ago that affected, among other things, my kidneys,” Mujica said regarding the tumor that was detected in his esophagus during a medical check-up last Friday. . In dialogue with EL PAÍS, his personal doctor, Raquel Pannone, said that we will have to wait for the results of the clinical studies that are ongoing to determine the most appropriate treatment. In these cases, she indicated, they are usually surgical, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. “This does not mean that it suits the patient in question,” she clarified. Asked regarding the former president’s state of mind, Ella Pannone assured: “He is fine, in good spirits, with enthusiasm, doing his things, without pain.” That seems to be the will of her patient, who has no plans to retire. “As long as I can, I will continue fighting with my companions, faithful to my way of thinking, entertaining myself with the vegetables and the chickens (…) As long as the bullshit holds, I will be there.” “We’ll see what happens,” she added.
As happened this Monday, on several occasions Mujica has made reference to his relationship with death. He explained that he knew her closely, especially when he was arrested and imprisoned in 1972, for belonging to the MLN-Tupamaros guerrilla movement that emerged in the turbulent 1960s in Uruguay. In prison he was subjected to total isolation, he suffered physical and psychological torture of all kinds, between the ages of 37 and 50. “I’m still alive by a miracle,” he often says. He was released with the return of democracy in 1985 and since then he has been a member of the MPP, a faction of the Frente Amplio for which he was elected deputy in 1994. His political career continued in the Senate until Tabaré Vázquez, Uruguay’s first left-wing president, appointed Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries in 2005. When he became president in 2010, Mujica attracted the attention of the world for his austere way of life, a combative speech and progressive policies that made him an undisputed leader of the left. Latin American.
For the presidential race in October, Pepe Mujica’s choice is Yamandú Orsi, an MPP politician and former mayor of Canelones (southern Uruguay). “It’s going to be difficult for us to assimilate it,” said Orsi following listening to this morning’s conference. For Orsi, there are few references who speak regarding the “value of life” as Mujica has done for a long time. “To the point of valuing life through an insect. In his most difficult moments he learned to value that: the complexity and the miracle,” he expressed. He recalled that the former president had had other health problems, such as vasculitis, while he was governing in 2012. He had also suffered from a severe kidney condition in 2004. Orsi, a candidate for the Frente Amplio, said that when asked: “How are you doing, Pepe ?”, Mujica usually answers: “I live”, simply. “The best thing is that he continues doing the two things that he said he was going to do: working the land, as he has always done, and militancy, because he does not conceive of any other way of living,” he concluded.
During the course of Monday, Mujica received signs of support from his fellow members of the Frente Amplio, from representatives of the center-right ruling coalition, as well as from leaders beyond borders, such as his friend Lula da Silva, president of Brazil: “You are a beacon in the fight for a better world. We have always been together in the good times and in the difficult times,” the Brazilian president wrote in X.
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