2023-10-07 18:12:02
MONTEVIDEO (AP) — More than half of the 3.3 million Uruguayans say they have no religious identity and, among them, the best-known atheist is former president José “Pepe” Mujica.
At 88 years old, the former guerrilla leader has earned global respect for donating most of his salary to charity and preaching simplicity in a world of consumerism. As president (2010-2015), his social agenda included supporting gay marriage and creating the first national market for legal marijuana.
In your country, the number of atheists, agnostics and other people without religious affiliation represents the highest share in Latin America. In the early 20th century, laws were passed to ban any mention of God in oaths of office and to remove symbols, including crucifixes, from public hospitals. Holidays were also secularized: Easter is Tourism Week and Christmas is Family Day.
In an interview with The Associated Press on his farm outside Montevideo, Mujica reflected on Uruguay’s secular history, religions and the growth in numbers of non-believers.
The questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
AP: What do you believe in?
MUJICA: I believe that there is nothing, that life is the adventure of molecules.
AP: Would you like to believe?
MUJICA: Yes, but I can’t.
AP: Why?
MUJICA: Because you believe it or you don’t believe it. And I see all religions as very arrogant. Because the magnitude of the universe is so brutal. Trying to place humans as the epicenter… seems frankly ridiculous to me given the phenomenal magnitude of the universe… It is likely that life exists in other environments of the universe, but in any case it is infinitely small compared to the phenomena of the physics of the universe.
AP: Religions bring—although they have had blunders—a sense of communion, of ritual, of faith.
MUJICA: And as a limit… it may be that they contribute to limiting some negative tendencies of human beings.
AP: When you faced your biggest challenge—being detained in jail for a long time—what kept you going?
MUJICA: That I was going to go out and continue fighting. I have never felt defeated in the sense of crushed, that it was all over. No! It is likely that these things are biological… Today we know much more than we knew before, that our guts rule much more than it seems. I know that there are people who are born pessimistic, even if they win the lottery every day, they always see it as black. And others have a desire to live.
AP: What do you think regarding atheists, agnostics and spiritual (but not religious) being the fastest growing group, especially among young people, in the world?
MUJICA: It is likely that technological, technical and scientific advances are influencing an evolution. Which is also a danger, a lack of humility, an arrogance, to believe that we have all the keys to human life. That is a gross simplification that we can fall into, but it seems that it is an evolution towards which humanity is going.
AP: What do you see between the positive and negative of religions?
MUJICA: Politically, I am consistent with the Christian message in its origin. That is, the cultivation of solidarity, respect for life. But that has to do with Christianity in its origins. Afterwards it can be anything. That anything is a very human construction… It continues to preserve within it enormous inequalities, denials. We probably believe that it is a modern invention, or that it is the last stage in human history. I don’t think so.
Now, God’s problem will be permanently latent. And it will be latent for the love of life. We are programmed to want to live, but it is not an intellectual decision. The organization of life is a hard drive that nature gives us: loving life. And we want to live as long as we can. And we know that we die. Do you realize that it is a brutal contradiction? We are programmed to want to live as long as we can, and yet, we die. And since we don’t want to die, we need to build something that gives us the illusion that not everything ends here.
I see a little mercy with the tragedy of life, which on the one hand is beautiful, but it ends. And I consider that we come from nothing and are going to nothing. Therefore, paradise is here, and hell.
AP: How do you want to be remembered?
MUJICA: Memory is a historical, comic-book thing… There is nothing historical. The years go by and not even the dust remains.
I have a tree that is a sequoia… and underneath I have buried the dog Manuela, who accompanied me for 22 years. When she dies, they have to set me on fire and bury me there.
They tell you: ‘How do you want to be remembered?’ Vanity of vanities! Because Amenophis IV probably must have been an important guy who had 300,000 people making a tomb for 20 years, but who remembers Amenophis IV? Some history specialist.
AP: Why do people remember Jesus so much?
MUJICA: Because we need shelter. Just because I don’t believe doesn’t mean I don’t respect religions a lot.
Jesus for me was… the flower of a political activist. He brought the sense of equality, the love to life, a lot of things. I see him as a historical companion. And he transcended the religious.
AP: You are respected for maintaining your convictions.
MUJICA: I live as I think because otherwise… I run the risk of thinking as I live… poor is the one who needs a lot… Or as the Aymara say, poor is the one who has no community, has no companion in life, he who walks alone. Those of us who have companions are not poor. We have the most important thing: solidarity of our colleagues… Wealth is considered to be a material issue and we are subject to a market civilization that subliminally imposes on people the confusion of being with having, that we must be buying things and owing… And we pay with the time of our life that we commit to work, because in reality you don’t buy with money, you buy with the time of your life.
When they made me look like a poor president, how poor they are!… If you have to live in that government house, four floors to have tea, stop screwing around!… I prefer a little house that I clean when I can my old lady, and the game is over, and I live comfortably. I’m not poor, I’m comfortable, which is different… You have to learn to walk through life light of baggage.
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The Associated Press’ religion coverage is supported through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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