Every great historical period produces great characters. The great historical period that lives Latin America currently produces great characters.
Among all of them, three stand out, for being deeply rooted in history, in the living conditions of our peoples and in their national character. They are Evo Morales, Lula and Pepe Mujica.
One is a Bolivian indigenous leader, coca grower, who knew how to capture and represent the identities of the original populations of his country like no one else. I remember how, on the day of his election to be the first indigenous president of Bolivia, he was celebrating his victory in Cochabamba, with his people.
Alvaro Garcia Linera he had to call him on the phone and reiterate that he would have to go to La Paz, give a speech as the new president of Bolivia, the first elected indigenous president of a predominantly indigenous country, in addition to being the first elected in the first round. He went, he made a statement from the hotel where we were staying, greeted everyone, received our hugs and returned to Cochabamba.
A leader who insisted on continuing to proclaim himself a coca grower, honoring his career and honoring the resistance struggle of his people against the bombings of american planeswho intended to burn the coca cropswhich serve as a source of energy for the original populations.
Seeing Evo take office in the oldest city of indigenous populations, in Tiwanaku, before taking formal office as president, expressed his origin and identity. (Ceremony that I had the privilege of attending together with my dear and late friend Eduardo Galeano.)
Before taking formal possession of the Palacio Quemado, in La Paz, the indigenous populations completely cleaned the Palace and the square in which it is located, before their leader entered there as indigenous president of Bolivia.
Evo is a charismatic character who represents, in the best possible way, the Bolivian national identity. His life is an essential chapter of Bolivia’s own life.
Lula, instead, was born in the heart of the most miserable sector of Brazil, in the northeastern interior, the son of the worst time of drought. He ate bread for the first time when he was 7 years old. He fled the drought with his 8 surviving siblings, along with his mother, Doña Lindu, a warrior, although she has been illiterate all her life.
They walked 13 days in pau-de-arara, with the only clothes they had, eating little and badly, drinking the water they found on the way. They arrived in São Paulo like the typical immigrants of the 1950s. To be cheap labor to build the wealth of the São Paulo metropolis.
Lula was a street vendor, a shoe shiner, an office worker, he sold all kinds of products to contribute money that Mrs. Lindu managed as best she could for the survival of the family. Chosen to be the only son of Doña Lindu who could study, he went to technical school, graduated as a mechanical worker, from where he became a union leader, a political leader, until he became a the most important president that you have had Brazil.
The history of Brazil in those decades summarizes the history of the country in the most expressive and profound way. Lula’s biography is the Brazilian biography.
Pepe Mujica is the other emblematic character of the most important political period of Latin America. I was lucky to have a book that seeks to recount the distinctive characteristics of Pepe, which make him the most expressive character in the history of Uruguay in the last decades of the last century and in the first decades of this one.
On my birthday my son Miguel gave me an attractive book with the title: The President and the Frog (Dulbinernse, Porto Alegre, 2022), by Carolina de Sanctis, Uruguayan writer, resident in the United States. It is these books that we devour when reading, because of the charm of the character, his experiences and the way they are told.
The book seeks to build what would have been Pepe’s lonely years in prison. As he said, in order not to go crazy, he began to talk to the ants, to the frog, that crossed his cell. A reconstruction made, in the book, by a Norwegian journalist. According to Pepe, it wouldn’t be what it is today if he hadn’t gone through all that.
That raises the same questions we might have had with Pepe both in the presidency of Uruguay and in his place – which he and his wife bought a year after his 13-year solitary confinement. In the book childhood memories are mixed, the hard years of prison and torture, conversations with the frog, companion of loneliness in the cell, even the experiences of him as President of Uruguay.
The book builds the life trajectory of a political prisoner, a former president, the poorest president in the world. But, above all, of a person who, for his life, for his sensitivity, concentrates in himself the best values that a human being can have. Reading the book enriches us humanly and ethically.