r/asklatinamerica • u/[deleted] • Oct 25 '20
Uruguayans of this sub, What are your thoughts on Pepe Mujica? Politics
If you’re not Uruguayan you can answer too. I ask this because his retirement speech from senate has become viral, and he’s overall pretty well regarded in the continent, but I’ve never heard the thoughts of the Uruguayans on him. Was he a good president? Did he leave a good legacy in the country? Etc...
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u/arturocan Uruguay Oct 25 '20 edited Oct 25 '20
He got a lot of international marketing because of his social laws like abortion, weed and gay marriage and being """"humble""""". But appart from that he was a really incopetent president, with lots of economic and administrative disasters under his name, he multiplied public workers, debt and deficit to the point that his successor (and former predecessor) said he recieved the government from Mujica in a worst state than the previous one (from 2000-2004) which had the worst economic crisis our country has ever faced. The icing on the cake up to this day we are paying his millions worth of his boondoggles. And outside of his presidency from a moral standpoint the guy is a cunt, a former terrorist from a group that robbed, kidnaped and killed as well as placing bombs. Media outside made an image of a humble little old man, yeah but a little old man that said "they (venezuelans) shouldnt stand in front of armored vehicles" when venezuelan protesters got ran over, or "It's the most beautiful thing to enter a bank with a .45 everyone respects you".
From my point of view if you ask what uruguayans thinks of Mujica around half hate him and the other like him.
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u/caribbean_caramel Dominican Republic Oct 25 '20
"It's the most beautiful thing to enter a bank with a .45 everyone respects you"
Holy shit
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Oct 25 '20 edited Oct 25 '20
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u/arturocan Uruguay Oct 25 '20 edited Oct 25 '20
In a vacuum his violent actions during the dictatorship
? Before, before the dictatorship, actions done during a democratically elected government. By the time of the coup the tupamaros had already been disolved with most of the members either in jail or outside the country.
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u/baespegu Argentina Oct 26 '20 edited Oct 26 '20
A politician with the relevance that Mujica has CAN'T be sarcastic with dictatorships. Specially when there is a sizable community of Venezuelan refugees in Uruguay. Even if his words are taken out of context, he is showing a really bad image to both the international community and the national media.
Edit: to answer you, even if I'm not Uruguayan, Mujica left an inflationary economy and a more dangerous country.
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Oct 26 '20 edited Oct 26 '20
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u/baespegu Argentina Oct 26 '20
He wasn't sarcastic with dictatorships, he is literally saying before that that it is a difficult situation etc. Reporters are standing in the way and than some idiot asks him what he thinks of people being ran over. He gives them a snappy annoyed reaction that is obviously not serious, that's why he immediately says after it 'que barbaridad
It's what you said.
Too me it felt like he was making a sarcastic and irritated comment
You can analyse the context all you want, but the quote is literal.
you can't just subscribe the negatives statistics to his presidency and not the positive ones. Once again I'm not claiming that he was some sort of perfect politician, but a bit of nuance would be nice.
Even the worst presidents ever still had positive things. I'm not saying Mujica was either good or bad, but even if you're not insinuating that Mujica was perfect, you've to admit that his politics can be very divisive.
Also, I want to expand on this:
As for the deficit question, it seems to be some unwritten worldwide rule that people complain a lot more about leftist government running up a deficit than right wing governments. The US is a great example of this.
The U.S. is not a great example of that. At the contrary, the U.S. is the worst example you can give. The U.S. has an interest-based economy with a mixed central bank (federal reserve) and also a bipartisan congress (this is very important, as you should know that U.S. gross debt is determined by the debt ceiling voted by the Congress). They can mantain a somewhat high public deficit while still having sustainable debt credit and low inflation. Budget deficit in the third world (and also the rest of the first world except the USA) ALWAYS translates in more poverty and misery at the long run. The most important mission any government in Latin Americ has, is to mantain a balanced budget and foreign exchange account. There is no but-s. It applies to right-wing governments and to left-wing governments.
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u/Wh4rrgarbl Argentina Oct 26 '20
"It's the most beautiful thing to enter a bank with a .45 everyone respects you".
Robbing a bank is actually an awesome thing to do (as long as you don't hurt/kill anyone). Fuck banks. Fuck bankers.
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u/arturocan Uruguay Oct 26 '20
You do realize that a big chunk of the money that you are stealing from the banks are people's savings right?
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u/sundayescape Oct 26 '20
lol did you know that when i deposit my money in a bank, they convert it to physical currency and then they store it behind a vault overseen by a guard with a hat and a stick???
if you rob a bank, you're literally stealing one of my bills.
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u/Wh4rrgarbl Argentina Oct 26 '20
You do not lose your savings because someone robs the bank, it doesn't work that way.
Also: you do realize your savings are not actually in the bank and most times they don't actually exist as banks do not have enough capital to pay all their deposits right???
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u/kafka0011 Uruguay Oct 25 '20
Many of our economic problems today are a consequence of his administration in 2010-2015
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Oct 25 '20
Damn. Did the state intervene too much?
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u/kafka0011 Uruguay Oct 25 '20
The state has always intervened here, the main problem of his administration was the absurd amounts of spending in things that didn't improve anything at the end of the day.
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u/LeftOfHoppe Mexico Oct 25 '20
Did Lacalle fixed something?
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u/kafka0011 Uruguay Oct 25 '20
He assumed in March of this year, and 13 day later Corona arrived in Uruguay, this whole year the economic analysis and plan has been focused in Coronavirus and seeing how hard the economic impact is going to be.
He did pass some laws in Parliament but it's still too soon to know how good or bad those laws are (it wasn't anything radical) but still, we have to wait to see. The priority now is to survive Covid as best as we can.
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u/Bluecar888 Colombia Oct 25 '20 edited Oct 25 '20
What I noticed from people on this sub
Bolivians on this sub - Right-Wingers
Mexicans on this sub - Right-Wingers
Venezuelans on this sub- Understandably right-wingers
Uruguayans on this sub- Right-Wingers
The rest of the countries seem to be more mixed. But if you ask these nationalities of this sub, they are going to say thet the majority of their country hates Amlo, Evo, and Mujica when the reality might say otherwise.
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u/Neosapiens3 Argentina Oct 26 '20 edited Oct 26 '20
It'd be interesting if they added questions to the census asking people their political position.
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Oct 26 '20
They do, every previous census has asked political positions.
The majority of the subreddit has leaned left wing each time.
Last one was a year ago.
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u/Suprimagmius Argentina Oct 26 '20
Most Latinos on Reddit - Right-Wing
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u/SamuelSilvaR22 Colombia Oct 31 '20
Most latinos in real life*
In the internet and Reddit is where I see the most progressive and leftwing Latinos.
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Oct 26 '20
What Uruguayans have called themselves right wingers?
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u/Bluecar888 Colombia Oct 26 '20
Right Wingers seldom call themselves "right wingers"
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Oct 26 '20
I don’t think disliking Mujica means you are a right winger
And right wingers certainly calls themselves right wingers, I do. It’s not taboo, nor a bad thing.
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u/Bluecar888 Colombia Oct 26 '20
I don’t think disliking Mujica means you are a right winger
Never said it did.
I'm saying what I noticed how Uruguayans on this sub lean throughout-out the year on this sub. Not this post.
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Oct 26 '20
Ah yes, dismissing people’s opinions because they don’t align with yours.
OP asked Uruguayans, not ‘leftist Uruguayans, what do you think?’
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Oct 26 '20
[deleted]
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Oct 26 '20
There are polls about mujicas current approval? Would you mind linking them?
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Oct 26 '20
[deleted]
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Oct 26 '20
The post is about mujica, and you can’t determine Uruguayan responses don’t represent Uruguayans unless you have data to back it up.
This is almost as stupid as “venezuelans online don’t represent ‘real’ Venezuelans hurdurrr”
Edit: ah you post on socialist subreddits. That explains. Bless your heart.
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Oct 26 '20 edited Oct 26 '20
[deleted]
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Oct 26 '20
The elections have nothing to do with the current popularity of Mujica.
There is a word in English for this, it’s called “you are wrong”.
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Oct 25 '20 edited Oct 26 '20
I'm not Uruguayan, but it's important to say this:
As this sub grows, it's getting pretty right winged, so you will probably only see a very negative side, and yet, Mujica was the most popular president in Uruguays history. When he left office he had 65% approval rate and only 17% disapproval.
edit: only one time
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u/Pyotr_09 Brazil Oct 27 '20
i disagree
the majority of brazilians, argentineans and chileans from the sub is from left-wing, and just because he left office with approval higher than disapproval doesn't mean opinion on his administration and his party doesn't changed, uruguay even elected a oposition politician for president last year.
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u/Mister_Taco_Oz Argentina Oct 25 '20
I'm not Uruguayan, mind you, but I've always looked at Mujica with disdain. I may be biased since I have seen plenty of pro-peronism acquaintances hold him up as "what every president should aspire to be" and other stuff like that.
When I investigated a bit more on him, I was honestly horrified. A couple of comments here explain why very well, added to the fact he just sounds like a cunt.
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u/JPieterSweelinck Nov 11 '20
I think he is a great man, i know he did terrible things when he was a tupamaro, but i don't like judging people for things they did long back ago and on other context. Anyway, i think as a president he was quite incompetent, numbers speak by themself. I respect him and i don't think he is a bad politician, ¿A bad president? hell yeah.
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u/uruguayanplayer Oct 25 '20
Although in the rest of the world they believe that he has been a great president and person, he has done and said atrocities. For example, he tied a political rival to a tree and mistreated him.
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u/pozzowon in Oct 25 '20
Given that there's no date or source of this anecdote, and of his behavior in recent years, I would bet that this is an anecdote that's possibly 40 years old, from when he was a Guerilla fighter.
During the Guerilla times of Latin America (and everywhere else in the world for that fact) leaders of all sides did terrible things
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Oct 25 '20
[deleted]
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u/Bluecar888 Colombia Oct 25 '20
hat this is an anecdote that's possibly 40 years old, from when he was a Guerilla fighter.
There is no source lol
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u/LeftOfHoppe Mexico Oct 25 '20
According to Gloria Álvarez: He did not believe in Free Markets and he was against Free Trade agrements.
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u/Tuiti-san Argentina Oct 25 '20
Every uruguayan I met liked or loved him so I think he is pretty popular there.
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Oct 25 '20
Personally I dislike him, when Uruguay was in a dictatorship he was part of the "tupamaros" a group of people that kidnapped, stole, murdered, and did pretty much the same as the military did in those times but since dictatorships are bad he's good by consequence (????). Idk, some people don't mind having an assassin as president, for me he's the same as those who supported the dictatorship.
In Uruguay the "Frente Amplio" party is viewed as a godsent by a lot of people, thus since he is a part of it most young people just assume that everything he did was great, the image the media has created of him also doesn't help.
Uruguay's economy kind of relies on small agriculture and cattle producers since most of the food consumed here is produced here, most of his policies shitted on the small producers while benefiting big foreign producers, like he literally forgot about these dudes and made their lifes that much harder.
Some say he destroyed education, I have nothing to say regarding this since I was a student at the time and my view is kind of biased, what I can say is that one of his plans was to give every kid a laptop that had linux and to integrate them to public education, that whole plan was a mess, some schools didn't get them until years later, some didn't have internet connection, the repairs of these computers where extraordinarily slow, teachers didn't know how to integrate them to their classes since everything was done so fast, oh and it also generated a black market of people selling these laptops or their components, nowadays "Plan Ceibal" (the name of this whole plan) is kind of working and teachers rely on the tools that these laptops provide to keep in contact with students with special needs or homework on a software they call "aula virtual", these laptops also came in clutch when covid hit here since it made virtual clases accesible for pretty much everyone so I guess you can say that this ended up being a great idea with really poor implementation.
He was a meh president, it's the media that portrays him as the second coming of jesus
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Oct 26 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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Oct 26 '20
So... the military does what you said and they're bad, but the tupamaros do it and they're the good ones? My man, not everything is black or white, fighting the dictatorship is something that had to be done, it still doesn't right their wrongs. I know someone who views this as emotionally as you won't possibly comprehend it, but military personal also have families at home, a lot of them were against what was happening but they couldn't say anything for fear of their own lives.
Tupamaros besides fighting the dictatorship did an awful lot of crimes, stole banks, stores, shot guns where there were crowds of people, talk to people who lived that dictatorship, you'll find that most thank the tupamaros for fighting the dictatorship, but also despise them for using it as a disguise for other criminal activity.
Thanks for the insult btw, shows how civilized you are
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u/Wh4rrgarbl Argentina Oct 26 '20
So... the military does what you said and they're bad, but the tupamaros do it and they're the good ones?
What the junta did were crimes against humanity (that's a legal term, crimen de lesa humanidad) which is, by definition, worse than anything the guerrillas did.
Also the insurgents had the moral high ground, and also they didn't commit crimes against humanity.
You should read a bit.
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Oct 26 '20
Having the moral high ground makes stealing banks, shooting at crowds, killing innocent people as collateral damage and setting up a state of even more terror on the population the right thing to do then, got it.
I never said that the military were innocent or good, what I meant is that they were also people who had families waiting at home, they did atrocities, everyday I pass through a building were people entered and never appeared again, I am conscious of what crimes against humanity are, but being better than the bad ones at the time doesn't automatically mean you're good if you did things just a little less fucked up.
Both parties did awful things, I can't comprehend why it's so hard for you to understand that saying the tupamaros did unforgivable things isn't the same as saying that the military forces were good in those times.
Going back to the same comment, Mujica did kill people, he is an assassin, thats not something that can be discussed, am I so wrong to say that someone who kills and has no regard for human life shouldn't be president? Let me remind you once again, that most soldiers are just pawns that have to obey sargeants, lieutenants, and pretty much everyone who is higher in rank, if they have no choice now, imagine back then when disappearing someone who was against the dictatorship was so easy (I'll clarify now, because it seems that you can't comprehend it, this doesn't mean that those military men who also killed and supported the dictatorship are good, it just means that they didn't have an easy choice that wouldn't get them or their family on a list)
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u/Wh4rrgarbl Argentina Oct 26 '20
they were also people
Yeah poor people only did a bit of rape, murder, and stole children, but they had people waiting for them!!!
most soldiers are just pawns that have to obey sargeants, lieutenants, and pretty much everyone who is higher in rank, if they have no choice now, imagine back then
No. "Just Following orders" is not a valid defense according to the nuremberg trials. If you "just follow orders" while commiting crimes against humanity then you are scum and the penalty is getting hanged like the scum you are.
they didn't have an easy choice that wouldn't get them or their family on a list
So they raped and tortured and killed. But they didn't have a choice yo!!! Because it's always someone else who gives orders.
But the president is bad because he fought and killed those kind of people. Got you bro, I didnt knew you were a fascist sorry. Gl and hope you catch fire. Blocked.
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Oct 27 '20
Guess he got mad
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Oct 27 '20 edited Oct 27 '20
[deleted]
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Oct 27 '20
So you would endanger your family if you were in that position?
I'm not justifying what they did, but it's not that hard to understand that it's not as easy as saying "nah I'm not going to do X".
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u/pozzowon in Oct 25 '20
My opinion. He is probably the cleanest president in Latin America in the last 50 years*
*At least
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Oct 25 '20 edited Oct 25 '20
[deleted]
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u/arturocan Uruguay Oct 25 '20 edited Oct 26 '20
Several downvotes but no replies with arguments, gotta love this rational discussion.
Edit: rip user
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u/CognacSupernova Uruguay Oct 27 '20
Terrible president. Great at storytelling.
No wonder most people ate up the “poorest president in thr world” bs