FDLP – Ecuador: MUJICA, THE CLOSEST TO MOTHER TERESA
We hereby share an unofficial statement published by theFront for the Defense of the Struggles of the People of Ecuador.
The life, work, and reactionary remnants of José Mujica seem to have deeply confused opportunists and the revisionist left.
Of course, if the so-called “progressives” and members of the domesticated left cry and grieve the death of eleven military personnel from the repressive apparatus of the old State in Ecuador, it is logical that they would do the same for Mujica’s passing. This is nothing more than the obvious consequence of their conciliatory logic: they cry for the executioners and for those who renounced the revolution in the name of the most conspicuous pragmatism that can exist.
We cannot—and will not—ignore the years Mujica dedicated to armed struggle, much less the fact that he was tortured and imprisoned for over thirteen years. Undoubtedly, it was a high price paid for a project like that of the Tupamaros, limited by its petty-bourgeois leadership and trapped in the margins of reformism.
Mujica’s story is perhaps the most complete expression of the political folklorism that characterizes the domesticated left in Latin America. From incendiary to firefighter. He accepted the presidential nomination in Uruguay, and once in office, he erased with his elbow everything he had tried to build with his hands. That single act constituted a denial of his insurgent past and an ideological surrender to the structures of power of the big bourgeoisie. It was a clear signal to that miserable left that sees nothing beyond the ballot boxes and shamelessly endorses the bureaucratic path.
From the government, Mujica promoted a discourse of tolerance, dialogue, and national unity that, in practice, meant the subordination of popular demands to the stability of the old State. His proposal for a “pragmatic left” became fully functional to the interests of the ruling classes.
He limited himself to administering bureaucratic capitalism, striving to give it a “human face” without affecting in the slightest the interests of neither big landlords, big businesses, nor imperialist capital. Ultimately, he was a continuator of the exploitative and oppressive model of the ruling classes in Uruguay.
Although he was a direct victim of state repression, during his administration of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state, he not only legitimized but also defended the actions of the armed forces and police under the pretext of ‘public security.’ Far from dismantling the repressive apparatus that had tortured and imprisoned him, he strengthened it, justifying its existence as the backbone of ‘bourgeois democracy.’
From his position in government, Mujica renounced armed struggle, and not only that: assuming the role of a senile advisor, disguised as a popular sage, he spread disordered philosophical messages with no class content. He did not hesitate to launch diatribes against the combative youth, especially against the more radical sectors, whom he labeled as ‘enlightened,’ ‘romantics,’ or ‘imprudent.’ His rhetoric, far from encouraging organized rebellion, was profoundly demobilizing, condemning any attempt at struggle outside the institutional margins.
His highly exalted austere style was turned into a spectacle by international media. The image of the ‘poor president’ served to conceal the political void of his administration and to depoliticize the structural debate. While bureaucratic capitalism continued to operate unchecked, Mujica was sold as an example of individual virtue, transforming his moralism into an effective smokescreen for the lack of objective transformations.
To talk about Mujica is to talk about ideologically defeated individuals, domesticated subjects who, in their eagerness to redeem themselves before the old society, have become demobilizing agents. They are critics of revolutionary ideology and of the just and necessary objectives of those of us who believe, with fervor, in the urgency of a radical transformation of the old society.
Mujica has been, for Latin America, a sort of secular ‘Mother Teresa’: a manager of moral comfort amid structural misery. He has fulfilled this role with precision: pretending to dignify the poor, not to liberate them, but to make them accept their condition with humility, resignation, and tolerance. It is the cult of the “dignified poor” who do not rebel, who endure exploitation with serenity, who embrace the oppressor, and who believe in the fable that justice can arise from the heart of the old and rotten system.
ORGANIZE, COMBAT AND RESIST!
