This is a dialogue between the ex-president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, and Kintto Lucas, a journalist, writer and Vice-Chancellor and Ambassador for Uruguay under Mujica’s government. As Lucas explains in the introduction, he first met Mujica in the Punta Carretas prison in 1971, when Lucas was just eight years old. He visited his older brother, who like Mujica was a member of the National Liberation Movement – Tupamaros (MLN-T) every Saturday. This was the prison from which 106 Tupamaros escaped in 1971 by tunnelling out of the prison, but Lucas’ brother was not among them. His cell had been changed at the last minute, and he no longer had access to the tunnel. However, by 1972 he was released and exiled to Chile. Kintto left Uruguay in 1980 and lived in Brazil until he returned after the withdrawal of the military in 1985. On his return he joined the MLN as a militant and worked as a journalist on a Mate Amargo bi-weekly Tupumaro newspaper, which became the best-selling newspaper in Uruguay.
Why am I talking so much about the author, and not Mujica himself? That’s because Lucas himself is front and centre in this book, with a 54 page introduction and he certainly doesn’t take a backward step in the interview, either. I didn’t bother counting the words, but I suspect that Lucas talks as much as Mujica does, and at times I just wanted him to shut up.
There’s lots of internal Uruguayan politics in here, which went right over my head. Still, it was good to get beyond the aphorisms and homespun wisdom that Mujica repeated over and over in his many interviews with Western journalists. I’m not sure whether this book was written in English or Spanish- an editor is credited, but not a translator- but it is rather strangled English and not particularly pleasant to read. As Mujica rarely spoke English, I think that this is a transcript of a Spanish conversation translated by the author, but it does not read particularly well.
Apparently when the Tupamaros held up a bank or a cinema, they would harangue the literally captive audience about politics and justice, before letting most of them leave. Reading this, you go away feeling rather ear-bashed by both of them too.
My rating: 6/10
Sourced from: Kindle e-book.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 