Mujica’s open letter to the people of Uruguay and President Obama
President José Mujica of Uruguay on Friday (Dec. 5) released an open letter to his people and his U.S. counterpart, Barack Obama, which he himself read on Montevideo’s Radio M24-FM. The occasion for the letter was the release of six prisoners from the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo, Cuba, and their arrival in Uruguay, where they were granted asylum. A transcript follows, translated by Progreso Weekly.
*The translator’s clarifications appear [in brackets.]
“Solidarity is the tenderness of nations,” proclaimed [Chilean diplomat and poet] Pablo Neruda amid the immense and most urgent task of evacuating, aiding and finding asylum for tens of thousands of Spanish republicans, many of whom found their way to Río de la Plata after the Tragedy of 1939 [the Spanish Civil War].
This president was, in his youth, a dazzled — and today grateful — disciple of one of those intellectual luminaries sent into exile.
A peaceful and pacifying Uruguay is a great heritage and, at the same time, a vital strategy.
This country was part of the world’s vanguard in the creation of international instruments for peace.
Extracting that vocation from our better past, we have offered our hospitality to human beings who suffered an atrocious kidnapping in Guantánamo. The inescapable reason is humanitarian.
To these lands have come — since our independence and even earlier — individuals and groups, often very numerous, seeking refuge, the product of international wars, civil wars, tyranny, religious and racial persecution, poverty and also extreme misery, far away or very close.
From all the countries of Europe, including the distant Russia, and America, and — the most hurtful — from Africa, brought as slaves.
Many came from compromised and compromising situations. They built this Uruguay; they forged its well-being, brought trades, seeds, knowledge, cultures and, finally, digging deep roots, sowed here their innumerable descendants. Also their own graves, before dying of old age. With their bones they became part of this, our very beloved land.
In turn and in due course, when we ourselves were going through bad times, we received a warm and opportune hand and asylum from numerous countries, even though we were “accused” by the tyranny at home of being very dangerous people.
And before, during and after, tens of thousands of compatriots left for all corners of the world because of poverty and lack of outlook.
Many of them, and their descendants who speak other languages, have been unable to return and represent for us — in addition to a heartache and an unfulfilled duty — the dear Diaspora.
It is for that reason that, following on the road of the famous parable, we feel this scenario because we suffered it in our own flesh, more as the pain of the wounded man than as the altruism of the Samaritan.
We are part of the world of the wounded victims. We belong to the huge majority of Humanity.
We mustn’t — and don’t want to — forget or lose that point of view, so we may see the raw realities, unfortunately as numerous as cruel, that today bang loudly on the doors of millions of consciences.
The occasion, now joyful, is propitious for us to again demand
- the lifting of the unfair and unjustifiable embargo imposed on our sister Republic of Cuba, whose National Hero [José Martí] was consul of Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay in New York;
- the release of Oscar López Rivera, a 70-year-old Puerto Rican pro-independence fighter, a political prisoner in the United States for more than 30 years, 12 of which he has spent in solitary confinement;
- and the release of Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino and Gerardo Hernández, Cubans imprisoned in the United States for the past 16 years.
We are certain that these unsatisfied demands would open broad avenues to a process of peace, understanding, progress and well-being for all the people who inhabit that vital region of our America.
José Mujica
