MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Pepe Mujica: Britain's stance regarding Malvinas/Falklands a thing of the past

“It would be good for the central world to have the self-critical vision to understand that history goes the other way,” Mujica underlined

Former Uruguayan President José “Pepe” Mujica, who was in Buenos Aires during the weekend to join Alberto Fernández for the ceremonies marking the 40th anniversary of the 1982 armed conflict with the United Kingdom, insisted “the Malvinas claim reminds us that there is still colonialism in the world.”

“It is a remnant of what is left of the abuse of 200 or 300 years ago,” Mujica stressed. He added that the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the war “concurred to that memory of the Argentine society which is representative of the history of Latin America”.

Mujica also said in a radio interview that “it would be good for the central world to have the self-critical vision to understand that history goes the other way,” and that British ownership of the Falkland Islands belonged to “a time when the emerging European capitalism scattered around the world.”

The leftwing leader also wondered the United Kingdom's refusal to recognize Argentine sovereignty should be transformed into “getting used to the right of conquest” and pointed out: “It would be good for Queen Victoria's successors to bear this in mind and think about it.”

Mujica joined Fernández together with former Latin American presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Fernando Lugo of Paraguay.

“The agenda of our internal dissidence weakens us in the face of a problem that is much older, that is of substance and that, with a Latin American sense, we should consider because in the face of colonialism there cannot be two visions,” said Mujica, who also highlighted Latin America's need to “try to bring everyone together.”

Mujica also addressed the region's trend to transition towards progressive governments with Gabriel Boric in Chile, the return of MAS in Bolivia Lula Da Silva's apparently imminent return to the presidency of Brazil.

“There are going to be marches and counter-marches,” Mujica pointed out, but he was confident that “what will continue to guide the course and struggles of humanity” will be “the long chimera of man behind the feeling of equality, which does not mean that we all eat the same and that we all earn the same, but that we have similar opportunities.”

About his rightwing political nemeses, Mujica replied that “the animal exists; it is there.”

“I cannot use the word 'libertarians' to define them. It is a sacrilege in the field of ideas because they are anything. They are capitalist anarchists,” Mujica said of the ultra-right movements that have emerged worldwide and that in Argentina are represented by national deputies Javier Milei and José Luis Espert.

Regarding Argentina's recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mujica explained that the financing organization “is trying to gain time because it realizes that the reforms it wants to be made will not be achieved with the current government,” while “Argentina needs time to recover a little”.

“Uruguay was stuck with the IMF for more than 50 years, from 1955 to 2006, when the last pesos were paid and to this day we have not” borrowed again from them.