Uruguay’s Leader Agrees to Take Up to Six Guantánamo Prisoners President José Mujica, Ahead of Meeting With President Obama This Week, Sets Conditions on Acceptance, Saying the U.S. Must Agree for them to Live Freely in Uruguay By Ken Parks May 7, 2014 8:57 p.m. ET
José Mujica, President of Uruguay. Alejandro Kirchuk for The Wall Street Journal
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay—President José Mujica said Uruguay would take up to six prisoners from the U.S.-run Guantánamo Bay detention facility, as long as Washington agreed they would be free to live freely in this tiny South American country. “We are never going to be the jailor for the United States,” Mr. Mujica told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday in an interview at his farmhouse outside the Uruguayan capital. “But we are prepared to take in the people over there, and allow them to live in our country, like any citizen.” Mr. Mujica, whose folksy style and socially liberal policies have brought him adoration and scorn, talked about his legacy as he prepared to meet with President Barack Obama on Monday at the White House to discuss trade and investments and not, he said, about the prisoners.
Speaking about Venezuela, where his ally, President Nicolás Maduro, has been whipsawed by protests, Mr. Mujica said he feared that the unrest could prompt the military to be drawn in. So far the military has remained on the sidelines. The Uruguayan leader also discussed the marijuana law he championed and turned to law this week, which calls on the state to oversee the cultivation, distribution and sale of pot. He acknowledged potential problems in applying the law, saying the government could use public hospitals to distribute pot if pharmacies cannot supply recreational users, as laid out in new regulations. “There are no doubts that the drugs policy we have followed up until now has been a failure,” said Mr. Mujica, who is a sharp critic on the U.S.’s drug interdiction strategies. “What we are trying to do is create policies that allow us to take the [marijuana] market from the drug traffickers, but that doesn’t mean we are going to allow this addiction to spread.”
Mr. Mujica at home on his farm near Montevideo. Alejandro Kirchuk for The Wall Street Journal
A former commander of a leftist urban guerrilla group who spent 14 years in prison, Mr. Mujica, who is 78, is known for his candid talk and an informal style that has included, at times, barbs about American foreign policy and reflections about his own life. So when it came to discussing Guantánamo, Mr. Mujica said he both wanted to help Mr. Obama close down the detention center and provide a new horizon for the Syrian and Palestinian men his country would resettle. Offering to take detainees, like some other of Mr. Mujica’s policies, haven’t sat well with all Uruguayans, but he said he had made the decision based on humanitarian grounds. “One shouldn’t always be bound by public opinion,” Mr. Mujica said. “Sometimes you have to help people open their minds and be generous. It’s possible that in the beginning they don’t understand, but they will over time.” Spokespersons for the U.S. Defense and State departments, as well as the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo declined to comment on the Uruguayan asylum offer.
But American officials in March said the U.S. was reaching out to several Latin American governments to resettle the detainees as the Obama administration tried making good on its pledge to close the detention center, which now has 154 prisoners. In recent years, hundreds of Guantánamo prisoners have been transferred or released to countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. Though Guantánamo has been a recent topic between the two countries, Mr. Mujica said “I’m not going to talk about it” at the meeting with Mr. Obama. “I’m not putting it on the agenda on my end,” he said. “For me, the matter is decided. If he asks me about it I’ll talk.” Uruguay’s government has held talks with the Obama administration, and Mr. Mujica said Uruguayan intelligence agents have met with the detainees his country would receive. The detainees would be permitted to bring their families to Uruguay, said Mr. Mujica, who called their imprisonment useless. Dressed in a polar fleece and sweat pants—Mr. Mujica is known for never wearing a neck tie, let alone a suit—he spoke in the dim light of a sitting room in the ramshackle cottage he shares with his wife, Lucia Topolansky, who is a senator. A wood cutting of the iconic Argentine revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara,” hung off a book shelf while the president’s three-legged dog, Manuela, occasionally sought a loving pat from two foreign visitors. Mr. Mujica and his wife gave up on living in the presidential palace, and instead spend their time in this home, which Mr. Mujica purchased shortly after his release from prison. Here, he grows chrysanthemums, squash and tomatoes, while chickens strut along a gravel road. “We’ve been here 28 years,” said Mr. Mujica. “I had just got out of jail and was looking for a farm.” Mr. Mujica, a former agriculture minister who had been elected in 2009, has overseen solid economic growth in this country, which is sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, as well as growing foreign investment in farming, forestry and pulp mills. Adriana Raga, the director of the Cifra polling agency, said that has helped fuel his popularity among Uruguayans, who enjoy an economic stability that is in short supply in other countries on the continent. But Mr. Mujica’s support for laws legalizing abortion, approving gay marriage and creating a national system for the sale of marijuana have made him something of a rock star in some circles abroad. Indeed, the rock band Aerosmith came to see him last year, giving him an autographed guitar. And Mr. Mujica has himself been a leading front man overseas for the left-leaning leaders that govern South America, ranging from Brazil’s center-left president, Dilma Rousseff, to the nationalist Evo Morales in Bolivia. “Uruguay is a small country with an inferiority complex,” said Ms. Raga of Cifra, “and Uruguayan like having a president who is well liked abroad.” One government that holds Mr. Mujica in particularly high regard is Venezuela, whose populist government is sharply opposed to the Obama administration. Celebrated for his revolutionary background, Mr. Mujica is a frequent visitor to Caracas, where he has met with Mr. Maduro and his ministers. Though Mr. Mujica stressed his support for Venezuela’s government, he said he is distressed by the street violence that has cost at least 41 lives. But Mr. Mujica didn’t criticize Mr. Maduro, though human rights groups ranging from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch have accused his administration of repression. “The cheapest way out in Venezuela is to respect the law and the constitution because behind all that is happening are human lives,” Mr. Mujica said. As the Uruguayan leader prepares for his last months in office, he doesn’t make a big deal of his colorful term.
“How am I supposed to know what my legacy is going to be?” he quipped. “The only thing I can say is that nine years ago when the Broad Front entered government people earned 40% less than they do today,” he said, referring to the left-of-center coalition that has been ruling since 2005. “The economy has more than doubled in size. We didn’t build a government for history. We are making a government for the people.” His countrymen, though, have a more nuanced view. Though his government’s approval rating stood at 52% in March, it had been as low as 42% last year, as people became frustrated with a faltering public school system, soaring crime and other problems. “During the last 10 years of abundance, Uruguay didn’t invest in infrastructure to make a quantitative leap forward,” said Claudio Paolillo, the director of the influential weekly news magazine Busqueda. Write to Ken Parks at ken.parks@wsj.com