Mujica on Petro: Colombia has an accumulated hunger for peace 4:42
(CNN Spanish) --
The elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, "would have to be a magician to be able to orchestrate the difficulties that lie ahead," said the former president of Uruguay, José Mujica (2010-2015).
In an interview with CNN in the farm where he lives, the former Uruguayan president, who shares a guerrilla past with Petro, pointed out that the winner of the elections in Colombia is not an "outsider who started today" and described him as a "breath of renewal." in a new left that, according to him, embodies Petro or the president of Chile Gabriel Boric, among others.
“They belong to another era, luckily.
Because what does not change does not exist.
He takes charge of the new agenda of problems that have appeared in the last 30 years.
And I think it is a breath of renewal for a martyred country like Colombia, which has imposing challenges.”
“What is most needed is peace”
For this reason, Mujica asked them to “help” Petro.
And he reflected: “Colombia has gigantic resources, but what it needs most is peace.
Colombia has an accumulated hunger for peace.
If he manages to get that country to walk together without violence, that is already a gigantic triumph.
Politics, in the case of Colombia, has this immediate destiny: to transform enemies into adversaries, which is not the same thing.
If he succeeds, he will have succeeded."
ANALYSIS |
How could Petro be the president who unites all Colombians?
These are your main challenges
Regarding the challenges facing the Andean country, Mujica said that "Colombia hurts."
“Because you have close to 20 million workers who probably won't be able to retire.
The bulk of the workforce is informal.
On the other hand, it has a gigantic amount of natural resources, it has spent its future in internal struggles and it has, below, the drug carpet that has been an alternative, a way of life, with an underground economy that is difficult to quantify” .
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Petro will have to move on that "shaky board," Mujica explained.
And he closed by wishing luck to whom he said he considers his "intellectual friend".
“Colombia hurts me.
I would like to know how to pray so that luck also accompanies him”.
The main challenge for Latin America, according to Mujica
In another part of the conversation, Mujica considered that the main challenge for Latin America today is “that it is difficult for us to incorporate that the world is entering another era.
Until now capital has been decisive, but from now on more and more what matters is knowledge”.
José Mujica: What matters now is knowledge 1:40
According to the former guerrilla, former deputy, senator and former president of Uruguay, who also spent more than 14 years in prison - most of the time in absolute confinement and solitude - Latin America needs "a fortune to put knowledge into the heads of our young people."
"Otherwise, we will remain in the fringe of what (Israeli author Yuval Noah) Harari says, of the irrelevant," he added.
“Either we get on the development (…) to have the means that allow us to train our youth or, if not, we stay”, he commented.
“There is an explosive race for knowledge.
And honestly I don't see that desperation anywhere because we are not going to face problems that we don't consider that we see it.
For me, this challenge is the greatest that we Latin Americans have”, he concluded.
Gustavo Petro Jose Mujica