Former Uruguayan President José ‘Pepe’ Mujica reappeared this Tuesday at an event of his political party, where he said that it was “a heavy day” because he is “recovering” his bones, after being hospitalized for a day as part of his treatment for a malignant tumor detected in the esophagus.
“Today has been a difficult day for me. I am taking care of myself as best I can, but I had to be here,” began the former Uruguayan president between 2010 and 2015. In his speech, he insisted, as he has done on many occasions, that “politics is not a business.” “It is a passion that you either have or you don’t have. We don’t come for what we are going to win. We come because we are convinced,” he added.
“I am aware that I belong to a generation that is leaving,” he acknowledges, “but the fight continues and must survive.” “I have been fighting since I was 14 and I am 90, I am picking up the pieces, but, everyone: to succeed in life is to get up and start again every time you fall. There is no definitive victory because there is no definitive defeat if you have a tempered heart,” he concluded to applause.
The former president participated in the event in which the incorporation of journalist Blanca Rodríguez to the list for the Senate of the Popular Participation Movement was announced, a space that Mujica leads within the Frente Amplio (FA, left), ahead of the October elections. Mujica praised Rodríguez’s skills, which, he said, “will serve to enrich the Senate (…) with her careful and careful language, with her authentic feminism.”
Mujica was treated with radiotherapy and this generated some symptoms that he is still “overcoming”, as his doctor explained, but the evolution of the tumor is “very good”. The feeding difficulties generated by the radiotherapy treatment he received as a result of a malignant tumor in the esophagus have worsened Mujica’s kidney function, and he left the sanatorium where he was admitted on Tuesday afternoon to follow some studies.
