“Bold and humble”, in the image and likeness of its President, that Pepe Mujica now envied by half the planet. So the British magazine The Economist featured Uruguay as Country of the Year for 2013.
And 'the first time that the economic weekly elects a country of the year, somehow pairing with the usual character chosen by Time and who also fell this year in South America, just a few kilometers from Uruguay, in nearby Argentina which was the birthplace of Pope Francis.
The tribute to the small country of three and a half million inhabitants, led since 1 March 2010 by former Tupamaro of Ligurian origins Josè Mujica, known throughout the world for having given up 90% of his salary settling for less than a thousand euros a month ("that's enough for me to live"), he goes beyond the recent legalization of marijuana, already considered by many to be a revolutionary move and worthy of recognition: Uruguay is in fact the first country in the world in which the "cane" has become a state monopoly, which will produce and distribute it almost for free, at 1 dollar per gram.
"We don't want to become the country of drugs, but to deal a lethal blow to drug trafficking and definitively remove young people from the black market"Mujica said. “If other countries followed Uruguay's example, and if other drugs were included in the list, the damage they would cause in the world would be greatly reduced”, acknowledges the Economist. Unlike the UN, which through the head of the International Drug Control Board (INCB), Raymond Yans, raised an uproar by defining the move "a type of vision typical of pirates".
But Uruguay and its ascetic president are walking straight ahead, as indeed they had also done with gay marriages, the second South American country to allow them after Brazil, another choice which according to the Economist "opens the way not only for a nation but from which the world will benefit". Not that he was the first nor the only one to have done it, so much so that the English magazine itself had initially examined other hypotheses to award the prize: from Sudan, which grew more than 30% this year, al Somaliland, an East African state not recognized by the international community which has had the merit of keeping piracy and Islamic extremism at bay; from the revived Ireland atEstonia, which has the lowest debt level in the European Union; up to consider, more for the people than for the leaders, the tumultuous Turkey e Ukraine.
But none of these countries was as convincing as Pepe Mujica, now considered by many to be the best president on the planet, and thus honored by the Economist at the end of the article: "With unusual candor for a politician, he lives in a humble house, goes to work driving alone his Volkswagen Beetle and flies economy class. Modest but bold, liberal and fun-loving, Uruguay is the country of the year”.
Read the article on The Economist,
