José ‘Pepe’ Mujica: ‘I dedicated myself to changing the world and I didn’t change a damn thing’
One afternoon, in 1970, José “Pepe” Mujica was talking with other men at a table in La Vía bar, in Montevideo, Uruguay. A regular recognized them as Tupamaro guerrillas and reported them. The police surrounded the place: Mujica was shot six times.
At the Military Hospital, he was treated by a surgeon who “was a comrade, a Tupa at heart. He gave me a bucket of blood and saved me. It makes you believe in God,” Mujica recalls.
Fifty-four years later, he’s sitting in the small living room of his rural house in Rincón del Cerro, nine miles from the capital. He’s surrounded by books, small sculptures, paintings and photographs. There’s a wood-burning stove, a small television and a couple of mismatched chairs. A white light hangs from the ceiling. On a small table, there’s a glass of water and a box of tissues. Mujica lifts his light blue shirt and shows EL PAÍS the gauze covering the hole in his body. That’s how he receives food.
“He’s so strange… he was shot nine times in his life. When they put the tube in, they found a hole from an old bullet and they put it through there,” says his wife, Lucía Topolansky. She’s also a former senator, congresswoman and vice president.
