When the 57th edition of the Casa de las Américas Literary Prizes announced the presence of former President of Uruguay José Mujica, no one knew exactly what the topic of his lecture would be. Given previous speeches we might have guessed that Mujica would talk about Latin American integration, climate change, or the disappearance of the human species, which he did.
What we hadn’t expected, at least most of us, was that Mujica would make Martí - our Martí - and culture, the central axis of his speech given last night, January 26, in the Casa de las Américas Che Guevara Hall.
“Those of us who essentially call ourselves leftists, must turn to sources such as Martí,” stated Mujica in reference to Cuba’s national hero and his vision for an independent Latin America. He spoke of Martí the revolutionary, writer, essayist, “sick with humanity.”
He went on to describe the ideas of Martí as “a bridge between the old leaders of Latin American independence struggles and future challenges. We owe many debts to Martí,” he noted.
In a divided and increasingly exclusionary world, Pepe Mujica expressed his concern over neglecting culture, noting that his presence at the Casa was an undeserved honor. “This is a temple which symbolizes the most contemporary efforts of Latin American culture, to which we owe an old debt,” he added.
Mujica also spoke about culture that transcends fine art, “that culture with the smell of the kitchen,” natural, full of history and tradition created by the people, and which has taught us to live together.
During the conference, the former President of Uruguay highlighted the importance of building a different kind of defiant culture linked to the struggle for genuine human liberation. A struggle to create a new kind of culture to combat that which the major world powers want to impose on us at all costs - a struggle, if you like, for life.
