How Uruguay's retiring President redefined his country's views on wealth
How Uruguay's retiring President redefined his country's views on wealth
Stephanie Nolen
RICÓN DEL CERRO, Uruguay — The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Sep. 19 2014, 6:11 PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Sep. 19 2014, 10:37 PM EDT
The President seems wistful. He flings open the wooden door of his farmhouse, squints into the early-morning light, mutters a gruff greeting. Two steps back into the gloomy interior and he sinks into the seat of power: an ancient black vinyl chair from which he does much of the governing of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.
Jose Alberto Mujica has only a few months left as the head of this country. The constitution prohibits him from consecutive terms; once he hands over power, he plans to grow flowers, and teach young people to farm. At 79, after a life packed full of drama, he is due for a rest. He has accomplishments to savour.
And yet he leaves his country’s highest office without having accomplished all he had hoped. The President sees himself as a fighter in an epic struggle – for justice, for equality, for liberty – and that fight, by any measure, is not won. So, Mr. Mujica admits with a shrug, he may keep one hand in the game of regional diplomacy.
He retires as a man of some influence, a perhaps surprising amount for the leader of a nation of 3.3 million people tucked into the southern tip of Latin America, its very name a frequent synonym for obscurity. But in the course of Mr. Mujica’s term, Uruguay has been the subject of unprecedented international interest.
More:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/guerrilla-turned-president-is-retiring-as-a-man-of-influence/article20709506/
= new reply since forum marked as read
... Judi Lynn! Read it all the through, right down to the field of chrysanthemums at the end. I've read about Mujica before, but this one was much more extensive. There are others ways of looking at the running of societies/countries. This country is so effed up, I just wish we could start over and not make the same mistakes the second time. 
Daniel Mitrione, former police in Indiana, who joined the State Department, under Dwight D. Eisenhower, to Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, to teach the "art" of torture to their police, so they could effectively torture the Tupamaros, the group to which both the current President and his wife belonged. Tuparmaros were leftists.
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Dan Mitrione[/center]
Here's a quick grab I found regarding his story:
December 08, 2013
Indiana Undercover: Dan Mitrione And The Birth Of Extraordinary Rendition
Mitrione was born in Italy in 1920 and his family later emigrated to the United States. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Mitrione began work as a cop for the Richmond police department in 1945. By 1955, he became the department's police chief. Mitrione came in contact with one of Indiana's most infamous residents, Rev. Jim Jones, while working as a Richmond cop. Jones began a sidewalk ministry in Richmond's black neighborhood when he was only 15 years old. It's unclear the nature of their relationship. Some believe that Mitrione counseled Jones as a police officer would counsel a child, while others believe Mitrione used Jones as an informant within Richmond's black community. Whatever their relationship, many years later Jones would be quoted as speaking very negatively of Mitrione to his followers at the People's Temple in Guyana. "There was one guy that I knew growing up in Richmond, a cruel, cruel person . . . a vicious racist." Mitrione and Jones would cross paths again later, but that's the subject of another post.
The FBI recruited Mitrione to work as one of its agents in 1959, but his career took a decidedly different path when he was assigned a year later to the State Department's International Cooperation Administration. From there he was sent to South America to teach public safety and police methods to local law enforcement officials. Although he operated under the auspices of International Development's Office of Public Safety, a predecessor organization for the Agency for International Development (AID), it is now widely accepted that he was actually working as an agent of the CIA. He was sent to several Latin American countries to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques," but his specialty was teaching local police how to torture political prisoners without killing them.
Mitrione spent most of the time from 1960-1967 working in Brazil. The American government was not happy with the leadership of Joao Gouart, a wealthy landowner who pursued policies to promote wealth redistribution, although he was anti-communist. The Johnson administration approved a CIA-led effort to oust Gouart, which was successful. It's not clear the extent of the role Mitrione played in the overthrow, but his work in Brazil for the CIA preceded and followed the successful overthrow of the government. He was also present in the Dominican Republic when the US intervened to overthrow the government there. Mitrione is credited with being the person responsible for the routine use of torture by police against political prisoners in pro-American countries in Latin America. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect," he once said. Mitrione allegedly used homeless persons to demonstrate torture techniques, including electrocution, who were executed once they had served their purpose.
In 1967, Mitrione was brought back to AID's office in Washington where he reportedly shared his experiences and expertise on "counterguerilla warfare." The Nixon administration sent him to work in Uruguay in 1969 where there was concern that leftists might repeat the success of Allende's rise to power in Chile, who was later deposed by a CIA-backed military coup in 1973. In Uruguay, it is believed that Mitrione helped the government fight leftists by: establishing a network of spies in high schools and universities; installing hidden cameras in terminals to monitor persons traveling to socialist countries; inaugurating police training courses in recruitment of informers, interrogation techniques; increasing the size of militias; inspecting all mail and publications from social countries; and use of explosives.
More:
http://advanceindiana.blogspot.com/2013/12/indiana-undercover-dan-mitrione-and.html
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As other reading will inform you, Mitrione had people swept up off the street, and brought to his sound-proof torture chambers so he could grind them down for audiences of his "students." They ended up killing some of them during their "learning" experiences.
He also had the US government deliver his torture supplies to him through the auspices of the US embassy pouch which was inviolate. It worked out totally successfully, as he had all the supplies his heart could desire, apparently. Very, very cruel person. He was loudly, highly exalted by Richard M. Nixon when he was killed, as an extraordinary patriot.
After seeing your post, I had to go looking to see if I could find a photo of President Mujika and Kusturica in "google images" and found a great one with the President, and his wife, Senator Lucía Topolansky, also a rebel revolutionary (Tupamaro) who was tortured and who spent time in prison, like the President, and the director.
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In their trusty VW. Vroom, vroom!
Young Lucía Topolansky
José Mujica and Lucía Topolansky [/center]
Thank you for the background on this movie maker. I'm sure it's going to be outstanding. Want to see it, too!
which you can run through "google translate" to get the gist of it:
http://focoblanco.com.uy/2011/11/ana-la-guerrillera-lucia-topolanski-380/
It says she was kept in prison for 13 years, and didn't marry Jose Mujica until 2005, even though they had been together long, long before that. I never knew.
More images of young Lucia Topolansky:
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(She's either the twin sitting on the left or right of this childhood photo.)
Such a great couple!
Found some images of young Jose Mujica:
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