Spanish
Montevideo.- The laws on the decriminalization of abortion, the regulation of cannabis for recreational use, and marriage between people of the same sex were the three major milestones of the presidency of José 'Pepe' Mujica in Uruguay, who died at the age of 89 in Montevideo, whose Government marked a before and after.
On November 13, 2008, the first left-wing president in the history of Uruguay and a reference of the coalition Frente Amplio (FA) Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010 and 2015-2020) vetoed, due to his personal objection, the initiative that, approved by Parliament, sought to decriminalize abortions in the country.
The decision of the renowned oncologist, rejected internally by his political party and celebrated by the Catholic Church, sparked a wave of protests from feminist organizations in a country where, according to polls, the majority of the population supported its approval.
However, since his campaign for the Presidency, José Mujica, until March 2008 Minister of Livestock of Vázquez and leader of the Movimiento de Participación Popular (MPP) sector, promised to promote the so-called law of voluntary interruption of pregnancy.
The law that legalized abortion up to the twelfth week of gestation by the sole decision of the woman, provided it was performed under the supervision of the State, was approved in the Senate by seventeen votes to fourteen against, and ratified by Mujica, placed the country at the regional forefront, second only to Cuba and Puerto Rico.
"Nobody can be in favor of abortion as a matter of principle, but there is a group of women who are seen in the bitterness of having to make that decision (...) and that world lives in clandestinity (...) there are lives that are lost there. Putting it on the table by legalizing it gives us the possibility to act," the then president stated.
This rule was followed on April 10, 2013 by a law promoted by LGBTQ social organizations that placed Uruguay as the twelfth country in the world to regulate civil unions between people of the same sex and the second in Latin America, after Argentina.
"It seems we are discovering a modern phenomenon, but the reality is that this is older than the mate hole -container of the typical Rio de la Plata drink-. We have decided to accept the existence of reality," he argued.
That same year, surrounded by detractors who predicted a chaotic scenario of insecurity and "narco-tourism", the one who would rise to international fame for a simple lifestyle that led the press to call him 'the world's poorest president' asked the international community to allow him to promote the "socio-political experiment" of legalizing marijuana.
"We are conducting a cutting-edge experiment worldwide," he said, referring to the cannabis regulation law for recreational use with three access routes: home cultivation, cannabis clubs, and regulated sales in pharmacies. The law enacted in December 2013 under his mandate, made headlines and positioned Uruguay as a global pioneer in legalizing marijuana to combat drug trafficking.
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One of the most remembered images was that of July 19, 2017, when, after negotiations with the merchants who opposed the measure and overcoming the logistical difficulties that it entailed, with long lines waiting outside, Uruguayan pharmacies began to offer the legal marijuana packages that closed the circle of the process approved by law in 2013.
Five years later, in dialogue with EFE, Mujica would regret that the rule had not been used to also pave the way for the regulation of cannabis for medicinal use.
"We could have exploited that law and transformed ourselves into a vanguard of the medicinal use of marijuana, because companies from abroad came like weeds, but we played a game of retention (...) in the bureaucratic gears and now they started producing marijuana for medicinal purposes in several places with or without a law," he reflected.
