Uruguary Has Poorest President With Richest Ideas

It's a common grumble that politicians' lifestyles are far removed from those of their electorate. Not so in Uruguay. Meet the president - who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay.

Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.
This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders.

President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife's farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo.

The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.

This austere lifestyle - and the fact that Mujica donates about 90% of his monthly salary, equivalent to $12,000 (£7,500), to charity - has led him to be labelled the poorest president in the world.

"I may appear to be an eccentric old man... But this is a free choice."

"I've lived like this most of my life," he says, sitting on an old chair in his garden, using a cushion favoured by Manuela the dog.

"I can live well with what I have."

His charitable donations - which benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs - mean his salary is roughly in line with the average Uruguayan income of $775 (£485) a month.

 

 

All the president's wealth - a 1987 VW Beetle

In 2010, his annual personal wealth declaration - mandatory for officials in Uruguay - was $1,800 (£1,100), the value of his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.

This year, he added half of his wife's assets - land, tractors and a house - reaching $215,000 (£135,000).

That's still only about two-thirds of Vice-President Danilo Astori's declared wealth, and a third of the figure declared by Mujica's predecessor as president, Tabare Vasquez.

Elected in 2009, Mujica spent the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Uruguayan guerrilla Tupamaros, a leftist armed group inspired by the Cuban revolution.

He was shot six times and spent 14 years in jail. Most of his detention was spent in harsh conditions and isolation, until he was freed in 1985 when Uruguay returned to democracy.
Those years in jail, Mujica says, helped shape his outlook on life.

Tupamaros: Guerrillas to government

 

• Left-wing guerrilla group formed initially from poor sugar cane workers and students
• Named after Inca king Tupac Amaru
• Key tactic was political kidnapping - UK ambassador Geoffrey Jackson held for eight months in 1971
• Crushed after 1973 coup led by President Juan Maria Bordaberry
• Mujica was one of many rebels jailed, spending 14 years behind bars - until constitutional government returned in 1985
• He played key role in transforming Tupamaros into a legitimate political party, which joined the Frente Amplio (broad front) coalition

"I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor.

 Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more," he says.

"This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself," he says.
"I may appear to be an eccentric old man... But this is a free choice."

The Uruguayan leader made a similar point when he addressed the Rio+20 summit in June this year: "We've been talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of poverty.

"But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries?

I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left?

"Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet."

Mujica accuses most world leaders of having a "blind obsession to achieve growth with consumption, as if the contrary would mean the end of the world".

 

 

Mujica could have followed his predecessors into a grand official residence

But however large the gulf between the vegetarian Mujica and these other leaders, he is no more immune than they are to the ups and downs of political life.

"Many sympathise with President Mujica because of how he lives. But this does not stop him for being criticised for how the government is doing," says Ignacio Zuasnabar, a Uruguayan pollster.

The Uruguayan opposition says the country's recent economic prosperity has not resulted in better public services in health and education, and for the first time since Mujica's election in 2009 his popularity has fallen below 50%.

This year he has also been under fire because of two controversial moves. Uruguay's Congress recently passed a bill which legalised abortions for pregnancies up to 12 weeks. Unlike his predecessor, Mujica did not veto it.

I

 

nstead, he chose to stay on his wife's farm

 

He is also supporting a debate on the legalisation of the consumption of cannabis, in a bill that would also give the state the monopoly over its trade.

"Consumption of cannabis is not the most worrying thing, drug-dealing is the real problem," he says.

However, he doesn't have to worry too much about his popularity rating - Uruguayan law means he is not allowed to seek re-election in 2014. Also, at 77, he is likely to retire from politics altogether before long.

When he does, he will be eligible for a state pension - and unlike some other former presidents, he may not find the drop in income too hard to get used to.

Growing Fish Farms and Huge Ecological, Health, Ocean Pollution Costs

The coast of Peru is being blighted by an industry sprung up to satisfy the West’s voracious appetite for salmon – marine life, human health and whole ecosystems are paying the price. The Ecologist Film Unit investigates

It is a life of poverty and filth. Standing above the tangle of rusting metal pipes and concrete-rimmed pools that lead into the ocean, Segundo Vorges and Luis Diaz explain how they scratch a living here in Chimbote harbour, Peru. They are part of a twilight community of ‘pipe people’ who survive by reclaiming waste discharged from nearby fishmeal production plants.

When operational, the pipes carry effluent – an unsavoury mixture of fish bodies, scales and fat – into the pools and the sea. Vorges and Diaz skim off the useful waste, particularly the fat, before shovelling it into containers. Some is turned into pellets used for cooking and sold at nearby markets. Whole families, including children, are involved in this dirty enterprise, earning $3 per day.

This shocking scene is a million miles from the succulent pink salmon fish-steaks on sale across the western world. But the two are inextricably linked: much of the fishmeal and oil produced in Peru from anchovy fish stocks is the principal ingredient of feed used in salmon farming.

Fishmeal is a protein-rich flour produced by cooking, drying and milling raw fish and trimmings. Fish oil is a byproduct of fishmeal processing. Both are largely derived from oily fish including anchovies, herrings and sardines. High nutritional values – both contain omega-3 fatty acids, beneficial both to humans and animals – has led to massive demand from the aquaculture industry.

Globally, the sector is worth almost $2.5 billion, with 400 plants producing approximately six million tonnes of fish flour and one million tonnes of fish oil annually. Principal fisheries supplying producers of meal and oil are situated in European waters and in the Pacific bordering Peru and Chile. Peru is the world’s leading exporter, supplying 28 per cent of the UK’s fishmeal in 2007.

After processing, meal and oil is usually exported for mixing with binders, such as soya, for output as feed pellets. Salmon are carnivorous and require large amounts of feed: environmentalists estimate 4kg of wild caught fish are required to produce 1kg of farmed fish, fuelling claims that aquaculture is not sustainable.

‘We know the factories are responsible for these [problems], because when it operates the illnesses gets worse,’ says one young woman, holding her young child. ‘When the smoke comes it gets so bad we need a mask.’ Another says when the plants are operating the pollution is so thick you cannot physically remain on the street.

Pupils at a Chimbote school afflicted by the industry also complain of health problems and environmental damage. ‘It causes fungal growths, breathlessness, we cannot breath,’ says one boy. Another says: ‘As well as make us sick it changes the colour of the ocean. We used to play years back, but now it’s polluted there is nowhere to play’.

During a tour of a row of dilapidated classrooms, teacher Yolanda Lara Cortez claims the industry has proved disruptive and costly. ‘We had to build walls to keep [smoke] out,’ she says. ‘We used to hold classes here, but the smoke, noise and pollution was so bad we can no longer use them.’ Other schools have suffered too, according to Cortez, with as many as 5,000 pupils affected by the pollution.

The salmon rush

A thousand miles south of Chimbote, the windswept mountains of Patagonia drop steeply into the stormy ocean that surrounds this region of Chile. This is salmon farming country, and the hub of Chile’s multibilliondollar aquaculture industry, soon to outgrow Norway’s as the world’s biggest. It is estimated that 40 per cent of all salmon eaten in the USA is produced here, as is much of the frozen salmon supplied to the UK and EU.

NOTE: Simple solution is to vote with your $$$ and do not support farm raised fish, This fish meal is combined with GMO soy, antibiotics and presented as a healthy alternative to wild fish.