According to Mujica, Covid-19 had a disproportionate percentage of victims among the population of the continent compared to other countries, which accounts for the need to equalize the conditions of access to vaccines and medicines.
“We are 7% of the world population and we had 30% of the victims of Covid. There was no meeting of presidents [de Sudamérica] to break patents. Never again must we make the mistake of not having the courage to unite to defend ourselvesnext to Brazil, Colombia, Chile, right and left, defending South America. No one is going to give us the right to prosperity if we don’t know how to fight together in the discourse that we live, ”he said.
South American unity against the universal rule of the market
In this regard, the former Uruguayan president maintained that, at the time, even presidents of other countries in the world had said that they could support the breaking of patents for vaccines against Covid-19, but that they had later retracted. Among them, he mentioned the president of United States, Joe Biden, but also to the authorities of china, russia and Europe who had the knowledge but preferred to multiply the production of vaccines according to the rules of the market.
In this sense, Mujica stressed that promoting this demand separately does not help the region, but that “a continental agreement on what we should do” is necessary. “Brazil is big and strong, but it has no strength if we don’t all unite. In this world, no one is going to give us prosperity. It’s not about being left or right, it’s about not being stupid”, he added.
Finally, the former president recalled that this union not only serves the lower classes, but also the richest sectors of South America. “The petty bourgeoisie also loses, the big Latin American bourgeoisie also loses. Only by coming together can we start to change the rules of the game”, he concluded.
A movement without land
Mujica’s visit to Brazil took place in the context of the friendship of the current Brazilian president with the former Uruguayan president, but it also had the objective of making the former aware of the regional integration plan that the leader of the Popular Participation Movement (MPP) want to boost in Latin America.
“The idea is to present to all the Latin American presidents that concrete proposal in writing, prepared by representatives of all possible countries, and for them to take what they want and leave the rest aside or postpone it for whenever they want,” he explained in January. to the weekly Search, when the idea of regional integration began to take shape.
For Mujica, it is “the only way that there will be in the future to negotiate with the great global economic interests, something that the European Union and what the African continent is beginning to work on”.
The former president considered that “in order to defend what remains of sovereignty it is necessary to unite interests in a long-term policy and draw conclusions from the failures we have had, because ultimately the integration phenomena were political concerns of politicians, of intellectuals, but not they had people, they have not made flesh in our towns”.
Source: Ambito
