Arias' request for "Pepe" the Revolutionary
Toward the end of March, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias wrote a letter to Uruguay's President José Mujica, asking him to follow Costa Rica's example and abolish Uruguay's military (Costa Rica abolished its military in 1948). President Arias made the same plea during his remarks on channel NTN24. "Why does Uruguay need an army? Who is Uruguay's enemy now? Will it invade Argentina? Will it invade Brazil?," President Arias asked.
Arias is the winner of the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize and two-time president of a country that has had no army since 1948. As ex-president, Arias played an important role in convincing decisionmakers in Panama and Haiti to abolish their military forces in 1994 and 1995.
President Mujica declined President Arias' suggestion, affirming that the military is a necessary element in the fight against poverty. Mujica continued, "My personal opinion does not matter [because] when you are president, you do not do what you want to do, you do just what you can."
While Arias' request and Mujica's denial is not new news, the text of the letter President Arias sent to President Mujica is interesting. Arias addresses the letter not "to Don Jose Alberto Mujica Cordano, but to 'Pepe' the revolutionary." Mujica was a member of the guerrilla Tupamaros movement in Uruguay in the 1960s and spent over 14 years in prison under Uruguay's military dictatorship. The first paragraph of the letter continues to refer to Mujica's days with the Tupamaro movement, calling Mujica "that man who in the midst of the mud of horror, always kept intact the flower of justice, that dreamer who never turned off the light of utopia, not even in the darkest corner of his overlooked cell, that idealist who championed, despite insults and threats, an abiding faith in a better future for Uruguay and Latin America."
Below are some excerpts from Arias' letter to Muijca, in which Arias refers to the many military dictatorships throughout Latin America that "trampled human rights in [the] region." The Spanish version of the letter can be found here.
... I just want to give an advice that I see written on the wall of the history of mankind: armies are the enemies of development, the enemies of peace, the enemies of freedom and the enemies of joy.
In much of the world, and especially in Latin America, the armed forces have been the source of the most thankless collective memory. It was the military boot that trampled human rights in our region. It was the general's voice that issued the most violent arrest warrants for students and artists. It was the hand of the soldier who fired into the back of innocent people. In the best of scenarios, the Latin American armies have meant a prohibitive expense for our economies. And in the worst one they have been a permanent trap for our democracies.
Uruguay does not need an army. Its internal security can be handled by the police, and its national security gains nothing from a military that will never be more powerful than its neighbors, which are also democracies. No matter how much it invests in its armed forces, Uruguay can not win an arms race against Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela. In the present circumstances, helplessness is a better national security policy for your people, than a military apparatus below that of your neighbors.
I speak from experience. Costa Rica was the first country in history to abolish its army and declare world peace. More than sixty years ago, another revolutionary Pepe, Commander José Figueres, decided to banish forever the armed forces from my country. Since then, Costa Ricans have never had to live in a war. They have not shed their blood again in a civil war. They have feared a coup, a dictatorship or a regime of political persecution. My people live in peace because they bet on life, they live in peace because they trusted the power of reason to govern the impulses of violence.
...
There are so many martyrs in history against military tutelage! You who suffered under the yoke of oppression, now have the opportunity to rid forever from that yoke the children of tomorrow. ... Let us hope that future will recognize in you, my friend the President, "Pepe" the revolutionary, who declared peace to the world and decreed life to be holy in Uruguay.
Read the full text of the letter here.