The Robin Hood Guerrillas

Book excerpt: The President of Uruguay, José "Pepe" Mujica, has recently become a global icon. Among other things, he lives a notoriously austere lifestyle; eschews luxury and protocol like no other head of state; has legalized marijuana and same-sex marriage; has agreed to take in Guantánamo detainees and Syrian refugees, and more. According to Mujica himself, all of his conduct and ideology is rooted in his time as a guerrilla: as a Tupamaro. Beginning in the late 1960s, the uprising of the Tupamaros shook Uruguay and rippled across the Western world. Born in a middle-class, urbanized society, these guerrillas did not fight within the natural shelters of jungles and mountains, but rather in the concrete maze of the city. Infiltrating residences, bars, movie theaters, sewers, police stations, and mansions, the Tupamaros were everywhere and nowhere. Uruguay's under-resourced police had to face the world's most sophisticated urban insurgents. The Tupamaros employed diverse, though often contradictory, tactics: from hunger relief commandos and the armed propaganda that gave them the Robin Hood title, to taking hostages and descending into murderous terrorism. In doing so, they integrated women like no other guerrilla force before, and staged memorable prison escapes. This is the first complete English-language history of the Tupamaros and of Mujica, who under the codename Facundo was directly involved in many operations. As the president himself has said, the way to understand him as both man and politician is as a Tupamaro.