The president from that party from 2010 to 2015 was José “Pepe” Mujica, a former member of the violent Tupamaros guerrilla group who achieved international notoriety as a plainspoken man of the people who donated 90 percent of his salary to charity. Mujica’s private austerity distracted from his reckless approach to public finances: According to Uruguayan writer Hana Fischer, his government oversaw “the largest increase in government spending since democracy was restored in Uruguay in 1985.” In a power grab overruled by the country’s highest court, Mujica sought to impose double taxation on large landholdings. He passed a “media law” that the influential newspaper El País called a threat to free speech. And although he legalized marijuana, Mujica included “a state-enforced oligopoly, production and consumption quotas, price-fixing, [and] coerced registrations,” as one commentator explained.
This story is from the October 2020 edition of Reason magazine.
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This story is from the October 2020 edition of Reason magazine.
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