Part One: Christmas non-Bastard: The Tupamaros of Uruguay

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hoo hoo hoo, May Christmas. This is Behind the Bastards,
the podcast about Robert trying to do a festive introduction
and then losing steam because he didn't really have a plan. Chris,
can you insert in a sound of me murdering Santa
Claus here and some jingle bells, jingle bells and stabbing?

(00:24):
Put it all in right here where we're talking, over
us talking. And now I'm going to introduce our guest today,
Margaret Killjoy. Margaret, you are the host of a podcast
called Live Like the World Is Dying. You just published
a book through a k Press called A Country of Ghosts, um,
which is fucking awesome. I read it last weekend in

(00:46):
a single long day of obsessive reading. How are you
doing today, Margaret, I'm doing good, good, Um. Well, Margaret,
how do you feel about Christmas? Very complicated? I feel
I think most people have complicated feelings about Christmas. How
do you feel about heroes? Um? You know, actually also complicated?

(01:11):
Also complicated, right, fundamentally problematic idea. Well are subjects today?
I don't know that I would call heroes, but I
do I think they do the most heroic thing that
you can do. Which is, uh, change with the times,
rather than repeatedly doing the same thing and hoping for
different results. Um, which there's there's an element of heroism. Um,

(01:36):
they're also terrorists kind of. Uh so this is going
to be a complicated episode, Margaret. Have you heard of
the Tupamorrows of Uruguay? I have not. Okay, Well, this
is good. And by the way, if you look up Tupamorrows,
there's also a Venezuelan Marxist Leninist political party called the Tupamorrows.
This is a different, very different thing. Um. If you've
heard much about Uruguay and politics in recent years, it's

(01:58):
probably that they were the first nation on earth to
legalize marijuana. This is back in two thousand thirteen. Uh.
They also legalized gay marriage the same year, which was
about two years faster than the US of A. Both
of these reforms were signed into law under the presidency
of a dude named Jose Mujica. Now, if you know
a single Uruguayan politician, he's probably the guy. The most

(02:19):
prominent piece of international press relating to him is an
article from the Guardian in two thousand fourteen titled is
this the World's most radical president. And this is the
Guardian article is very much like radical from like a
centrist liberal standpoint, um, but it refers He's referred to
a lot as Uruguay's anarchist president again and a lot
of like not anarchist media because he's not. He's not

(02:41):
an anarchist, although it is fair to say he's got
there's anarchist influences in his in his politics and his attitude. Um.
You might have guessed that he's not an anarchist by
the fact that he's a president, right, but he is.
He's he's he's pretty rad. It's hard not to love
this guy when you read about like aspects of his personality.
The thing he's most famous for is his humility. Like

(03:02):
he drives his own car. He well, usually he rides
a bicycle, the same bicycle he's maintained for sixty years.
But he has a small Volkswagen he refuses to have
like a limo or a driver. Um. He usually wears
sandals and like warren Ole, he would just usually he
used to wear like stained jumpers was like the only
thing he would wear. And they finally got him to
like at least wear a clean shirt. So there's like

(03:23):
photos of him with like Hugo Chavez and Obama. And
he's just like dressed like a dude who lives in
Latin America. Is just like going to work. You know.
He's like a farmer a lot of the time. Um,
Like he runs a farm and has for most of
his life. Um. He's just like not a guy who
looks like other world leaders. Um. And one of the

(03:44):
reasons he's become so popular again is like the every
every liberals favorite quote unquote radical politician. Um, was this
moment in two that's in fourteen, when he gave a
speech to the United Nations that included this bit which
Sophie's gonna play for us now, and this is uh,
it's it's a UN speech. So he's speaking in Spanish,
but the UN is, you know, doing They've got like

(04:07):
a guy reading in English. So that's not actually Jose's voice.
But yeah, and that allows us to contemplate the beauty
of nature. We have destroyed the Jungles, the green Jungles,

(04:30):
the true Jungles, and we've created anonymous, cemented Jungles. We
have tackled uh, sedentarianism with walkers, insomnia with pills, solitude,
with electronics, and are we happy when we are so

(04:51):
far from the human essence? We have to ask ourselves
this question, stunned. We have fled from our biology, which
defends life for life itself as a superior cause in itself,
and we've replaced it by functional consumerism and accumulation politics. Yeah.

(05:19):
So that's that's uh, pretty rad um for a world leader.
And then yeah, that's the most I've ever agreed with
anything of president said and long time, especially in the
U n UM. I think you'll feel that way about
this next segment here too. But today, today, it's time
to begin to fight to prepare a world without borders.

(05:46):
The globalized economy has no other inclination but private interest,
the private interests of very few, and every nation state
looks at its own stability. Yeah, so getting up there
talking about how we shouldn't have borders, Uh, I don't

(06:06):
know that. That's to me pretty rad to hear a
president saying at the United Nations. Um. Yeah, And you
can see why people, uh, you can see why people
win gaga for this guy, right, and why they call
him an anarchist because there's there's anarchistic elements of what
he's saying, especially the whole we should be moving towards
a world without borders. But you know he's also a president, um,

(06:31):
and it's it's like, well, we'll talk a little bit
more about Jose later. But one of the things I
do think that's interesting about him because you can find
other world leaders like saying good ship, talking a good
game about all this stuff, and then like going back
home to their mansions and taking private jets places, and
like Jose does. One of the things that kind of
separates him is he um he wears not not only

(06:54):
does he like not live in a mansion or anything,
but like he flies coach like he's not he's not
living to sort of like yeah, but what if he's
like a secret mansion bunker underneath his his tiny house. Well,
I mean it's it's not impossible. Although most of the time,
when like journalists come to visit in him his home,
like there's a couple of different stories, like some some
Japanese or Korean film crew will come and he'll like

(07:16):
meet them at his front door and they'll go drink
jim bean under a tree, um, which is how I
would create a film crew. If Yeah, that's good because
people always talked about that. George Bush was like the
president you drink a beer with. That was like his
whole thing was like, He's the one you would want
to drink a beer with. But I think that the
president that you drink Jim being under a tree. I

(07:37):
don't know. Yeah, yeah, I I think that would be
I would I would prefer that to like having a
staged photo op beer with a president at the White House,
which seems horrible. Um. Again, we'll cover later. There's a
lot of criticisms of of Jose from the left, primarily
like most of the people who have issues with him
are are like leftists. Um. But what I find more

(08:00):
interesting than than his presidency is where he came from,
uh and the kind of intellectual and moral journey he represents,
not just from himself, but for the political organization that
he came from. Because Jose, because Jose Music, got his
start in politics through what you might call non traditional means.

(08:21):
He was a terrorist as a young man. Um and
not like a we're not like like that, not like
in a light way like and it got shot repeatedly
in gun fights with the cops, way like. He went
as hard as he possibly could have um without dying. Uh.
And the group that he was a member of is
one of the most fascinating insurgent organizations I've ever heard about,
the Tupa Morrows. UM. So in order to explain the

(08:44):
Tupa Morrows, we're gonna have to get into a little
bit of what Uruguay is. It is A. It's a
It's the second smallest country in South America. It's like
middling sized as countries go. It's about the size of
Washington State, UM, which is bigger than a lot of
European countries. So it's not not a tiny country, but
tiny for South America. UM. Before you know, white folks

(09:06):
showed up and started doing what white folks do. Uh.
The indigenous inhabitants of Uruguay were the Charua Uh. They
had been pushed into the area by another tribe up
in Paraguay and the generations before European conquest, and when
the Spanish showed up on their shores in fifteen sixteen,
their overall response could be best characterized as fucked this ship.
You know. They did the they did the fight thing,

(09:28):
and they were really good at fighting. They fought like hell,
and that synergized what with the fact that Uruguay didn't
have anything colonizers wanted at that time. There was no
like gold or silver there, so the locals were pretty
good guerilla fighters and there wasn't anything valuable, so it
didn't really get settled when all, it didn't get colonized,
when like all of the areas around it, we're getting colonized.

(09:50):
It took longer, so there were some light attempts by
the Europeans to settle there in the fifteen hundreds, but
the first permanent Spanish settlement there wasn't founded until six
teen twenty four at a place called Soriano. About fifty
years later, the Portuguese came and built a fort, and
this sparked uh in Uruguay rush between Spain and Portugal,
who started gobbling up chunks of land as fast as

(10:12):
they could. And again the reasoning seemed to be less
their stuff here we want, and more the other guys
are starting to take stuff here, so we should we
should do that. Um it's great. Uh So I went
really well for everyone, right, Yeah, I mean it goes,
it goes the way it goes in all of what's
now Latin America. Terribly, yeah, terribly yeah, terribly all I mean,

(10:35):
I guess less bad. Uruguay kind of gets off better
than well no, not really. Yeah. So today the capital
of Uruguay's Montevideo, which was founded by the Spanish in
the early seventeen hundreds as like a fortress city and
trading port, and it was specifically founded because the Portuguese
had buenos aires and so the Spanish needed a port
near there that could be their port, right, Like that's again,

(10:57):
it's all part of this like co war kind of
kind of ship going on between Spain and Portugal. Um.
And so for the next century or so, Uruguay wound
up in the cross hairs of a bunch of different
spats between colonizing powers. And it wasn't just the Spanish
and the Portuguese. The British occupy monte Video at some
at at one point, like everybody's going through here now,

(11:19):
like right, they get kind of a hundred years off
compared to everybody else. But once colonizing comes for Uruguay,
it comes hard, you know. Um. So people don't often
like being battled over by foreign powers. And by eighteen eleven,
a guy named Jose Artigas launched a revolution against the
Spanish crown, which Uruguay one Artigas was adamant that the

(11:41):
new government should be a federal system with high levels
of political autonomy for each region. This led to a
civil war between the people in Buenos Aires and the
people in monte Video. And there's all of this fighting
between forces, most of which is like less it's not
quite like states fighting as much as it is like
it's these cardios, these these war lords right who have
like are kind of aligned with one side or the

(12:02):
other in control regions, and they're all kind of murdering
each other, um, and a civil war, but it's between
Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires and Montevideo are kind of broadly speaking,
it seems to be like the main sides here um
and there there's a bunch of murdering and and all
of the fighting in this period effectively wipes out most
of the remaining indigenous people in the region. And so

(12:25):
I think a lot of people in Uruguay have some
like like a lot of Latiman have some indigenous ancestry
down the line, but like the communities are just wiped out,
and most Uruguayans are actually um Spanish and Italian heritage
UM kind of as a result of this. Like again
we're talking in really broad terms. So when for its independence, sorry,
when independence, it wasn't indigenous folks, it was instead they

(12:49):
considered themselves that, but it was like the children of
children of children of people who had come to colonize.
And there was again some like intermarrying and stuff between
the communities. But yeah, it was the people who I'm
sure at that point considered themselves the indigenous people of
Uruguay fighting against the colonial power, but who were also
the descendants of Yeah, you know, this is like all

(13:10):
a lot of Latin American history, you know. Uh yeah,
so uh. Things started to settle down by the turn
of the next century, and in nineteen o three, the
fairly new state of Uruguay elected a president named Jose
Baz buz A. He's generally just known as buz A.
Um was a socialist UM, or at least close enough UM,

(13:33):
and the New Republic credits him for building quote, perhaps
the most perfectly rendered socialist society of the world has
ever seen. Now, that's how the writer from the New
Republic describes it. I have found actual academic theses on
Uruguay and politics. None of whom say anything close to that. Um.
So I don't know, Like the writer from the New

(13:55):
Republic actually went there, did a lot of work. I'm
sure knows more about our Aguay than me. But I'm
sure these scholars no more than that person. So I
think it's probably fair to say that it's a little
overstated to call it the most perfectly rendered socialist society
the world's ever seen. Um. But Baz did do a
lot of rad shit. He taxed landowners and he put
the money into pensions for working people. He was an

(14:16):
advocate of union's. Healthcare in Uruguay was ruled to be
a universal right. And this is like in nineteen eleven
or something like that. Um. Higher education was made free,
and under him the literacy rate hit n UM. And
I'm gonna quote from the New Republic here, quoting a historian.
His idea, Girardo Katano, Uruguay's foremost historian of the Baz era,

(14:38):
explained to me was that you can't have liberty without equality.
There is no psychic liberty, in other words, for the
poor unless they can imagine themselves equal to the privileged.
One of the many new laws Baz implemented was to
correct perceived imbalances and gave women greater rights to request
divorce than their husbands. The logic was that men are
more powerful, Katano said, so to treat men and women
equally would result in an outcome that's still favored men.

(15:01):
So this is like again nineteen o three, and I like,
this guy is pretty you keep running into this in
Uruguayan history. These dudes were like, well, I didn't expect
that from somebody saying this in like nineteen o five.
People are still struggling with that basic Yeah, like that's
incredibly controversial today. And this guy is like, yeah, we're
all rubbing dirt into our wounds. And also, you can't

(15:21):
just treat men and women equally because structural inequality means
that men will still have more power, which is like,
it's pretty dope, I would say, pretty dope. Um, And
it's it's fair to say, like it is the New
Republic overstates things, but it is I think fair to
say that like most recently colonized nations and most recently
colonized nations in Latin America, because like the eighteen hundreds

(15:43):
is kind of the period where a lot of them,
you know, have their revolutions and get free from the
Europeans who had dominated them. Uruguay winds up better off
than a lot of places. Um. But the new Republic
does give an incomplete idea of Bezazis time and power.
I found a master's thesis from Thomas Moore of Texas
Tech which gives it goes into a lot more detail
and cites a lot of other scholars um, and notes

(16:06):
that buz A socialist reforms weren't just incomplete. They also
carried with them the seeds that would sprout right there
violently in a few generations. Quote. No matter how democratic
the government appeared to be, there were some serious drawbacks
and flaws. The main problem which plagued the government for
years was that executive responsibility was divided between a president
and a national council. This division of responsibility created no

(16:29):
serious problems so long as things ran smoothly and all
the council members were in agreement. This was apparent during
the prosperous nineteen twenties. Presidents and councils could toss problems
back and forth with no damaging effect because of the
evidence of economic affluence during that period. It was during
the depression years nineteen nineteen thirty three that the Collegiato,
the National Council um demonstrated its incapacity for coping with

(16:52):
a rising inflation and employment. And basically, when there's not
factionalism and strong political party disputes, this works okay. When
there is everything grinds off, grinds down the gridlock. And
in Uruguay you have kind of two broad parties and
the history of these parties goes back to the Civil
War period. I'm not we don't need to get into
a lot, but it's the Colorado Party and the Blanco Party,

(17:13):
and um, I think the Colorado Party is kind of
broadly liberal ish and the Blanco parties a little more conservative.
Um not that they not to like, they don't like
graft onto the Republican and Democratic Party obviously right like,
but that's probably broadly right. Um. So the president at
the time when the Great Depression hits and like ship

(17:35):
gets sucked up, is a dude named Gabriel Tera, and
he gets piste off at the fact that Council members
couldn't come to any solid ideas about how to deal
with the economic collapse, right like, nobody can agree on anything,
and so this system that had worked when everyone was
rich stops working when the money stops flowing, which happens
a lot in world history. Um. All of his attempts
to remedy the situation got shut down by the Council

(17:57):
because of political divisions. So a nineteenth three he bypasses
the political gridlock in the council by doing a kudata
against his own government. Uh. He dissolves the National Council
and Congress, He censors newspapers, and he basically basically makes
himself a dictator for a while there. Right, Um, but
not quite, because he also calls for a new constitution,

(18:18):
which is written nineteen thirty four and establishes a new
one man presidency with a Senate which would be permanently
divided in half between the two major parties. Um, I
don't know that this. I'd say this helped, But like,
also by thirty four, things are starting to get better economically,
So it's it may be that this reduced gridlock somewhat.
It may just be that like money starts coming in again,

(18:40):
and so all of the problems are lessened because there's money. Um,
I don't know. Politics are kind of like a relationship
in that regards great until you're broke. Yeah yeah. Um.
So the problem though with this this new constitution is
that it completely enshrines a two part system into law

(19:00):
because like you have to have the Senate split between
the two parties. It's very immovable two party system. Um.
But still like, even though this has got to create
problems later, uh, kind of during the late thirties, Uruguay
starts doing a lot better. They are in the thirties
up to the four and up through like the forties.
They're the most urbanized and prosperous nation in Latin America.

(19:23):
And this is a very urban country. Most of the
population lives in cities, like the vast majority. So it's
not like a lot of Latin America where you have
like this really geographically spread out populations and a lot
of them are in the mountains or something like that. Um.
Kind of everybody lives in the cities in Uruguay, and
it has the lowest level of social inequality in Latin
America and one of the lowest levels of social inequality

(19:45):
in the world. Some of this is due to government policy,
because baz does do a lot of like good socialist
e stuff. Um. But It's also a lot of it
has to do with Uruguay and culture, which I'm not
an expert on but sounds fascinating. One of the cool
things about it, it's considered to be like the classic
car capital of the world, not because everybody's like collecting
old cars, but because it's considered shameful to not keep

(20:06):
a car working, like to buy in if you're buying
a new car too, because your old vehicle cannot be
fixed under any circumstances um or at least this yeah,
exactly where it's just like, well, no, you keep fixing
the car. You don't buy a new car, like unless
your car is just like shattered, you know, but season
is more like chosen instead of just because goes yes,

(20:29):
And there's you know, there's rich people and there's poor people,
but they often, especially throughout most of the twentieth century,
you know, you couldn't necessarily tell the difference apart from
on them based on how they travel or how they dress,
because there's this distaste culturally for displaying your wealth. So
even if you're super rich, you kind of dress like
a working class person because that's again it's there's there's

(20:52):
just kind of like cultural morays against showing off when
you have money, and that contributes to the lessened levels
of social inequality in the country. Um. So, when World
War two comes and knock and Uruguay winds up producing meat, leather,
and a handful of other goods for the Allies, and
this is one of the things Bez's, Like the scholars
I've been reading criticized Bez Force. He kind of started

(21:12):
this attitude of like, we have this socialist welfare state
and it's going to be entirely supported by uh, providing
these products to Western countries. And in fact, whose name Musica,
the president of Uruguay or former president of Uruguay says
that basically the big mistake Uruguay made was turning itself
into a lackey of the British Empire and supplying all

(21:33):
of their needs and kind of tying it's so it's
welfare state and its prosperity to the British Empire continuing
to need these supplies. Right, um, but during World War two,
it's great to be selling shipped to the British and
the Americans, right. Uh, It's it's a good time to
be selling them ship. They're buying up everything. Uh, there's
this big economic boom and it again kind of hides

(21:55):
the gridlock, um of the that that has been put
under this second constitution with a permanent two party state.
So again, as long as there's cash to blow and
cash to keep the welfare stuff going, everything's all right. Um.
And in fact Europeans in the forties and fifties called
Uruguay the Switzerland of South America um, which is not

(22:16):
accurate um and based you know on eurocentrism and ship
but because they're very much doing their own thing and
they're not all not neutral, not primaria primarily a place
for rich people to store their money. Um. You know,
like there's a lot of reasons why that's not a
good way to describe them. Not surrounded by mountains that
they've turned Yeah, yeah, it's just because it's nice they're

(22:40):
compared to like a lot of places they're having wars
and like difficulty, like fighting between the government and Uruguay.
There's a lot less conflict socially in this period, so
that they're just like, oh, basically they're saying, we didn't
funk up Uruguay as much as we sucked up a
lot of places around it. So it's the Switzerland of
South America. Yeah, you know who else didn't funk up

(23:04):
Uruguay and definitely isn't neutral. Yeah yeah, yep, all right,
we're back and we're talking about Uruguay. So, um, things

(23:28):
are going great in Uruguay through the forties. World War
two is great for them, and they keep making bank.
They kind of transition from serving through the British Empire
to servicing the American Empire through through the Korean War.
So we keep buying a shipload of stuff from Uruguay
through the Korean War, and then the United States enters
a permanent era of peace that was completely unbroken for
the next seventy years, which is you know, everybody knows

(23:49):
about that period the packs Americana where where we weren't
involved in any wars. Um but Agwaiste movement to try
and get us to be involved in wars. All those
people who wanted us to get into Vietnam. Yeah. John
Lennon had a big song about that. Yeah, war starting.
I think if you want to merry Christmas, let's get

(24:10):
into a war. Um. Yeah. Um, So Uruguay stops getting
big fat government paychecks after the Korean War and the
economy contracts heavily, like it's it kind of goes into freefall. UM.
The government short on money. It can't pay for these
social programs they've built, and they don't want to do austerity,
so they spend, they like burn through the country's currency

(24:31):
reserves and they start taking on debt from international lenders
at kind of ruinous rates. This happens to a lot
of other places in this period of time. This is
kind of like the birth of the kind of global
debt system that exists to this day, because a lot
of countries get quote unquote like liberated from the colonial
powers and then take on loans from those powers to
like anyway, it's it's a fund up period. A bunch

(24:54):
of fund up ships happening in this period, and it's
happening to Uruguay to UM. So this is this is
kind of disastrous and it leads to a massive political reorganization. UM.
Members of Congress push a plebiscite UH that the country
votes on UM and this plebiscite reinstitutes the National Council
and uses it to replace the presidency. So they get

(25:15):
now they don't have a president anymore, and they have
this National Council and the Senate who are trying to
do everything. Um. And even though this is a plebiscite,
because kind of the social stability is starting to crumble
in this period of time the mid to late fifties,
most Uruguayans don't vote for the plebiscite, so it passes
narrowly and it completely changes the political situation. Um. And

(25:37):
it does. I'm sorry. That's when that's when the government says, hey,
we gotta we gotta make a big change and instead
of doing normal political things, everyone in the country gets
to vote ye your name on this thing that we're
going to do. It would actually be rabbed if we
could do some stuff that way, because things might we
might be able to do some good stuff that everybody
agrees on. Um, but we can't seem to pass. But

(25:57):
well never we don't. It's there's a bunch of reasons
why it's not really possible in the US right now. Um.
And it wasn't great there because like, this is a plebiscite,
but most Uruguayans don't vote, um. And it's it's about anyway.
All it does is kind of reinforce the factionalism that's
been getting worse and worse and worse throughout the twentieth
century in Uruguayan politics, and in the late nineteen fifties,

(26:18):
there's just massive unemployment UM and there's these huge labor protests,
hundreds and hundreds of them UM as a result of
the fact that this this welfare state and this kind
of very pro union environment has like broken down. A
lot of workers aren't unionized at this point, and a
lot of them are like starving basically. UM. And the
National Council, this new government with the National Council, proves

(26:38):
that they can be as vicious as a government with
the president. And they cracked down horribly on these protesters,
Like they Arguay doesn't have a lot of police or
a big military, but they throw them out there to
just beat the absolute piss out of people who are
are protesting. Like that's kind of where the government immediately
goes once Uruguay has its first like mass civil disobedience campaigns. UM.

(27:00):
What they couldn't have a number of people more they
are a number of people, the less violent they have
to be, Like, yeah, some of the most violent police
are the ones who, yeah, you know, that's the way
that they can take I mean yeah, there's not a
lot of police in Portland, but they're pretty fucking violent, um,
so they can. What's interesting to me is that this
National Council government, despite being like very split by the

(27:22):
two party system, all agree, well, yeah, we have to
we have to have the police brutalized protesters. But they
can't agree on anything any ways to fix the economy,
like they can't, they can't get that together. They're just like, well,
the poor people are getting organized, so we should like
funk them up, Republicans and Democrats because it does a bit.
I only just in this one way, like and that

(27:43):
everyone agrees, Like I think I've got this right. I've
read scholars who are smarter than me, and this seems
to be what they're saying, and I'm just sort of
rephrasing it. I never want to be saying too directly.
It's just like here, even though there's patterns throughout different
countries and history that are similar, because people are all
basically the same aim. So yes in power agree that
you should beat up the people who are trying to

(28:04):
stand that. That is the thing that maps onto every
country ever exactly. It's the uh, it's everything from yeah,
it's everything. It's every country. It's every government, socialist or capitalist.
Uh people are angry, send the cops and to funk
them up. Uh So they do that. Yeah, it's the
people stick in this case. Uh So in nineteen fifty

(28:26):
well kind of because this is also like this is
it's not really the people's stick. It's way too much
to call this. It is a country with a lot
of socialist policies, it's certainly not like a socialized socialist nation. Um.
In nineteen fifty eight, there's another election and the party
that wins is the party who had kind of been
slightly in the minority before and had never like been
the party in power. And they win election by promising

(28:49):
and like take control over all of the government by
promising to fix a bunch of ship that they've been
So they've been the minority party for years and had
thus gained power by saying, look at how much the
people IMpower wars suck. We'll do it differently. Now they're
in power and they have to like reform everything. So
they try to fix the welfare system which was going broke.
But nothing they do works. Um, and nothing they do

(29:09):
stops the protests in the labor marches. Now, all of
this comes to pass in the late fifties as the
first generation to truly benefit from Uruguay's massive educational reforms
grows into adulthood. Because remember Baz had made college free,
and like people after him too, they had been like repeated,
they built up a pretty good, a really good educational
system in the country. Um and you know, widespread literacy

(29:33):
and whatnot. And in like the late fifties, the people
who were like eighteen to thirty or so are like
the first generation who had really taken full advantage of this.
In Uruguay in this period has like one of the
highest percentages of of individual print publications per capita um
of anywhere in the world. Um And they had like
for an dy of like how big this educational boom was.

(29:54):
Between the fifties and the seventies, the number of students
receive in college degrees in Uruguay increased by a hundred
and seventeen percent. So you've got you've got the economy collapsing, inequality,
growing protests in the streets, increasing government crackdowns, and the
largest most educated generation in the country's history comes of age. Right,
what is historically what happens when all those things go

(30:15):
to go down at the same time. Awesome ship, really
awesome ship. Yeah, oh, Margaret, you're gonna like some of
the graffiti we're about to talk about. So by the
late nineteen sixties, you've got this situation whe Uruguay is
a decade into the uh well, mid nineteen sixties, you
get the early to mid nineteen sixties, you've got a
situation where Uruguay is in a decade into economic contraction globally,

(30:39):
not just in Uruguay, but like the left all over
the world in the early and mid sixties is engaged
in an increasing series of protests and revolts. Domestically, Uruguay
has this huge population of educated people who have all
spent a lot of time reading Marx and Mao and
Guevera and Bakunen, and they're they're watching this two party
system tilt right words and get more violent and militarized

(31:00):
police for and everything keeps getting worse, right, a situation
no one else in the world can identify with um
And all of these trends kind of coalesced, as they
sometimes do, into a single person, or at least they
kind of washed through this person and his because of
unique things about him, it kind of colored the way
that they flooded over the rest of the population. And

(31:20):
this guy's name was Raoul Syndic. He was an agricultural
law student from Montevideo and in nineteen sixty three he
decided to do something about the fact that all the
sugar cane and beat cutters, like sugar cane cutting. Sugar
cane and sugar beat is like this horrible, really unpleasant
like job that is necessary to process a cash crop, right,

(31:41):
And these people are despite you know how socialized Diruguay
is supposed to be, they're not unionized. They're barely getting
by on poverty rate wages, and they're attempting to unionize
and protesting against unfair working conditions. And Raoul Syndic is
kind of like a middle class, upper class like law student,
and with a bunch of other law students, he tries
to help organize these workers and they gather a bunch

(32:02):
of these people together into a march, and they have
a three hundred and fifty mile protest march into monte
Video that ends in a huge fight with the cops.
Um and stuff like this is happening all over the place.
Raoul is just like one of the organizers who's part
of this massive labors like labor protests surge at the time. UM.
The fact that the government had used such violence to

(32:23):
stop a union drive leads Raoul to kind of reconsider again.
He'd been a law student. He was planning to like
work within the system to change it. And seeing the
police beat the ship out of all these these people,
UM makes him decide that the two party system is hopeless.
He's like, well, they're both willing to beat us when
we when we try to organize for better conditions, So

(32:43):
why would I try to work within that system? Um
is kind of what rival thinks. Um, I know wild
right that you would conclusion become to a very conclusion.
So he's not the only guy thinking this way. He's
kind of I think the most arismatic got to think
this way, and the best probably the best of organizer

(33:03):
of them. And he starts getting together small numbers of
like minded men and women. Um, this is a very
gender equality group that he starts to build. But they're
all kind of agreed about the fact that they should
affiliate together and find ways to execute their desire to
overthrow the government. Right, that's the conversations these people are having. Um,
and their numbers start to grow. Protests overtook Uruguay in

(33:26):
streets in the early nineteen sixties, um and um. Yeah,
all of this state violence keeps bringing more and more
people to Rule Roule's way of thinking, and the they
start to kind of formalize their attitudes towards like we
should be organizing to overthrow this system. Now. One of
the positives about Rule is that he fucking hated explosives. Um.
He was like, did not like bombing things. Um. In

(33:49):
the group like they would eventually use some explosives, but
they kind of landed on firearms as the natural tool
to seek to execute some of the things that they
wanted to do and over to overthrow the government. Um.
Guns would enable them to carry out a variety of
actions and do it in a way that would target
people rather than killing like random as much. Yeah, it's
slightly more discriminate forms of violence. UM. Well it always

(34:13):
goes well yeah, yeah, and his he was also very
committed to the idea that you don't target people, you
target institutions, um, like banks, the police, and the impotent
government that had been squandering their future. So as they
increasingly talk and increasing things get more and more formalized,
they eventually decided to like form an organization which they

(34:34):
called the Tupamaros UH. Now this was actually an acknowledgment
of the history of indigenous resistance in Latin America. Tupac
Amaru was the last living member of the Incan royal
family and he led an insurrection against Spanish rule and
was murdered in fifte one. So they kind of as
they are starting to form what becomes this insurgent organization,

(34:55):
they're kind of looking back to specifically to get Even
though most of these people are like primary early Spanish
and Italian descended Uruguayans, they're they're very much identifying with
the history of indigenous resistance to colonialism. Like that's it's
not a it's not for nothing that they name their
group that um, which is real blurry. Yeah, you know,

(35:16):
it's like there's a lot that could be said about
that that I don't quite know how to say, And
I'm certainly not nearly enough of an expert on like
indigenous struggles in Uruguay to like try to make more
of I just think it's worth noting that's who that
that's what they're trying to signal, Like that's important for
understanding how they conceive of themselves. Um. The first two

(35:38):
Tomorrows were largely middle class, young white collar workers and students.
Since more than half of the Uruguayan population lived in
monte Video. Most is successful in surgery groups and the
groups that they're looking at, because they're directly looking at
like Cuba and che Guevara and stuff, and like a
lot of the successful and surgeon groups in Mouth that
they're they're they're um modeling themselves after our mountain fighters, right,

(36:02):
like because it's the best place to be if you're
an insurgent' is the mountains, right, That's it's why there's Kurds, right,
It's because mountains are a good place to fight in
um but u Uruguay. The places where people live at least,
there's not really mountains. Everybody lives in the city, like
more than half the population live in monte Video. So

(36:22):
these are urban guerrillas, and in fact, in Latin America,
I'm not mistaken, they are the very first urban guerrilla
organization UM. And so they have to they have to
carry out and plan and organize themselves very differently. As
a result, they carry out their first attack in nineteen
sixty three against the Swiss Gun Club in Montevideo, which
is like a rich person gun club in the capital. Um.

(36:45):
Nobody gets harmed in this attack, but they steal dozens
of guns, which they've always Yeah, you've got to get guns.
You find the place with the guns, and you rob
it with the gun you happen to have or stick.
I think in this case they just kind of burgle
it because like none of these people were expecting anyone
to break in and steal their mousers. UM. So they
get a shipload of guns from the Swiss gun Club.

(37:06):
They you know, they get handed out to people, YadA YadA.
UM and from the start, Rule and other early members
of the group UM knew that it was going to
be there was going to be state repression at some point.
And so there's the way it's organized as there's a
bunch of independent cells that are like five to I
think the biggest ones were like a couple of dozen people,
but usually like five to fifteen people. And each cell

(37:27):
is supposed to be have its own find its own
sources of funding, usually robbing stuff, find its own weapons,
and be able to completely replicate the entire organization from
within itself and also be unaware of the other cells,
although there is like a nine person coordinating council that's
responsible for organizing stuff. Um so, they you know, they

(37:48):
set this up in and again they're they're very consciously
patterning themselves off of other insurgent groups at the time.
They are not while a lot of their inspirations are
Marxist Leninists, they're not really Marxist Leninists. A lot of
inspirations are anarchists. They're not really anarchists. They're very much not.
While there's a lot of theory and ideology and they're
reading all of these guys. It's very kind of like

(38:09):
a pan left insurgent movement. Um Yeah, which is which
is interesting to me. Um So, from nineteen sixty three
to nineteen sixty eight, their attacks gradually escalate again. Their
first actions get them guns, which they then used to
carry out what they call armed propaganda. Now, this is
a local idea in Uruguay and radicalism that that is

(38:29):
influenced by the old anarchist idea of propaganda of the deed.
Right in the late eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds, anarchists
are murdering presidents and kings and in the hope of
inspiring other people to do more of that so that
eventually there's no presidents and kings. I think that's like
a fair broad strokes description of the idea. The idea
was like, these people don't know how to read texts,

(38:51):
let's show them what we mean, which actually didn't start
out as UM didn't actually start out as assassination, to
start out as like burning property records and like answer
and what's interesting to me about the Tupamorrow as you said,
the propaganda of the deed didn't start out is being
based around murdering people Tupamorrow armed armed propaganda is never
focused primarily around killing people. There, that's aspects of it

(39:14):
later on UM, But from the beginning they have a
very different attitude for what armed propaganda should be. And
I'm gonna quote from a rite up by a War
is Boring article about their first action. One of their
first actions quote. One of the group's first actions involved
hijacking a truck filled with chickens and turkeys that was
headed to a Christmas banquet. Twenty Tupamorrows holding revolvers and
knives attacked the truck. They called themselves Junior Jose Artigas Unit,

(39:38):
a reference to Uruguay and independence fighter Jose Gervasio Artiguas.
The tupamorrow Is left a note that read revolutionary share
in the Christmas of the poor and call upon them
to form committees in each district to fight against rising prices.
They handed out the turkeys and chickens and poor neighborhoods
of the capital. Yeah, so, like that's the armed propaganda,
Like we're going to use our guns to rob a

(39:58):
banquet for rich people and redistribute the food to the poor,
which is great. That's awesome, Like it's hard to have
an issue with that, right, Yeah. Yeah, So, over the
next couple of years, the tup Tomorrows engage in ever
grander acts of armed propaganda. They would rob banks and
take piles of cash and redistribute it immediately to the poor.
They would also rob banks to like fund their operations,

(40:20):
but a lot of time they're taking cash and then
immediately handing it out to poor people, and it's like
they're robbing specifically often investment banks and saying like these
people have been robbing you, so let's rob them and
give it back to you. Um. At one point they
hoisted a popular casino for foreigners and the resort town
of puntadale Este, and they realized after they get away
with the bag that they had also stolen the employee

(40:41):
pool of tips, which they return because they're like, we're
not here to funk with working people, like your tips
are yours? Like, we're not taking your fucking tips, don't
worry go. That is classy as hell, where they're like, well,
we wanted to steal from this casino, but we didn't,
like we understand you guys work in there, like you
didn't do nothing on here's your tip money back. Um.

(41:03):
And the fundamentally pro social ends of most Tupamarow crimes
endear them to people write like they're extremely popular obviously, um,
their antics make them famous the world over. One time
they robbed a fancy nightclub and spray so like they
go into this rich person night club in a nice
part of Monte Video and like Robert at gunpoint and
then they spray paint on the wall. Everybody dances or

(41:25):
nobody dances. U. Um yeah, that's just incredibly incredibly cool. Um.
Time magazine declares them the Robin Hood Guerillas and their
motto evinced. They also had a motto that kind of
I was saying. They're very pan leftist and open minded

(41:46):
towards questions of tendency and political theory. And their motto
is words divide us, action unites us. Okay, m hmm,
Like in these guys so far, Um, yeah, yeah, they're
they're pretty dope. So one of these guerrillas is a
young Jose Musica Um, you know, the for the future

(42:07):
president of Uruguay. Pepe, as he's most commonly known, was
born on May nineteen thirty five to a poor farming
family outside of Montevideo. He was the first born of
several brothers. His family was Basque on one side and
Italian on the other. His dad was the foreman for
a small farm which went belly up when Jose was five.
When he was in third grade, at I think age eight,

(42:27):
his dad dies, which throws the family into total poverty.
It forces young Pepe to take to the streets selling
flowers and working as a bakery to support his siblings
and his mom. He was from an early age a
generous person. Walter Purnas Mujica's biographer notes that as a child,
Jose offered all of his toys to other kids in
the neighborhood because he wanted to share everything that he had. Um.

(42:50):
He was born about six years after the death of Baze,
that president who had made all that lovely policies. Um.
And even though he grew up during what has generally
seen as Uruguay's old in years, his family is dirt
poor and he is mired in poverty, so he never
he doesn't have like a Rosie lens towards the past.
He's very progressive in part because he comes up during
Uruguay's golden age and like, yeah, life's sucking hard for

(43:13):
poor people. Yeah. Um. One of the most influential moments
in his young life is there there's a butchery near
his house, um, and the union for it is an
anarcho syndicalist union, and the workers there go on strike
and during a negotiation they get angry at their employers,
so they hold up his trucks at gunpoint and redistribute
all the meat in them to the poor. Um. So

(43:34):
this is like one of the defining moments of Jose's
childhood is being like, oh, that's pretty You see why
this guy becomes at tubamorrow because he's like, oh yeah
that that fucking rules. Yeah um one day. Yeah, that's
how I ate one day. I know what I know
what makes people appreciate an organization is when they help
you eat. Yeah. Um yeah, it's pretty pretty rad. Uh.

(43:57):
The action stirred something in him, and given the similarities
betwe this in a lot of Tuop tomorrow action. Again,
it's easy to see why he winds up where he is. Uh.
He's also political and kind of the legal sense from
an early age. His uncle is a nationalist and part
of the National Party. Um, and he becomes a general
secretary for the youth of that party. Uh. There's a
passage from The Guardian that gives good insight into how

(44:17):
his initial foray into legitimate politics led to his radicalization. Quote.
As a young man, Mujica went for went to work
for Enrique Arrow, a popular left wing politician, but had
a political epiphany when he met che Guevara in post
revolutionary Cuba. As much of Latin America fell victim to
crises in decline, it was an Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Gagliano,
who penned a new bible for the continent's left wing.

(44:39):
The Open Veins of Latin America. The human murder by
poverty in Latin America is secret, Galliano wrote in nineteen
seventy one. Every year, without making a sound, three hiroshiuma
bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering
with clinched teeth. She is a good way to phrase
the devastation that poverty reeks in a pop elasition like

(45:01):
the West is nuking us every year, um, you know,
as a result of and our our leaders are nuking
us every year as a result of like starvation. By
nineteen sixty four, after a year of escalating robin hood
raids by the tupamarrows and several years of escalating police violence,
Jose two decided that his country's political system had left
him with no peaceful options. So he tries to get

(45:21):
into legitimate politics, but he's very influenced by Seguavarre in
particular UM, And in nineteen sixty four he decides, like
fuck it, I'm going to join the guerrilla, and he
joins the Gorilla Um. He receives training, and he's soon
living a split life. By day he's a humble farmer,
and by night he's a revolutionary robbing banks and ship.
He joined at a period when the Tupamarrows were rapidly

(45:44):
expanding and growing more comfortable with increasingly extreme acts of
armed propaganda. In nineteen sixty five, the Tupamarrows bombed a
local Bear factory. Um and their justification for this, So
they blow up this factory because Bear internationally is making
gases used by the US military in Vietnam. So it's
very much an attack. And it's one of I think

(46:04):
it's their first attack where it's not like we're doing
this to protest local things. We're doing this to assert
ourselves as part of the international struggle. Yeah and uh yeah,
pretty interesting. Um, and things escalate from there. I want
to quote now from a graduate thesis by Thomas Moore
of Texas Tech University. Quote the two p Tomorrow suffered

(46:26):
their first fatality in December nineteen sixty six, two weeks
after a robbery at an armory, police located a vehicle
that was suspected to have been involved. While in pursuit,
a fierce gun battle erupted between the police and the
occupants of the vehicle. During the battle, the vehicle ran
into a tree and the occupants fled on foot. One
of the occupants, later identified as Carlos Flores Alvarez, remained
behind and covered his comrades retreat with machine gun fire.

(46:48):
The police returned fire and Flores Alvarez was killed. Inside
the vehicle were two more machine guns and two pistols.
Less than a week later later, another shootout with police
cost the life of Mario Robiana Mendez, another tupamarow. So
the first couple of years they've got going on, nobody
gets killed. Everything's pretty I mean like violent, like violent

(47:10):
in that they're using weapons and stuff, but like it
they avoid things escalating to that level. Sixty is when
like now we're getting into gun battles and the cops
and people are and people are dying. Um. And occasionally
it's like people who are bystanders who are shot by
either the tupamaros over the or the cops not intentionally,
but because they're firing machine guns at each other wildly

(47:30):
in a city. You know, like like car chases are
not exactly safe for it's not safe for anybody. Um.
And again they avoid as much as possible direct gunfights
with the police. Like, this is never something they seek out.
They are never like let's ambush a bunch of cops
and kill them kind of group. Like when they ambush police,
it's generally to let's take their guns and like then

(47:53):
rob this place and tie them up and stuff. Um.
And this is largely just like it's not smart to
get into a bunch of gunfights with the cops because
your guys get killed. Um Yeah, it's usually yeah, not
the strategic choice that one could make. Yeah, you guys
and your ladies. Because kind of like the p k K,
but much earlier, the Tupa Marrows are like very gender

(48:14):
equal um. And like one of the decisions they come
to early and it's like there's no reason women shouldn't
be fighting too. Um. So a lot of the people,
some of the people who die are like women who
are getting into machine gun fights with the cops. Um.
In this group, it's a very like egalitarian insurgent organization.
We can all get we can all get murdered by

(48:34):
the state. Everyone is able to do that. Um. Now,
the Tupa Marrow organizational structure, the fact that there's all
these independent cells allows for a tremendous amount of group
autonomy and experimentation. I haven't found much about this, but
one of the cells has led by a priest, and
I'm really interested in, like how that went down. Yeah, yeah, uh,
the whole liberation theology you think went on, and that's

(48:56):
big in Uruguay. Yeah. Yeah. In ninety sixty six, a
monte Video theater was putting on a production of a
play that necessitated military uniforms and rifles for some of
the actors because it's good. Pr the military is like, yeah,
we'll loan you guys outfits and we'll give you some
Mouser rifles. And so they're just being like stored at
this theater. And so one day before the play, a
group of pistol armed Tupamorrows like busts in and steals

(49:19):
all the guns in the uniforms. Then they dress up
as soldiers and they rob a bank, making off three
and one thousand paces, which is fucking very funny. Yeah,
I hope it was someone who worked at the theater.
Tip to mof I think it was, like, I believe
it was an employee at the theater who was like
a Tupamorrow or sympathetic who like tells them there's this
stuff here. Yeah. It was from It was like oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

(49:42):
give us some mousers, you know, the show be more
authentic if you yeah, mousers. Yeah, and some big machine guns.
Really a lot of ammunition for set dressing. Yeah. In
nineteen sixty seven, the government struck back, rounding up several
dozen Tupamorrows and building what they thought was an accurate
picture of the group's membership. So this big bank rate

(50:05):
like inspired like the government does a huge crackdown. They
actually catch and arrest a bunch of Tupa Morrow's um
and they feel like, oh, we know who everyone, we
know everything. Now we've got like this whole organization dead
to rights. Let's roll them up. And they they arrest
a bunch of people and think that they've they've destroyed
the organization, and so they announced in the press that

(50:25):
they've dealt a mortal blow to the Tupa Marrows. Now
this was a mistake for the state because they actually
had not um, and the tupamorrow proved that with the
launch of their next major operation, the incredibly named Plans
Satan Wow. I hope it was the priest who came

(50:47):
up with it. Yeah, it's a fucking price. Yeah. So,
as their war had escalated, a number of guerillas had
suggested they start assassinating government officials in the street. Um
decision Satan, Well, that's not what plans, Satan is because
they don't they do eventually do that. They don't start
doing that because they're like, well that might backfire maybe,

(51:07):
like they're never that operation. It just to escalate towards
it does because they decide instead of assassinating people, they're
going to carry out a campaign of kidnapping prominent business
leaders and politicians and then ransoming them back to fund
the revolution. Um. And also, this will this will show
that the state is ineffective, right, Like you can't even

(51:28):
stop us from kidnapping government ministers, Like, clearly you're not
capable of running this country, right. That's like the big
idea behind this is like we will show the people
that the state is not capable of governing them by
proving how impotent it is. That's that's kind of there,
like the propaganda justification of this, I mean, they can

(51:48):
also backfire really easily. It does like we need the
state because people are running around kidnapping people. Yeah, it
doesn't quite. I mean, we'll talk about there's a lot
of debate over the gree to which this backfires. Um,
but our Peppe, our future Uruguayan president, is intimately involved
in Planned Satan And I'm gonna quote from the Guardian here.

(52:10):
I love that one managed to get elected after being
part of plans Yeah. Yeah, a guy who was part
of Plans Satan gets selected precedents. It's it is, it's
pretty dope. It's it's it's extremely dope. Yeah, So from
the Guardian quote. On a spring day in nineteen sixty nine,

(52:30):
Manus was at home with his sister Beatrice when the
future president burst out of the lift outside of their
penthouse in Montevideo with a pistol in his hand. Turn around,
shut your mouth and keep your hands above your head,
he barked. Manus immediately recognized the pinched eyes and thick,
wavy brown hair of one of the most notorious members
of the daring violent Tupamaro guerrillas. After his initial sense
of panic subsided, he recalled he felt strangely calm. I

(52:53):
remember telling the young gunman who was with him not
to worry that I wasn't going to do anything, the
sixty two year old travel agent told me when we
met in his favorite Monte Video bookshop, a short distance
from the murky waters of the Immense River Plate. His sister,
who suffered from polio and used a wheelchair, was taken
off to another room. Don't worry, Mouica Musica told her,
You'll be fine. This has nothing to do with you.

(53:15):
Um and yeah menaces. Stepfather, Jose Pedro Purpura, was a
notorious judge with ties to Uruguay's far right and a
stock of pistols. After the gang had left, taking documents
and weapons, Many's told his relatives that he was only
upset that the two Pamorrows had stolen a typewriter he
used for his schoolwork. The following day, the phone rang,
It is us, the same people from yesterday, A voice said.

(53:37):
He suddenly felt scared again. Somehow they knew about the typewriter.
If he wanted it back, the voice told him he
could find it in the lobby of a nearby building.
Sure enough, it was there. He said. They had left
a type typed message in it for my stepfather, careful doctor.
It read, we are watching you. Yeah, hey, kids, we

(53:59):
know this In your fault, but we gotta take your
stepdad's guns. Um, oh, we stole your typewriter. We'll give
it to you back, but we're also going to send
a threat for your stepdad. Um, it's it's pretty it's
pretty pretty funny. Yeah, I'm glad they kept a classy longer,
like keeping fairy classy, because most groups start a little

(54:20):
classy and then get real bad, real quick. We can debate.
I don't think they ever get real bad. They do
get much more violent, and then you get comfortable assassinating
people and like you can feel about that the way
that you want. They are never like the I Rara
where they're setting off bombs and bars filled with just
random people. Like, they do not do that kind of ship. Right.
There are civilians who get killed as a result of

(54:43):
their actions, never intentionallymore as like, yeah, we're we're it's
not that like, we're not going to set off a
bomb and it kills people and we're fine with that,
But we are going to get into gunfights with the
cops sometimes and people will die as a result of that. Right,
But they don't get in the people's death. They do
not put on a an ethical No, there's an ethical

(55:03):
line somewhere, and I don't know where to draw that
kind of line. They do, know what I My ethical
line I guess is they do not as far as
I've read, they do not target groups of civilians for
murder in order to create fear. Yeah. That that's not
a thing that they do which is good people, which
is good. I think that's a bad thing to do.
Like I think it is worth stopping people here that Yeah,

(55:24):
for all of my enjoyment of IRA music, I think
bombing random bars is bad behavior. No, sir, Some other
people have done similar anyway, A lot of people have
done similar things. Yeah. Um, and it's it's never a
good thing. I don't like. You know, I call them terrorists, um,
because they are. Um. But there's a spectrum of things

(55:47):
that you can do as terrorists. Um. And they are
not like, let's set off a suicide bomb in the
middle of a packed market. That's not these dudes and ladies.
Oh yeah, you know who does set off bombs and whit? No? Okay, Um,
savings bombs yea, savings bombs bombs of financial with the

(56:09):
line responsibility. Those kind of bombs, the best kind of
bombs are products now you got you got out punned
on that one, my friend. Yeah, that was that was
much better. All right, we're back and I'm going to

(56:31):
continue to try to pronounce Jose music is name, right.
I keep needing to listen to the pronunciation because it
might I keep drifting as I read it. Um, but
Jose Musica was part of Some of them were creative
acts of armed propaganda that the Tupamarrow's breached out into.
And I'm gonna quote from that same article, The Guardian
article quote. In the summer of nineteen sixty nine, a

(56:51):
police officer knocked on the door of a small monte
Video investment bank, which was partially owned by a government minister.
The employees let him in, only to discover he was
a tupamorrow. Several other guerillas followed. They took the equivalent
of a hundred thousand dollars in today's money, but also
demanded the bank's account ledgers. One of the employees, Lucia Topolanski,
had tipped off the Tupamorrows that the bank was doing

(57:11):
illegal currency deals. Her twin sister, Maria Elia, was one
of the guerrillas who conducted the raid. The Tupamrrows dropped
off the ledgers at the home of a public prosecutor,
and some of those involved in the illegal trading were
subsequently jailed. Um, that's fucking awesome. We're going to rob
this bank to get evidence of corruption and government and

(57:32):
then we will hand that over to a prosecutor. Right
and again you see like this is there. They are
such a creative and flexible group that they're like we
are trying to overthrow the state. We're also not against recognizing, oh,
this prosecutor is an honest man, will give him information
that will that will reduce corruption and stuff, because that's
also good. Like they're they're they're they're very pragmatic and

(57:54):
willing to embrace like a real diversity of tactics, like
they're doing a lot of different ship and also very
like I think that shows the sort of non ideological
nature because I have a hard time, Yeah, I mean
up with someone who with with almost any isms, including
my own, who would do that, yeah, do that? Yeah, yeah,
But they're very much Um, yeah, they're very They're very
good at pivoting, and this is the thing throughout there

(58:16):
up to the modern point, they're really good at just
like kind of flowing um, which I think is why
they have the impact that they do. That said, nineteen
sixty nine was what you might call the last good
year for the Tupamorrows, because after this point things get
a lot less fun and creative and a lot more
violent and funked up and scary, which is inevitable when
you are trying to overthrow a government using force. Right,

(58:38):
Like that is every single one of these stories. Um.
Things come to a head first near the end of
nineteen sixty nine, when the tupamorrow Is execute a raid
on a town called Pondo, which is like a part
I think it's like, it's kind of a neighborhood of
it's called a town. It's kind of like I think
it's more of a town at this point. It's now
I often hear a refrid to it, just like a
part of Monte Video. But it's like a it's it's

(58:59):
high end, um, right, it's a it's an area in
this urban sprawl where people with a lot more money live.
And on October eight, the Tupamorrows carry out their largest
action ever, more than a hundred guerillas um a symbol
inside Pondo and in order to all get together and
into position that being noticed. A lot of them dressed
in a costume as members of a funeral entourage in
order to elude suspicion. Once the signal was once they're

(59:22):
um in pondo groups of five to ten guerrillas a
symbol outside a series of targets, and at one o'clock
a signal is given. Commandos put on white arm bands
to identify themselves in the even of a gunfight, and
they carry out simultaneous attacks on the police commissary, the
police station, the fire department, and two local banks. And
again they never their goal is never to get into gunfights,

(59:43):
so these are not they're not just like coming and
shooting to murder people. There's almost no resistance and so
nobody gets killed initially, like they're they're just taking guns,
tying up people, you know, like they're there to raid
and rob and take ship. They're not attempting to murder everybody.
UM and another group, one of the groups raids the
bank armed with machine guns and pistols, and while to
tupamrrows remove money from the bank. A third hands out

(01:00:05):
leaflets to civilians at the bank explaining why they're taking
the money and what they're going to do with it, um,
which is again awesome. So they everything works out. The
initial stage of this raid goes great. They steal millions
of pacos, but as their ex fol trading, they've got
like a caravan of vehicles leaving. The police catch up basically,
and there's a series of gun fights. There's a car

(01:00:26):
chase and a roadblock and like the founder of the
role gets away with the money, but like a group
of Tupa Morrows get their vehicle stopped and like have
a big gunfight with the cops. Three Tupa Morrows get
killed in twiny get captured. Um, so it's it's a
it's it's a very like pyrc victory right, Um, yeah,

(01:00:48):
and it's it. Things get a lot uglier for the
Tupa Morrows after this point. Um. For their part, they're
panning out the flyer. I mean someone designed it, and
so somewhere there's someone who went to school for graphic
design who's like, this is my contribution. I'm the flyers.
That person. I hope that person made it through the
entire thing totally unscathed. Her grandkids are like, you wouldn't

(01:01:11):
believe what Grandma used to do. Yeah, she was in
that gunfight with the cops. Yeah, she made the flyers. Yeah.
So everything gets uglier though after this point. Now, for
their part, in terms of things getting uglier, the t
start carrying out target assassinations of some government officials in
police officials. At this point, um. And for it's part,

(01:01:33):
the government cracks down by going ultra authoritarian. And I
think the two per Mars would argue, we started assassinating
people when the government started torturing our people, right. Um.
I think the police would say that, like the Tupamrrows
were so violent that like we had to use these
these radical measures. I think the torture comes first. Um.
From what I can read, their Tupermorrows are being tortured

(01:01:54):
by the time they start carrying out assassinations. Um. And
the government also cracks down by restricting freedom of speech,
so the news media is forbidden to refer to the
Tupamarrows by name. Um. And in order to get around this,
the Tupamorrows set up a radio transmitter in monte Video
to hijack government run radio channels and broadcast propaganda about
their actions. Um. Which is again, are they during all

(01:02:17):
this quite We'll talk about that in a bit, but
like that's part of why they get away with it
is most of the people seem to be pretty supportive
of this, Like they're extremely popular. UM. In July nineteen seventy,
the tupamrrows made would prove to be one of their
worst strategic decisions. They kidnapped Dan Matrion, an American citizen UM,

(01:02:38):
which is always a dicey thing to do, especially for
a leftist movement in nineteen seventies Latin America. UM. Yeah. Now,
one source I found described Dan Matrio as quote an
American policeman on loan to the Uruguayan security forces. I've
also heard him described as an FBI agent working with them.
When you hear an American policeman on loan to the

(01:02:59):
Uruguayan security of wars is what do you assume his
was his actual employer? Yeah, it's the c i A.
And Dan Matrio's job is to teach people how to
do torture. UM. He had previously consulted for the Brazilian
government and his specialties were electrocution and slow strangulation. So
I feel really good about that having chosen I'm like,

(01:03:21):
how it wasn't a strategic plan. It's not a good
strategic move morally, if your job is to travel to
different countries and teach them how to strangle people. I
don't think you getting kidnapped as bad that. That is
my moral line. Yeah. Um, and I'm going to quote
from a write up by war is Boring here. While

(01:03:41):
torture was part of the government's unofficial policy prival to
Matrio's arrival, he is often create credited with making it
widespread among the Uruguayan police force and extolling the value
of applying quote and this is Dan, the precise pain
and the precise place and the precise amount for the
desired effect. He was known in particular for his expertise
in applying as much electrical doc as possible to the
genitals without causing death, and for pioneering the use of

(01:04:03):
thin wire that could be placed between the teeth to
intensify pain during electrocution. So a cool dude, Dan, Yeah,
definitely not just the fodder of like every trashy spy
movie ever. You know that this guy has like black
gloves that are very yeah, and some weird sexual hang ups.
Probably a serial killer back in the US. Yeah, and

(01:04:26):
like particular about how where everything in the apartment goes.
So the Tupamrrows responded to the escalation of violence and
kind and specifically targeted Matrion. They kidnapped the CI agent
in July of nineteen seventy. The Tupamrrows rarely killed anyone
and did not have a reputation for killing those they kidnapped. Instead,
they would exchange them for cash ransoms or release them

(01:04:48):
of the imprint of imprisoned tupamarrows. However, with the government
assault on them proving more effective, several leaders of the
movement were killed or arrested while Matrion was being held
in the Tupamrrows Underground People's Prison. When the headline for
Matrion's ransom came and went the new t P Tomorrow
leadership was uncertain of how to respond, they executed him.
And I should know there are allegations, at least I

(01:05:09):
don't know how. I haven't found a lot of the
tail that there are allegations that the People's prison tortures
folks as well. Um, I don't probably, I don't know. Again,
they're also allegations from in a lot of cases guys
doing tortures, so like I don't, I don't know, but
probably right there, probably doing some of that themselves. Um,
which you know, Uh, nobody's a good guy when you

(01:05:33):
when it comes time to be a war, Um, there's
a better guy. And I think the people who are
not being helped by the traveling torture electrocute your testicles, dude,
are probably the better people in this situation. People kidnapped
the strangler are often better than the strangler. Yeah, I
would say better than the strangler, even though as things
get brutal, perhaps they do some strangling themselves, or at

(01:05:55):
least like holding people in solitary confinement and ship. Um. Look,
I'm sure the people's prison isn't nice either, you know. No, Um,
so they execute dan um, which again I don't. I
don't have a moral problem with that. If your job
is to hook up electrodes to people's testicles, and like her,

(01:06:16):
you're torturing like kill you, I don't have a moral
issue with that. But it's not a great I don't
think it's a good idea for them for a couple
of reasons, Like it doesn't work well, I guess it didn't.
It doesn't go well a lot of the sources you'll find,
especially like the Guardian, kind of more liberal sources will
say that this is what leads to a loss of
public support, and they they often are kind of sources

(01:06:36):
that leave out the fact that Dan tortured people for
the CIA. The ones that are like, this was like
a bad move for them. I don't know how badly
this hurts them locally. I don't know how much this
is actually an unpopular move. UM. We get one hint
in that in nineteen seventy two there's an Uruguay and
gallop poll Um and this is two years or so
after they kill Dan Um and after two more years

(01:06:58):
of because the violence s lights after they killed Dan.
In this nineteen seventy two Pole finds that they're still
widespread support for the guerrillas UM even though the majority
of Uruguayans want non violent resolution to their political yields.
So most most Uguayans do not support violent revolution, but
they are also broadly feel fondly towards the Tupamarrow's right UM.
In a lot of cases, because the government is increasingly militarizing,

(01:07:22):
they're like carrying out these huge dragnets that impact people's lives,
so like the Tupamorrow's Rabba bank and that doesn't really
funk with people living in the area. But then the
police set up a huge dragnet and that fox up
things for everybody, and so like they're angry at the
cops more so than the tupamrrows. I don't know that
killing Dan hurt the Tupamorrows with uruguayans, um, But it's

(01:07:43):
not good for another reason, which is that now a
CIA agent has been killed. Um. And so the United
States is like, well, that's all the justification we needed
to get way more involved in this ship. UM. So
the US accelerates their support of the increasingly right wing
Uraguayan government. The CIA funnels money and equipment in and

(01:08:04):
they they funnel all of their money and equipment in
manpower through one of their favorite vehicles. The US Agency
for International Development or u S aid, like that is
how all of their like here's how to torture people.
Guys get like ledgered out as like this is part
of an aid package, you know. UM. I want to
quote from a paper called Tracking the Tupamorrows by Lucas

(01:08:25):
Hall of Union College. Quote, the United States began to
offer its assistance in the form of military aid to
the Uruguayan government throughout the nineteen sixties and into the
nineteen seventies throughout the civic military dictatorship. Although the United
States initially provided military aid in order to squash the Tupamorrows,
eventually it provided aid in order to suppress the left
in general. For example, the Uruguayan government first declared a

(01:08:46):
state of siege government limitation on personal freedom in nineteen
sixty three following a worker strike at an electric company
in Montevideo, and thereafter in nineteen sixty five, sixty seven,
sixty eight, and sixty nine in response to various protests
organized by labors or insurgent activities perpetrated by the Tupa Marrows.
Such governmental decrees intensified conflicts among laborers, guerilla movements like

(01:09:07):
the Tupa Morrows, and the increasingly authoritarian government. Moreover, following
the nineteen sixty six elections, Buruguay re abandoned the National
Council and reinstituted the presidential system, which reinforced executive power.
Following the death of the newly elected Colorado president and
military general Oscar Diego Gastito, pose a A year later,
Gastito's vice president, George Pacheco Areco, assumed the presidency and

(01:09:31):
used his executive power to pursue and defeat the Tupamrrows.
In nineteen seventy one, he decreed that the armed forces
would intervene in the battle against the military movement against
the guerrilla movements. So that's kind of like the political
and and this is one of the points. A lot
of people will say that the Tupamrrows brought on the
dictatorship that is coming because of their resistance, and as

(01:09:53):
kind of that passage points out, they were a part
of the process by which the state became increasingly dictatorial.
But a lot of the state's dictatorial decrees are in
response to just workers protests, um, that are not organized
by the Tupamorrows, because other stuff is happening in the
left here. Um. And I think that like when when
primarily Western sources but although not entirely there are some

(01:10:15):
eric Wades will blame them for it too. But when
I think primarily when like western sources say well we
got there, we got the dictatorship because of the Tupamrrows,
they're ignoring the fact that the dictatorship came in and
was backed by the US as part of a broad
attempt to stop all left wing organizing in the country,
including all of these like workers movements and the Tupamorrows

(01:10:36):
because they were the guerilla movement. Are a really convenient
group to blame because kind of liberals always like to
blame the people who are accepting violence, even though like,
well they also instituted states of emergency because they were
fucking protests, like but like, don't don't put this all
on the tupamrrows. Yeah, it's a very very classic means
by which to try and get the left to eat itself. Yes, um,

(01:11:00):
and it doesn't really work in Uruguay, which is interesting.
But well, well we're getting to that. So a reco
the president who like brings the military and to fight
the Tupamrrows doesn't isn't quite a dictator, although Quays make
equipbal with that, Like, I don't think he doesn't. He's
not quite as far as the next guy. Is what
I'll say. How did the guy die in the I don't,
I don't. I don't know. I think it was natural causes,

(01:11:22):
though it was not. I don't think so. Um, yeah,
so a reco is the tri angler. Um, he preps
the path for dictatorship, and he kind of ushers Uruguay
into the dictatorship that's coming. I've mentioned a few times
that the Tupamaros escalated their violence in response to state violence,

(01:11:43):
and the Hall credits this less with desperation than to
again the fact that this is a very pragmatic group.
So the two Borrows are like, let's try not killing people,
and then when it escalates to a more violent, more
gunfight a thing, they're like, well, let's become a straight
up insurgent group. You know. Um. They're very willing to
kind of like weave with things, and so they pivot
because they don't have a hard and fast ideology. They're

(01:12:05):
kind of happy to be mostly non violent or happy
to be mostly violent, depending on what the situation calls for.
And in the early seventies, when the military gets in
there like well now it's time to kill with more people. Um,
and not a lot of people. I think about three
Pmrrows get killed and they they kill about fifty people. Um.
So as insurgent movements go again, these guys are not like,

(01:12:29):
we're not bombing military convoys and stuff. You know. Um,
that's what they wanted. They could have had a more
close if they if they wanted to, Yes, um, but
this doesn't work in any case, violence escalates and the
government's much better at doing violence right that the mars. Yeah,
like if you're going I think it is this situation

(01:12:51):
where like, if you're gonna do that, um, they will
probably be better than you. Add it. It's it's very
rarely that a guerrilla movement takes all the entire apparatus
of the state and uh and wins. It happens, and
usually they have to do some very ugly ship in
order to make that work, um, and have some other
things break their way and have a lot of foreign

(01:13:12):
aid and all this stuff. Anyway, whatever, it does not
work here, President Pacheco grows increasingly dictatorial. Everybody knows ship
is bad. And again there's a lot of left wing
organizing outside of the Tupamorrows critical of the Tupa Morrows.
There's the what what a lot of scholars I read
we'll call the legal left in Uruguay who has this
kind of mixed relationship where they appreciate them, they may

(01:13:32):
agree with overall goals but not the means. And kind
of as they Uruguay hits this point where like the
military has been brought in, we can all see that
a dictatorship is coming. The whole left kind of unifies
behind this idea of like, well, let's try one last
legal push to stop this. Let's see if there is
a way within the democratic system to to avoid this

(01:13:57):
before it becomes a straight up dictator ship. Um. And
so all these folks on the legal left form an
organization called the Frente Amplio, which means broad Front, and
it's like it's a popular front coalition. Right. We've talked
about this in the Behind the Insurrections episodes, and like
happens in Spain, happens in France, happens in a bunch
of places. So they build a popular front coalition of
left parties and groups aimed at resisting the authoritarian creep

(01:14:20):
under Pacheco reco Um. By nineteen seventy one, dozens of
Tupas have been killed, hundreds tortured, and the guerilla organization
agrees to sit down with the Frente Amplio, with the
legal left and work together in this this effort to
try and legally stop a dictatorship. Um. The Tupamrrows announced
a sort of ceasefire from the nineteen seventy one elections, like,

(01:14:41):
we're not going to do insurgent ship. We're gonna we're
gonna try to do electoral ship again. They're good at
pivoting right Um. And they form a political wing, the
March twenty six Movement or twenty six m which declares
support for the Frente Amplio. So the two bars are like, hey,
we're not gonna do any attacks right now. We're let's

(01:15:01):
we formed a political organization and we have joined this
broad front coalition of left wing political parties. Um. This
was a really difficult thing to pull off, because again,
Uruguay has a two party system at least as fucked
up as ours as currently. It is hard. Then they're
trying to make a third party, right like, they're not
unified with kind of the vaguely liberal party. They are

(01:15:23):
trying to do their own thing. Um, and it's it's
it's a significant attempt, right like. It is not an
easy thing to pull off. Quote from Lucas Hall's article,
The Tupamorrows beyond expressing their support for the party through
the formation of them humbled themselves in order to further
strengthen the front as electoral position amid rumors of a

(01:15:43):
military coup. For example, the Topamrrows participated with former members
of the armed forces and other members of the security
apparatus in Plan Contra Goulpe, a movement intended to prevent
the onset of authoritarian dictatorship. However, despite such efforts, the
Fronte amply failed to gain the support needed to topple
the traditional parties. However credible it's written program in general

(01:16:06):
principles might have been for a large sector of the citizenry,
the support of the Tup Tomorrow party positioned the Fronte
Amplio as an extremist option. As a result, it was
especially difficult for the Fronte to win the support of
voters on the countryside, even that of voters outside Montevideo. Nonetheless,
the results of the elections were surprising. First, although he
received the most votes, the constitution prevented President Pacheco from

(01:16:29):
serving a second term, and the electoral effort to amend
that law was disapproved. As a result, Pacheco's handpicked suppressor,
Juan Maria Bordaberry A Rosina won the presidency second, although
it only won eighteen percent of the vote. The front
A Amplio won thirty percent of the vote in Montevideo.
In other words, nearly a fifth of the total population
and a third of the population of Montevideo was disaffected

(01:16:52):
with the current political system, although the other four fifths
of the population voted for the traditional parties. This figure
represents the first time in Uruguay's a total history that
a non traditional party garnered considerable support from a significant
portion of the population, suggesting that at least in the city,
the Tupamaros armed propaganda campaign has had had been successful
in influencing all sides of the left to challenge the

(01:17:14):
established order. And this is interesting to me because again,
a lot of the non scholarly sources who are kind
of like journalists summarizing the history will say that, like
they they lead to the failure of the left electorally
and going anyway, Yeah, left wasn't gonna win anyway, But
this some academics at least I'm not I'm not trying

(01:17:35):
to claim what's in this Lucas Hall article, although he
does cite a number of Uruguayan academics. I'm not trying
to say that this is the absolute consensus, but there
is a substantial academic argument that actually the Tupamaros armed
propaganda campaign is why, for the first time ever, the
Left as a third party gains a really significant chunk
of the vote. UM, that's an argument you can make

(01:17:58):
that said time had run out. Uh, the nineteen seventy
one election was sadly their last attempt to for their
last chance to forestall a dictatorship. UM. The Frente Amplio
did succeed in destroying the two party system in Uruguay,
but the election of nineteen seventy one destroyed democracy. President
border Berry seized total power after taking office, although he

(01:18:20):
himself was more or less just a stand in for
the military. This is not really like a fascist thing
where like he's taking power. He is the guy the
military has being the face of the military dictatorship. Right.
That's kind of how it works in Uruguay. It's less
like about the individual and more that like and not
that like. He's not part of the decision making apparatus,
but he's like one of a bunch of guys making

(01:18:42):
this military dictatorship. Be a thing. Um. From what I
can tell, the military's attitude is like, well, we let
you civilians try to get things under control. It's time
for like the military to function up for everybody because
that'll be um and spoilers. It's not it's a real
bad dictatorship. Yeah. Um, a lot of kind of casual sources. Again,
like they will blame the tupamaros for the onset of dictatorship.

(01:19:06):
I'm not going to say they didn't have any Like
obviously they are a major part of Uruguayan politics. As
the country descends into a dictatorship, of course they had
a role in what happened, right, Um. I think saying
that because of the tupamaros Uruguay gets a dictatorship number one,
it ignores that Uruguay falls a dictatorship alongside Chile, Argentina,
El Salvador, Guatemala, like a bunch of other countries, all

(01:19:27):
of whom the US is doing the same ship they're
doing it to Uruguay and and none of whom have
to pamaros themselves. Um. So I when you when you
knock everyone off the fence, when you polarized society, you're
like lining up for a fight, and you're even gonna
win or lose. It's not inherently like, it's not necessarily
the fault of the people who knock everyone off the fence.

(01:19:47):
You know. No, they are again part of this process.
It certainly would be unreasonable say they had nothing to
do with the dictatorship, right, Like they're a huge factor
in Uruguayan politics. But also the dictatorship comes into power
in part because the government's trying to crack down on
like unions and labor organizing and stuff out. That's not
people pulling guns. Um, that's a big chunk of what happens.

(01:20:10):
And yeah, that is what we're going to end part
one because thankfully, Margaret, unlike a lot of unfortunately a
lot of Latin American history we're not talking about, Like
and then they get crushed and right wing governments take
power for the next sixty years, and the US trains
their security forces over and over again, and now they're
burning down the like whatever. Like, this is not that story.

(01:20:30):
It does not have that ending. Um, But we'll get
to that into Christmas. Now, it is a Christmas miracle, Margaret,
That's what everybody says. Um, I'm gonna go get my
Irroguay tree tomorrow. Um, you got any plug holes to plug? Yes,
I do. I have a new book out. It was
actually a book that's been out for a while, but

(01:20:51):
it's been re released with a new publisher. It's called
A Country of Ghosts. And it's my attempt to answer
the question of people always ask, well, they we know
what you anarchist are against, what are you for? And
so I tried to write a book. Um, that's fiction
because I don't read a lot of theory and yeah,
and that's yeah. It just came out a couple of

(01:21:12):
weeks ago. I think, Um, that's my main plug able.
I'm also on the internet as good as hell and
very relevant to the story we're telling here, although more
mountains uh les. Yeah, No, it's the it's the Switzerland comparison.
It's it's it is kind of a Switzerland sort of deal.
But yeah, um, I reckon. I tore through it uh

(01:21:35):
in a in a long weekend day last weekend and
thoroughly enjoyed it. Um. And it's also I mean kudos
to ak on this one of the books that has
like the little flaps on the inside of the cover
so that you can manage without folding the pages over
which I really appreciate. I was really excited. It's my
first yeah, I use book with French flaps, and it's

(01:21:57):
my first book with a painted fantasy cover on the cover.
You have such a good cover. I'm so excited about it.
And then so now I need to write a book
with a dragon. You can write a sequel to this
book with a drag. But oh, that's actually okay. Anyway, um,
all right, well you can find me nowhere because I'm

(01:22:18):
a great ghost baby. That's the end of the episode. Sophie. Okay,
hello world, I'm Robert and I'm doing a live stream
with my good friend Prop if you want to listen
to that. Sophie won't let me curse. So this ad
isn't very entertaining, but it's going to be February at
six p MPST and you can find it at a

(01:22:39):
moment house dot com slash behind the Bastards allegedly. Yeah,
this is a you know, a good holiday gift or
allegedly or not a holiday gift or allegedly, but we'll
be doing that. We'll be doing it behind the Bastards
in and in a little Q and A be there
if you want to Where? Where can people find that again?
Robert Minhouse dot com slash behind the Bastards

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Christmas non-Bastard: The Tupamaros of Uruguay