⇨ Inauguration speech as Mayor

“How great the culture of our country, thank you very much for what has been the prelude to an intense work that we will carry out. The days of this entire period will not reach me to thank the people of all Montevideo, but also of the interior, that no matter what they have voted in the elections, in the street they give me encouragement, they wish me luck, they offer me their support, express their affection and respect.

We are today at the beginning not of a century, but of a new era for humanity. An era of extreme emergencies, with a worldwide pandemic with parameters never known before. And at the same time, to mention just two, a brutal revolution in the world of work. And that causes tensions in society that we have to understand in order to move through them.

We began convinced of the need to deepen the scope of humanism and ethics to translate it into our action, in the fulfillment of our government program. And if you allow me, I want to take this opportunity to make some announcements. The announcements that I am going to make are just some of the issues that we have been specifying in this transition, there is much more that has been worked on in these three short weeks, but I want to share with you some of these announcements.

We had talked that we were going to deploy an emergency plan, we are going to do it, with 5 axes:

The first axis that has to do with intervention in neighborhoods. On December 7 begins the intervention of the plan “Open Montevideo in Marconi”, to develop comineries, improve passages, make gutters, illuminate, and continues on December 14 Father Cacho with works of the same size. And we are going to intervene in more than 30 neighborhoods during 2021, but throughout December we are going to define in which neighborhoods and in what order with all municipalities.

The second axis would have to do with health of which I am going to name a single ad. Starting in January, 13 municipalities of the Intendency will be open on Saturdays, covering the entire territory of Montevideo.

The third axis, food support. And here I want to make a public recognition of the deep respect we have for the citizen effort to respond to the food emergency. And because we have a deep respect for him, we got in touch with the coordinator of popular pots and started working. And we are going to continue working, we already have meetings scheduled for next week.

The fourth component would have to do with temporary work, we already have a team formed, which has already begun to analyze all the details so that this temporary work program can be effective in these first months of 2021.

Finally, the fifth axis of our political agenda has to do with our fight against gender violence. I want to say that with that point, this administration will focus on multiple aspects. Yesterday was the international day for the elimination of violence against women and today I want to announce that in the emergency plan where we had announced a large number of measures, we can already announce that as of March 2021 all existing women’s communes, they will work with extended hours, in the week or on Saturdays. We have also decided and confirmed a team that will start operating in the territory in 2021 to address the issue of gender violence and disabilities.

In another order, during the campaign we had said that we focused on three pillars for the fulfillment of our program: cleanliness, mobility and work, and we also said that we were going to try to find ways to interconnect them all the time so that the resolution of one It will contribute elements for the resolution of the other.

I am going to give an example of what we have worked on: we have a waste valuation plan, and within the framework of that plan, the whole of society will have a fundamental role, the classifiers also who are the environmental workers and who are also part of the solution, not part of the problem. And that is why we are going to make the necessary changes in the classification plants so that those who work there have a decent environment to carry out their work. But also in the first half of 2021 we will reach 100 motorcycles delivered, in order to improve our classification task within this framework of a waste valuation plan.

I also want to announce that we have a UTU proposal that consists of developing a project to recover furniture and artifact waste, and you know what? This rest! We are going to call it “Montevideo Integra” and I want to summon all the people of Montevideo, and all the people of Montevideo to help us, and to help themselves. In this way, working for the environment, we generate work and raise awareness.

We are also talking about a great transversal axis of innovation. We are going to generate an open innovation ecosystem, and we are already preparing all the conditions to open up digital mobility and cleaning information. And I want to tell you that this is a significant development worldwide. But it is not enough to open the data, we are going to open the data that is the raw material to work on, to build infrastructure. But if we do not generate projects on that data, it is useless, therefore we are going to generate and promote research projects on that open data available to the entire community so that the data becomes information, and the information is a tool to build the Montevideo that we want.

We also talk about entrepreneurship, and the need to generate a Montevideo ´21 project, and we have formed a team for this that will focus on investment promotion, the search and analysis of opportunities, and the promotion of entrepreneurship.
And we are going to look for opportunities for Montevideo to develop, move, change and build itself. And we are going to look for them hand in hand with the workers, large and small companies, our rural producers, the very young and the very old.

To close this part of the announcements, I want to share with you that this Tuesday I am going to visit the commission of the model market to announce the date of the move to our Agrifood Unit.

These announcements, these events, these actions are just a small sample of what we have worked for and that we have to do much more. It wouldn’t make any sense if it weren’t framed in a plan. And the plans are meaningless if speaking of a deep humanism we do not speak of the soul.

Let me share with you what we have in our soul, that encourages us, let me talk about participation and integration. More than ever we are going to promote and need active participation in all its possible ways. We are experiencing an economic and social crisis, and this is not a circumstance, it is a moment in historical terms, and we are convinced that it is time to maximize our ability to cooperate and coordinate as a society. But not only to alleviate an emergency, but to continue, to build development, for Montevideo to develop. And this has to be done with active participation.

When you go through a crisis and can turn knobs, you can do it because knobs are there, they were created, and what are those knobs? They are structural tools of society, structural or structuring. And we conceived the creation of the tools that will structure the society of the future in Montevideo. The construction of structuring tools for the future is a process of active participation with all possible forms of participation.

And we talk about participation and at the same time integration, because so that no one is left behind we cannot leave anyone out. And that is why we are going to constantly reach out to all institutions, workers, companies, SMEs, the very young, the very old, to each and everyone. We are going to reach out because this is how democracy deepens. And then what we want to propose is that instead of seeing a problem we come to a moment when each one of us asks “what part of the solution is my turn?” . That is the cultural change that we want to invite you to build, because history is not written, peoples can decide to walk their way.

And I am sure that the world will look at us again in amazement, as it happened before. Like when we said no to despotism in the midst of the dictatorship in the 1980s, we made a mark on the wall of history. And a few years later the world looked at us first with disbelief, and then with astonishment when we did not sell the heritage of the Orientals. And then he looked at us again in amazement when we built Ceibal, fiber optics, wind energy, and universal access to health.

And very recently the world watched in amazement as Uruguay had a people that had forged a political system in which a president entered an international event hand in hand with the next.

I know these are difficult times, believe me I am not forgetting anything, we are living a complex reality, but I commit myself because it is always time to start.

And what I want to bring here is that message, although times are difficult, Uruguay and Montevideo have shown that it is always time to start, and we commit ourselves to working without pause solving the present, building the future, always close to go further.

We have a great team but for you it will be the greatest.

Thank you!”