Aging & Wisdom Quote by Tabare Vazquez

Vazquez is doing something quietly radical here: he turns the usual generational tug-of-war into a civic design problem. The line isn’t a feel-good plea for “unity” so much as a pointed diagnosis of how a country polices belonging. “Being young is not suspicious” names a specific kind of state and social reflex: treating youth as a security issue, a source of disorder, a demographic to be surveilled rather than invested in. It’s a rebuke to “mano dura” politics, where public safety gets narrated through fear of the young, especially the young who don’t fit middle-class respectability.

Then he flips the mirror: “where aging is not a problem.” That’s not just a nod to pensions or healthcare. It’s an argument against turning elders into fiscal burdens and cultural afterthoughts, the way modern economies talk about “dependency ratios” as if people are spreadsheet errors. He’s stitching together two groups that politics often pits against each other in budget fights: the young portrayed as threats, the old portrayed as costs.

The setup matters: “from my sentiments, my convictions and my responsibilities.” He’s signaling a three-legged legitimacy: empathy (sentiments), ideology (convictions), and the sober authority of office (responsibilities). In a region where charisma can slide into caudillo theater, that triad reads as an anti-macho style of leadership: less swagger, more social contract. The intent is coalition-building, but the subtext is sharper: a modern Uruguay should stop criminalizing its future and apologizing for its past.