Yamandú Orsi, the son of grocers who was afraid of the Moon and was elected president of Uruguay

( Spanish) – History teacher, good cook, lover of folk music and popular singing, Peñarol fan and, as he says, “a good soccer player.” Yamandú Ramón Orsi Martínez, a son of farm workers and warehouse workers from the department of Canelones, who as a child “was afraid of the Moon,” was chosen to take office as the next president of Uruguay by the leftist Frente Amplio party.

He was born in the winter of 1967 in the rural town of Santa Rosa, according to what he says, on a freezing day, one of the coldest in memory. “I am from the frost of ’67, which everyone in the countryside remembers,” she recalled in an interview with the FM del Sol program “Protagonistas.” Her father worked in the countryside, in a vineyard, and her mother was a seamstress. It was during those times, living in the countryside, that, as they reminded him in that interview, he was afraid of the Moon.

In 1972, a herniated disc prevented his father from continuing to work in the fields and forced the family to move to the city of Canelones, the capital of the Department of the same name, in the interior of Uruguay. There he opened a warehouse, where he also worked. When asked how a grocer’s son could become president of the country, he answers: “That’s Uruguay.”

He assures that in his paternal home “there was nothing left over”, but that he also “lacked nothing”.

His first teacher was his sister. “When I was just five years old, I read the newspaper. The parishioners were surprised… and that was my sister who taught me to write and read,” he said in the aforementioned interview. He was educated in public school and also had a Catholic education: he was an altar boy in a chapel; but today he defines himself as agnostic.

Like most Uruguayan children, he spent his childhood playing soccer and says he “played well.” “I played barefoot… there was no more light and we continued playing.”

His interest in politics – he has said in several interviews – was due to his fascination with popular music in the 70s and 80s. Los Olimareños, Alfredo Zitarrosa, Larbanois & Carrero, Daniel Viglietti and Abel García marked his adolescence, despite the fact that In his family “politics were not talked about.”

Shortly after the return to democracy, after the dictatorship that devastated Uruguay (1973 to 1985), he studied for four years to be a history teacher. But, after several years working as a grocer, teacher and member of high schools in the department of Maldonado, life had another destiny in store for him: politics. Starting in 2005, he joined as general secretary of the Municipality of Canelones and, from then on, his life was political management and public administration. In 2015 he became mayor of Canelones, the second most populated department in the country, where he governed two consecutive terms. And in the 2024 internal elections he was chosen as the candidate of the center-left Frente Amplio party, which sought to regain power in the country.

To achieve this task, he boasted of his capacity for dialogue and negotiation, and his campaign affirms that his intention is to “unite” Uruguayans. Two of his great political mentors have been former Uruguayan president José Mujica and his wife, former vice president Lucía Topolansky; in addition to Marcos Carámbula, the former mayor of Canelones, with whom he worked.

He is married to Laura Alonso Pérez, with whom at the age of 45 he had two twin children: Victorio and Lucía, who stated in the program “Protagonistas” that they like their father to cook for them.

When the journalists of the radio program asked him “who is Yamandú Orsi?”, he answered: “An optimistic, left-wing progressive Uruguayan, who really likes contacts, affection and being able to transform for the better a reality that for many is very hard”.