Montevideo, April 15 (teleSUR-RHC)-- In an exclusive interview with teleSUR, Uruguayan Senator and former President Jose Mujica said on Tuesday that the world owes a great debt to the recently departed intellectual and author, Eduardo Galeano.

“Galeano went searching for hidden truths and he traveled throughout the Americas with the greatest suffering, that part which neither books nor the academy ever reaches,” said Mujica. Galeano, who died on Monday at age 74, was honored in his home country on Tuesday with a wake ceremony at the Uruguayan Legislative Palace.

Mujica said that Galeano was able to “solve that old contradiction” as to whether something can be both form and content. “He was a poet of history or a poetic historian,” said the senator. The former President added that he was able to visit Galeano in hospital before his death.

“I went to see him in hospital shortly before I vacated the presidency, I went with (my wife) because I felt the need to give him a hug on behalf of our nation, in order to thank him for what constituted his intellectual life,” said Mujica.