In a society where the State, far from being a solution, has become the main promoter of poverty—with confiscatory taxes that suffocate the average taxpayer— an alternative and authentic response emerges: the Cireneos project, led by priest Juan Andrés “Gordo” Verde.
Founded in 2017 by young missionaries together with this remarkable priest, the civil association Cireneos operates in Uruguay's most neglected neighborhoods—Santa Eugenia, Costanera, San José, and Melo—with an approach based on three pillars: decent housing, education, and faith.
Far from the State's bureaucratic labyrinths, they have delivered dozens of container homes to families who lived in undignified conditions, with dirt floors and nylon roofs.
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Priest “Gordo” Verde, who even moved to the Santa Eugenia settlement to live alongside the most humble, asserts that they don't need an NGO or state dependency, but rather solidarity, work, and faith.
His message is clear and powerful: it's not the millions from the public budget—loaded with taxes that sterilize growth—that save lives, but the spontaneous commitment of ordinary and autonomous people.
It's an offensive against the paternalistic State that reproduces poverty through laws and tax burdens. “Cireneos” demonstrates that there are real solutions outside the state machinery: when the government fails, it's organized citizens—whether religiously motivated or not—who provide what the State promises and doesn't deliver.
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Juan Andrés Verde represents that irreverent and victorious spirit: a former rugby player with a semi-celebrity past on television, he now lives alongside the people in their daily lives.
Meanwhile, while the State spends—and spends poorly—Cireneos builds dignity from the ground up, with no officials watching, no endless paperwork, no empty ideologies.
If you believe taxes solve everything, think of the temporary roofs, of the warm showers obtained by a little girl, or of those container modules that cost just 12,000 dollars each and deeply changed lives.
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The real change isn't in government halls; it's in the active faith and the outstretched hand of “Gordo” Verde and his army of volunteers, who carry the cross of the most needy... without asking for permission.
