Former Uruguayan President José “Pepe” Mujica on Oct. 27, 2024.
Natacha Pisarenko/AP
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Natacha Pisarenko/AP
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — José Mujica, a former guerrilla fighter who turned a logo of nationwide reconciliation after he disarmed and was elected president of Uruguay, and whose frugal dwelling earned him the nickname “the world’s poorest president,” has died. He was 89.
His loss of life was introduced Tuesday by Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi. “It’s with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of our good friend, Pepe Mujica. President, activist, chief and information. We will miss you very a lot, pricey previous man. Thanks for all the pieces you gave us and in your profound love in your individuals,” Orsi wrote on social media.
Mujica had stated in January that his esophageal most cancers had unfold to his liver and that he would forgo additional medical remedy.
Mujica, Uruguay’s president from 2010 to 2015, was amongst of a batch of left-leaning politicians — typically referred to as the “pink tide” — who got here to energy in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and elsewhere in Latin America within the early a part of this century.
He oversaw an financial growth, a surge in overseas funding and a discount in poverty within the small South American nation of greater than 3 million individuals, whereas avoiding corruption scandals. His progressive insurance policies included legalizing abortion, marijuana and same-sex marriage, in addition to the resettlement of battle refugees from Afghanistan.
“It was a really profitable presidency,” stated Pablo Brum, who interviewed Mujica for his e book The Robin Hood Guerrillas. “In these years, he turned a celebrity. The Economist named Uruguay the first-ever ‘nation of the 12 months.’ There was a Uruguay mania. He put Uruguay on the map for lots of people.”
Mujica, extensively identified by his nickname, “Pepe,” was 8 when his father died, leaving him to be raised by his flower-seller mom. Outraged by Uruguay’s hole between wealthy and poor and fascinated by the 1959 Cuban Revolution, he sought political change by means of guerrilla warfare.
“By the early Nineteen Sixties, Mujica was amongst many younger individuals who discovered armed wrestle anyplace from fascinating to inevitable,” Brum stated. “So the notion of, like Che Guevara, selecting up a gun and effecting social change and political change — proper right here, proper now — he fell into that.”
Mujica joined the Nationwide Liberation Motion, a insurgent group extensively often called the Tupamaros. Its members carried out bombings, financial institution robberies and kidnappings and in 1969 briefly occupied the Uruguayan city of Pando. However the Tupamaros by no means got here near seizing energy, and in 1970 Mujica was captured after a shoot-out with police through which he was badly wounded.
Folks strolling within the rain cross by a picture of Uruguay’s then-president, José Mujica, throughout the presidential runoff election in Canelones, Uruguay, on Nov. 30, 2014.
Matilde Campodonico/AP
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Matilde Campodonico/AP
After recovering, Mujica took half in an audacious jailbreak. His fellow Tupamaros inmates constructed a 130-foot-long tunnel to a home throughout the road from the jail, which allowed Mujica and 105 different rebels to flee.
However most have been rapidly rounded up. Mujica was overwhelmed and tortured, and he spent a lot time in solitary confinement that he befriended ants, frogs and rats.
Nonetheless, jail gave him time to mirror — and to comprehend the rebels have been doing extra hurt than good. Certainly, insurgent violence and chaos weakened Uruguay’s civilian authorities and helped pave the best way for a 1973 coup that plunged the nation into navy dictatorship.
“What we did not notice was that if you play with hearth, it’s possible you’ll unleash forces which you can’t management,” Mujica advised the Uruguayan newspaper El País in 2020.
Mujica “spent these years [in prison] attempting to teach himself, attempting to know the political system, the world, and in addition to know who he was,” says Mauricio Rabuffetti, a Uruguayan journalist who wrote a biography of Mujica.
Mujica was launched in 1985. By that point, Uruguay’s dictatorship had given option to a democratic authorities, and Mujica ultimately embraced electoral politics.
In doing so, says Rabuffetti, “he helped make sure that Uruguay would [become] a secure nation with sturdy establishments. He understood that Uruguayans did not desire a combat however, relatively, peace and stability.”
Uruguayan President José Mujica sits exterior his dwelling throughout an interview on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay, on Might 2, 2014.
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This transition was helped by Mujica’s humorousness, folksy method and rustic way of life, which made him a darling of the information media. Brief, gray-haired and infrequently wanting matted, he would give interviews whereas sipping maté, an natural drink, at his tiny farmhouse exterior the capital, Montevideo, the place he and his spouse grew flowers.
“It is a quite simple home product of bricks, or concrete blocks,” Rabuffetti stated. “The roof is product of sheet metallic. There’s a small kitchen, a bed room and a toilet, and you may see all the pieces from the entrance door.”
For a lot of common Uruguayans, who have been fed up with pompous politicians and authorities corruption, Mujica appeared extra like considered one of them. He was elected to parliament in 1994, was named minister of livestock, agriculture and fisheries in 2005 and, 4 years later, received the presidency.
But even in the meanwhile of his biggest triumph on election night time in 2009, the then-74-year-old president-elect refused to brag. As an alternative, he apologized to the dropping candidate for having used some harsh rhetoric throughout the marketing campaign and pledged: “Tomorrow, we will stroll collectively.”
José Mujica, Uruguay’s president on the time, arrives in his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle to forged his vote in Montevideo in October 2014.
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Natacha Pisarenko/AP
Excessive workplace did not change Mujica very a lot. He eschewed the official residence in Montevideo for his ramshackle flower farm. Reasonably than a presidential motorcade, he typically drove his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle to work. He dressed casually and donated almost all his wage to charity.
His austerity was no gimmick. Mujica thought politicians ought to dwell like common people and incessantly declared that the well-off on the earth should get by on much less. On the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 2012, he bluntly advised delegates: “Hyperconsumerism is what’s destroying the planet.”
In his twilight years, because the world turned extra polarized, Mujica seemed again on his personal extremist previous with chagrin and endorsed moderation.
“In my very own backyard, I now not plant the seeds of hatred,” he stated in a 2020 speech saying his retirement from energetic politics. “Life has taught me a tough lesson … that hatred simply makes us all extra silly.”
