Uruguay’s ex-President José Mujica, nicknamed ‘world’s poorest president,’ dies at 89

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — José Mujica, a former guerrilla fighter who turned an emblem of nationwide reconciliation after he disarmed and was elected president of Uruguay, and whose frugal residing earned him the nickname “the world’s poorest president,” has died. He was 89.

His demise was introduced Tuesday by Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi. “It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of our friend, Pepe Mujica. President, activist, leader and guide. We’re going to miss you very much, dear old man. Thank you for everything you gave us and for your profound love for your people,” 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 — usually 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 increase, 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 struggle refugees from Afghanistan.

“It was a very successful presidency,” stated Pablo Brum, who interviewed Mujica for his e-book The Robin Hood Guerrillas. “In those years, he became a superstar. The Economist named Uruguay the first-ever ‘country of the year.’ There was a Uruguay mania. He put Uruguay on the map for a lot of people.”

Mujica, extensively recognized 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 guerrilla warfare.

“By the early 1960s, Mujica was among many young people who found armed struggle anywhere from desirable to inevitable,” Brum stated. “So the notion of, like Che Guevara, picking up a gun and effecting social change and political change — right here, right now — he fell into that.”

Mujica joined the Nationwide Liberation Motion, a insurgent group extensively often known as 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 wherein he was badly wounded.

Folks strolling within the rain go by a picture of Uruguay’s then-president, José Mujica, in the course of 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 had 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 replicate — and to appreciate the rebels had been doing extra hurt than good. Certainly, insurgent violence and chaos weakened Uruguay’s civilian authorities and helped pave the way in which for a 1973 coup that plunged the nation into army dictatorship.

“What we didn’t realize was that when you play with fire, you may unleash forces that you can’t control,” Mujica informed the Uruguayan newspaper El País in 2020.

Mujica “spent those years [in prison] trying to educate himself, trying to understand the political system, the world, and also to understand 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 strategy to a democratic authorities, and Mujica ultimately embraced electoral politics.

In doing so, says Rabuffetti, “he helped ensure that Uruguay would [become] a stable country with strong institutions. He understood that Uruguayans didn’t want a fight but, rather, peace and stability.”

Uruguayan President José Mujica sits outdoors his house throughout an interview on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay, on Could 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 trying raveled, he would give interviews whereas sipping maté, an natural drink, at his tiny farmhouse outdoors the capital, Montevideo, the place he and his spouse grew flowers.

“It’s a very simple house made of bricks, or concrete blocks,” Rabuffetti stated. “The roof is made of sheet metal. There is a small kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom, and you can see everything from the front door.”

For a lot of common Uruguayans, who had been fed up with pompous politicians and authorities corruption, Mujica appeared extra like one in all them. He was elected to parliament in 1994, was named minister of livestock, agriculture and fisheries in 2005 and, 4 years later, gained the presidency.

But even in the mean time of his best triumph on election evening in 2009, the then-74-year-old president-elect refused to brag. As a substitute, he apologized to the dropping candidate for having used some harsh rhetoric in the course of the marketing campaign and pledged: “Tomorrow, we shall walk together.”

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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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 usually drove his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle to work. He dressed casually and donated practically all his wage to charity.

His austerity was no gimmick. Mujica thought politicians ought to dwell like common of us and incessantly declared that the well-off on the planet should get by on much less. On the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 2012, he bluntly informed delegates: “Hyperconsumerism is what is 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 own garden, I no longer plant the seeds of hatred,” he stated in a 2020 speech asserting his retirement from lively politics. “Life has taught me a hard lesson … that hatred just makes us all more stupid.”