José Mujica van Uruguay, ‘poorest president’ of the world, dies

Former Uruguayan President José Mujica, known as “Pepe”, died at the age of 89.

The ex-guerrilla that Uruguay ruled from 2010 to 2015 was known as the world’s ‘poorest president’ because of his modest lifestyle.

The current President Yamandú Orsi announced the death of his predecessor on X and wrote: “Thank you for everything you have given us and for your deep love for your people.”

The cause of death of the politician is unknown, but he had suffered from esophageal cancer.

Because of the simple way in which he lived as a president, his criticism of consumerism and the social reforms he promoted – which among other things Uruguay became the first country that was legalized the recreational use of Marijuana – Mujica became a well -known political figure in Latin -America and then.

His global popularity is unusual for a President of Uruguay, a country with only 3.4 million inhabitants where his inheritance has also generated some controversy.

Although many people had the tendency to see Mujica as someone outside the political class, that was not the case.

He said that his passion for politics, as well as for books and the country work, was passed on to him by his mother, who built him in a middle class house in Montevideo, the capital.

As a young man, Mujica was a member of the National Party, one of the traditional political forces of Uruguay, who later became the center -right opposition against his government.

In the 1960s, he helped set up the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement (MLN-T), a left-wing urban Guerrilla group that carried out attacks, abductions and executions, although he always claimed that he did not commit any murder.

Influenced by the Cuban Revolution and International Socialism, the MLN-T launched a campaign of clandestine resistance against the Uruguayan government, which at the time was constitutional and democratic, although to the left of it that it became increasingly authoritarian.

Mujica was captured four times during this period. On one of those occasions, in 1970, he was shot six times and he almost died.

He escaped twice from prison, on an occasion by a tunnel with 105 other MLN-T prisoners, in one of the greatest escapes in the history of Uruguaya.

When the Uruguayan army organized a coup in 1973, they recorded him in a group of “nine hostages” who threatened to kill them when the guerrillas continue their attacks.

During the more than 14 years he spent in prison in the seventies and eighties, he was tortured and spent most of that time in serious circumstances and isolation, until he was liberated in 1985 when Uruguay returned to democracy.

He always said that during his time in prison he experienced madness firsthand, suffered from delusions and even talking to ants.

The day he was liberated was his happiest memory, he says, “Becoming president was insignificant compared to that.”

A few years after his release, he served as a legislator, both in the Chamber of Representatives and in the Senate, the lower and upper houses in the country respectively.

In 2005 he became minister in the first government of the Frente Amplio, the Uruguayan Leftist Coalition, before he became the President of Uruguay in 2010.

He was then 74 years old and for the rest of the world, still unknown.

His election meant an important moment for the Latin -American links, which was already strong on the continent at that time. Mujica became a leader alongside other left -wing presidents such as Luis Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

Mujica, however, ruled in his own way, which pragmatism and courage demonstrated on different occasions, say political commentators.

During his administration, amid a fairly favorable international context, the Uruguayan economy grew by an average annual percentage of 5.4%, poverty was lowered and unemployment remained low.

Uruguay also attracted global attention to the social laws that were adopted by parliament in those years, such as the legalization of abortion, the recognition of same -sex marriage and the state regulation of the Marihuanamarkt.

While he was in office, Mujica rejected moving to the presidential residence (a country house), as head heads around the world usually do.

Instead, he stayed with his wife – politician and former Guerrilla Lucía Topolansky – in their modest house on the outskirts of Montevideo, without domestic help and little safety.

This in combination with the fact that he always dressed casually, that he was often seen who drove his light blue Volkswagen -beetle from 1987 and gave away a large part of his salary, led some media to call him “the poorest president in the world”.

But Mujica always rejected that title: “They say that I am the poorest president. No, I am not,” he told me in an interview in 2012 at his home. “Bad are those who want more (…) because they are in an endless race.”

Although Mujica preached austerity, his government significantly increased government spending, which widened the tax deficit and led his opponents to accuse him of waste.

Mujica was also criticized because he did not reverse the growing problems in Uruguayan education, even though she had promised that education would be a top priority for his administration.

However, unlike other leaders in the region, he was never accused of corruption or of the undermining of the democracy of his country.

Towards the end of his administration, Mujica had a high domestic popularity assessment (almost 70%) and was elected to senator, but also spent part of his time traveling the world after he resigned as president.

“So what is it that attracts the world’s attention? That I live with very little, a simple house, that I drive in an old car? Then this world is crazy because it is surprised by (what is) normal,” he thought before he left the office.

Mujica withdrew from politics in 2020, although he remained a central figure in Uruguay.

His political heir, imamadadú orsi, was Chosen President of Uruguay Gained in November 2024 and his group within the Frente Amplio the largest number of parliamentary seats since the return from the country to democracy.

Last year, Mujica announced that he had cancer and references to his age and the inexorable proximity of death became more frequent – but he always accepted the final result as something natural, without a drama.

In the last interview he gave the BBC in November last year, he said, “It is known that death is inevitable. And maybe it is just like the salt of life.”