Jose “Pepe” Mujica, a former leftist insurgent who turned Uruguay’s president from 2010 to 2015, has died on the age of 89.
Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi introduced his dying in a social media put up on Tuesday. Mujica had been identified with throat most cancers in 2024.
“It’s with deep sorrow that we announce the dying of our comrade Pepe Mujica,” Orsi wrote. “Thanks for every part you gave us and in your deep love in your folks.”
Mujica turned an icon even past Uruguay’s borders, as he led his nation to pursue environmental reforms, legalise same-sex marriage and loosen restrictions on marijuana.
He additionally was celebrated for sustaining his easy life-style even throughout his presidency, when he eschewed the presidential palace in favour of the farmhouse the place he grew flowers. He instructed Al Jazeera in 2022 that such opulence can “divorce” presidents from their folks.
“I imagine that politicians ought to dwell like nearly all of their folks, not like how the privileged minority lives,” Mujica defined.
Information of Mujica’s dying has been met with tributes from world wide, notably from figures on the Latin American left.
“We deeply remorse the passing of our beloved Pepe Mujica, an instance to Latin America and all the world for his knowledge, foresight, and ease,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum wrote on social media.
Chile’s President Gabriel Boric, in the meantime, remembered Mujica’s optimism in a put up of his personal.
“When you left us something, it was the unquenchable hope that issues will be executed higher,” he wrote.
For his half, Colombian President Gustavo Petro provided a tribute to Mujica that doubled as a name for higher collaboration and integration throughout Latin America.
“Goodbye, pal,” Petro wrote within the wake of Mujica’s passing, as he envisioned a extra unified area. “I hope that Latin America will someday have an anthem.”
Mujica turned an emblem to a era of political leaders serving to to steer their international locations out of army dictatorships in the course of the latter half of the twentieth century. Like Petro, Mujica was likewise a former insurgent fighter.
As a younger man within the Sixties, he led armed fighters as a part of the far-left Tupamaros motion, which was recognized for robbing banks, taking up cities and even exchanging gunfire with native police.
Mujica was arrested a number of instances and spent practically a decade in solitary confinement, in a jail the place he endured torture.
A authorities crackdown on the left-wing fighters helped pave the best way for a coup in 1973, adopted by a brutal army dictatorship that perpetrated human rights abuses like pressured disappearances. However in 1985, Uruguay started its transition to democracy, and Mujica and different insurgent fighters have been launched underneath an amnesty regulation.
He began to develop into a pressure in Uruguay’s politics, becoming a member of the Frente Amplio or Broad Entrance, a centre-left coalition with different former fighters.
After he was elected president at age 74, Mujica staked out progressive stances on civil liberties and social points together with abortion and homosexual marriage, and he even pushed for the legalisation of marijuana. He additionally emphasised the event of inexperienced power practices, placing Uruguay on the forefront of addressing the local weather disaster.
His long-term associate Lucia Topolansky, whom he met throughout his time with the Tupamaros, was additionally politically energetic, and he or she served as his vp after they have been married in 2005.
Whereas president, Mujica famously shunned the presidential residence and remained at his flower farm on the outskirts of the capital of Montevideo. He additionally drove a weathered blue Volkswagen Beetle, one in every of his logos. His modest life-style led some to dub him the “world’s poorest president”.
“We elect a president, and it’s as in the event that they’re a candidate to be king, somebody with a courtroom, a pink carpet, who has to dwell in a flowery palace,” he instructed Al Jazeera in 2022, earlier than including with attribute bluntness: “Don’t blame the pig, however those that scratch his again.”
Mujica remained a outstanding public determine even after leaving the presidency, attending the inauguration of political leaders throughout Latin America and providing assist to candidates in Uruguay, amongst them Orsi, who was elected in 2024.
“The issue is that the world is run by outdated folks, who neglect what they have been like after they have been younger,” Mujica stated throughout a 2024 interview with the information company Reuters.
Mujica was knowledgeable in September 2024 that radiation remedy had successfully focused most cancers of the esophagus, however a physician reported in January 2025 that the most cancers had returned and unfold to his liver.
The previous insurgent and president didn’t appear overly involved.
“Truthfully, I’m dying,” Mujica instructed the weekly journal Busqueda in what he stated could be his final interview. “A warrior has the best to relaxation.”
