Jose “Pepe” Mujica, a former leftist insurgent who grew to become Uruguay’s president from 2010 to 2015, has died on the age of 89.
Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi introduced his demise in a social media submit on Tuesday. Mujica had been identified with throat most cancers in 2024.
“It’s with deep sorrow that we announce the demise of our comrade Pepe Mujica,” Orsi wrote. “Thanks for the whole lot you gave us and to your deep love to your folks.”
Mujica grew to become 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 way of life even throughout his presidency, when he eschewed the presidential palace in favour of the farmhouse the place he grew flowers. He advised Al Jazeera in 2022 that such opulence can “divorce” presidents from their folks.
“I imagine that politicians ought to reside like the vast majority of their folks, not like how the privileged minority lives,” Mujica defined.
Information of Mujica’s demise has been met with tributes from around the globe, 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 submit of his personal.
“In the event you left us something, it was the unquenchable hope that issues might be carried out higher,” he wrote.
For his half, Colombian President Gustavo Petro supplied a tribute to Mujica that doubled as a name for larger 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 sooner or later have an anthem.”
Mujica grew to become an emblem to a era of political leaders serving to to steer their nations 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 Nineteen Sixties, he led armed fighters as a part of the far-left Tupamaros motion, which was identified for robbing banks, taking on cities and even exchanging gunfire with native police.
Mujica was arrested a number of instances and spent almost a decade in solitary confinement, in a jail the place he endured torture.
A authorities crackdown on the left-wing fighters helped pave the way in which 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 had been launched underneath an amnesty regulation.
He began to develop into a drive 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 vice chairman after they had 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 emblems. His modest way of life 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 purple carpet, who has to reside in a flowery palace,” he advised 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 help 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 had been like after they had been younger,” Mujica mentioned 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.
“Actually, I’m dying,” Mujica advised the weekly journal Busqueda in what he mentioned could be his final interview. “A warrior has the precise to relaxation.”