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José Mujica

José "El Pepe" Mujica was president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. He died on May 13th 2025, aged 89.

Early life and guerrilla years

The son of a florist and a smallholder farmer who died when he was six, Mujica joined the Tupamaros, an urban guerrilla group inspired by Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution. The Tupamaros staged Robin Hood stunts, robbing supermarkets to distribute food to the poor. Mujica was hit by six bullets in a bar when he and three comrades exchanged fire with police. He was imprisoned for a total of 14 years, including two escapes, ten years in solitary confinement and two years at the bottom of a well.

The Tupamaros did not fight for democracy. Their guerrilla violence provoked a military coup in 1973; the armed forces ruled Uruguay for 12 years.

Political career

After his release, Mujica became a parliamentarian and then minister of agriculture, accepting the market economy, foreign investment and liberal democracy. As president he legalised cannabis, abortion and gay marriage. He gave away much of his presidential salary and continued to drive a battered sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle. He lived for the last 40 years of his life on a scrabbly farm with a three-roomed concrete house outside Montevideo.

He did not try to "refound" his country or rewrite its rules in the manner of other Latin American leftist leaders. When Uruguay's courts struck down six of his government's laws, he accepted it without criticism. He rejected attempts to put former dictators on trial, insisting that "justice has the stink of vengeance."

He tried and failed to reform Uruguay's education system, which was dominated by an over-mighty trade union.

Diplomacy

Mujica acted as a discreet messenger between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro when the two negotiated a diplomatic thaw between their countries.

Legacy

Mujica became a global icon for frugal, anti-materialist leadership. His lasting legacy to the Latin American left was that he became the antithesis of a caudillo.