José Mujica, Uruguay's president who changed his country and charmed the world, dies at 89

Arab Times

14-05-2025

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 14, (AP): Former Uruguayan president José Mujica, a onetime Marxist guerilla and flower farmer whose radical brand of democracy, plain-spoken philosophy and simple lifestyle fascinated people around the world, has died. He was 89. Uruguay's left-wing president, Yamandú Orsi, announced his death, which came four months after Mujica decided to forgo further medical treatment for esophageal cancer and enter hospice care at his three-room ranch house on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay's capital.
"President, activist, guide and leader,' Orsi wrote of his longtime political mentor before heading to Mujica's home to pay his respects. "Thank you for everything you gave us.' Mujica had been under treatment for cancer of the esophagus since his diagnosis last spring. Radiation eliminated much of the tumor but soon Mujica's autoimmune disease complicated his recovery. In January, Mujica's doctor announced that the cancer in his esophagus had returned and spread to his liver.
In recent days, "he knew that he was in his final hours,' said Fernando Pereira, the president of Mujica's left-wing Broad Front party who visited the ailing ex-leader last week. As leader of a violent leftist guerrilla group in the 1960s known as the Tupamaros, Mujica robbed banks, planted bombs and abducted businessmen and politicians on Montevideo's streets in hopes of provoking a popular uprising that would lead to a Cuban-style socialist Uruguay.
A brutal counterinsurgency and ensuing right-wing military dictatorship that ruled Uruguay between 1973 and 1985 sent him to prison for nearly 15 years, 10 of which he spent in solitary confinement. During his 2010-2015 presidency, Mujica, widely known as "Pepe,' oversaw the transformation of his small South American nation into one of the world's healthiest and most socially liberal democracies.
He earned admiration at home and cult status abroad for legalizing marijuana, enacting the region's first sweeping abortion rights law and establishing Uruguay as a leader in alternative energy. Rejecting the pomp and circumstance of the presidency, he drove a light blue beat-up 1987 Volkswagen Beetle, wore rumpled cardigan sweaters and sandals with socks and lived in a tin-roof house outside Montevideo, where for decades he tended to chrysanthemums for sale in local markets.