Uruguay's ex-president Mujica dead at 89
Uruguay's leftist ex-leader Jose "Pepe" Mujica, a cult figure for his modest lifestyle, has died after losing his battle with cancer, the government in Montevideo said Tuesday.
"With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend," the country's serving leader Yamandu Orsi said on X.
On Monday, Mujica's wife Lucia Topolansky said the 89-year-old was in a "terminal" phase of cancer and receiving palliative care.
The former guerrilla was once known as the world's "poorest president" for giving away most of his salary and driving an old Volkswagen Beetle while in office from 2010 to 2015.
He also gained an international following for his firm anti-consumerist stance.
On his watch, Uruguay passed a number of progressive laws -- legalizing abortion and gay marriage, and becoming the first country in the world to allow recreational cannabis use, in 2013.
Mujica was part of the MLN-Tupamaros rebels that waged an insurgency during the 1960s and 70s.
Though popular, many Uruguayans blamed the group for provoking the 1973 military coup that ushered in a dictatorship that lasted until 1985.
Mujica spent 12 years in prison during that time, much of it in solitary confinement.
In January, Mujica said his cancer, diagnosed in the esophagus last year, had spread and he would stop treatment.
bur-mar/lbc/mlr/bjt
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Axios
02-06-2025
- Axios
East Boston family details ICE arrest of TPS recipient
Mercedes Pineda said having Temporary Protected Status and no criminal record didn't stop federal agents from detaining her husband, Jose, at work. The big picture: Pineda, who spoke at a panel organized by U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley in East Boston, said hers is far from the only family to get torn apart by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. What's happening: Pineda's husband, a TPS recipient from El Salvador, was released after two days, but she said the family is still grappling with the aftermath. Neither of them is sleeping well. Jose's doctor warned he's one traumatic event away from a deadly stroke. Their 12-year-old daughter is suffering from anxiety attacks. (As Pineda spoke, Pressley sat behind her and comforted her daughter.) Pineda later told Axios she learned he was detained through videos that circulated, but couldn't confirm it until he managed to call hours later. They still don't know why he was held and say he has no criminal record. Protections for Salvadoran TPS recipients last until Sept. 9, 2026, per U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. What they're saying: " We are honest people. We came to this country to work, to help our families move forward," Pineda said in a Spanish-language interview. "They shouldn't be treating us like criminals, because we're not." Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which typically does not respond to inquiries about individual cases, didn't respond to a request from Axios concerning Pineda's husband's case. What's next: Pressley asked Pineda what help her family could use. In the meantime, Pineda tells Axios she's leaning on her church and on God, whom she thanks for connecting her to Centro Presente and getting Jose released.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Yahoo
Trump and Pepe the Frog: 2016 campaign turned meme political. Then it became a hate symbol
President Donald Trump posted a graphic on social media with a subtle nod to a meme that was added to the Anti-Defamation League hate symbol database during the 2016 presidential election. A May 28 Truth Social post shows a black and white picture of Trump walking through a dark street with an on-image caption: "He's on a mission from God & nothing can stop what is coming." In the background of the picture is Pepe the Frog, a popular internet meme that started as a comic in 2005 but was embraced by far-right groups when Trump was first running for president. Some racist and antisemitic uses landed it on the hate symbol list, but ADL says it depends on the context. Pepe the Frog has also become a popular meme coin, and Trump's Truth Social post was shared by a $PEPE account on X, repeating the refrain, "nothing can stop what is coming." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's recent post. Why critics are alarmed: Trump shared an article with a pink triangle symbol Pepe the Frog started as a character from a comic series, "Boy's Club" by Matt Furie in 2005, according to Know Your Meme. While the somewhat sad-looking frog did not have racist or antisemitic origins, its proliferation through the internet as a meme led to its adaptation into something of a symbol for single men who felt they were on the social outskirts, Know Your Meme editor Brad Kim told the New York Times in 2016. But Kim said it became political when Trump shared a Trump-ified version of Pepe in October 2015. "Pepe plugged into the ideology of the alt-right because it was a reaction against the people they call 'normies,'" Kim told the New York Times. "Pepe had been a symbol of the disenfranchised, social outcasts. It was Trump's natural audience." In 2016, the Anti-Defamation League added Pepe the Frog to its list of hate symbols, though the organization notes many uses of this meme are still not rooted in bigotry or hate. "The number of 'alt right' Pepe memes has grown, a tendency exacerbated by the controversial and contentious 2016 presidential election," Pepe's ADL page states. "However, because so many Pepe the Frog memes are not bigoted in nature, it is important to examine use of the meme only in context." The ADL Center on Extremism's senior director of investigative research Carla Hill pointed out the "FruitSnacks" watermark on the graphic. Hill said it is a reference to a popular Truth Social account formerly associated with QAnon, the far-right movement that pushes the conspiracy theory that Trump is waging a secret war with a satanic "deep state." "Nothing can stop what is coming," is commonly seen as a QAnon slogan, Hill said. "The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist," the ADL page on Pepe states. "However, if the meme itself is racist or antisemitic in nature, or if it appears in a context containing bigoted or offensive language or symbols, then it may have been used for hateful purposes.' In another offshoot of internet culture, Pepe the Frog is now a meme coin, a form of cryptocurrency often seen as a collector's item. "$PEPE is a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return," a disclaimer on the website states. "There is no formal team or roadmap. the coin is completely useless and for entertainment purposes only." Trump also has a meme coin: $TRUMP. He recently hosted a dinner for the top purchasers of the coin, who together invested a total of $148 million in the coin. The dinner stirred ethics concerns. According to CoinMarketCap, $PEPE is the No. 25 most valuable crypto token and $TRUMP is No. 41. Contributing: Mike Snider, Zac Anderson and Joey Garrison, USA TODAY Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @ This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Who is Pepe the Frog? Donald Trump's Truth Social post, explained
16-05-2025
Latin America's leftist leaders remember Uruguay's 'Pepe' Mujica as generous, charismatic leader
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay -- In the soaring palace of Uruguay's parliament, leftist presidents from the region came to remember former President José Mujica on Thursday as a generous and charismatic leader whose legacy of humility remained an example for the world's politicians. 'A person like Pepe Mujica doesn't die,' Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said as he paid his respects to his longtime friend, widely known as Pepe, at the Legislative Palace in Montevideo where his body lay in state, eulogizing the onetime Marxist guerrilla who spent over a decade in prison in the 1970s as a 'superior human being.' 'His body is gone. But the ideas he put forward over the years demonstrate the generosity of a man who spent 14 years in prison and managed to emerge without hatred toward the people who imprisoned and tortured him,' Lula said. Approaching the coffin, tears streamed down his face. Lula pulled Mujica's lifelong partner and fellow politician, 80-year-old Lucía Topolansky, into a hug and planted a kiss on her forehead. Mujica, a member of Uruguay's leftist Broad Front coalition elected in 2009, and Lula, the standard-bearer of Brazil's Workers' Party who started his second term in 2007, belonged to a generation of leftist leaders elected to office across Latin America in the early years of this century. The movement's power faded more recently as some leftist populist governments became embroiled in corruption scandals. But Mujica stood out for keeping his reputation for honesty and humility intact. 'It's the end of an era. I think Mujica represented one of the last figures of that 'pink tide' that rose in the region in the 2000s,' said Juan Cruz Díaz, a political analyst who runs the Cefeidas Group, a consultancy in Buenos Aires. 'The global impact and iconic figure of President Mujica is probably irreplaceable.' Lula often met Mujica in his three-room farmhouse on the outskirts of Montevideo, where, after retiring from the Senate, the former president tended to his chrysanthemums and dispensed wisdom to a range of visitors — from rock band Aerosmith to philosopher Noam Chomsky. It's also where Mujica died at age 89 on Tuesday, after more than a year spent battling esophageal cancer. Chile's president, Gabriel Boric. On learning of Mujica's death on Tuesday, both Boric and Lula jetted to Uruguay from Beijing, where they had been meeting Chinese officials. They were received by Uruguay's moderate left-wing president, Yamandú Orsi, who was Mujica's preferred candidate in last fall's presidential elections. 'Life goes on, causes remain,' Boric wrote on social media. 'Thank you, dear Pepe, we will carry you with us in every fight.' ___
