Obituary: Jose Mujica, Uruguayan Marxist guerrilla who later became ‘the world's poorest president'
Telegraph obituaries
Jose Mujica, who has died aged 89, was a Marxist terrorist who reinvented himself to become a popular liberalising president of Uruguay in his 1970s. Ostentatiously rejecting the rewards of office, he earned the soubriquet 'the world's poorest president'.
As a Marxist guerrilla, Mujica survived a gun battle with police during which he was shot six times and later spent two years incarcerated in a hole in the ground, keeping his sanity intact by befriending and conversing with a frog. In his later years his life became more mellow and — as he joined the centre-left Broad Front party — so did his politics.
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Obituary: Jose Mujica, Uruguayan Marxist guerrilla who later became ‘the world's poorest president'
Telegraph obituaries Jose Mujica, who has died aged 89, was a Marxist terrorist who reinvented himself to become a popular liberalising president of Uruguay in his 1970s. Ostentatiously rejecting the rewards of office, he earned the soubriquet 'the world's poorest president'. As a Marxist guerrilla, Mujica survived a gun battle with police during which he was shot six times and later spent two years incarcerated in a hole in the ground, keeping his sanity intact by befriending and conversing with a frog. In his later years his life became more mellow and — as he joined the centre-left Broad Front party — so did his politics.
