Latest news with #JoséMujica
BBC News
26-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Lives Less Ordinary José Mujica: Guerilla, president and occasional romantic
Remembering the former president of Uruguay: José 'Pepe' Mujica. He started life as a flower farmer on the outskirts of Montevideo. As a young man he became politically active, part of the left-wing guerilla group the Tupamaros, who were bent on revolution through armed struggle that involved bank heists and kidnappings. With the authorities on his tail Pepe was eventually captured, he was shot six times and later staged what became a record-breaking prison escape. When he was captured and imprisoned again, he was held for 13 years in horrendous conditions but he says the pain and loneliness of that time was when he learned the most about life. A year after the military regime stepped down, Pepe was released and joined formal politics and in 2010 he was voted in as president of Uruguay. He shunned the presidential palace and car for his crumbling farmhouse and old VW Beetle and brought in laws legalising gay marriage and abortion. He had his critics but when he died earlier this month, thousands of people lined the streets to pay their respects. We spoke to Pepe alongside his wife Lucia Topolansky in 2023 and they talked about how their love had changed over their decades together. Presenter: Andrea Kennedy Producer: Louise Morris Get in touch: liveslessordinary@ or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
José Mujica, Uruguyan Marxist guerrilla who later became ‘the world's poorest president'
José Mujica, who has died aged 89, was a Marxist terrorist who reinvented himself to become a popular liberalising president of Uruguay in his 70s; ostentatiously rejecting the rewards of office, he earned the soubriquet 'the world's poorest president'. In the course of an adventurous career 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. 'I need capitalism to work,' he observed in 2014. 'Trying to overcome it all too abruptly condemns the people you are fighting for to suffering.' Unlike many lapsed Marxists, however, he did not regard the evolution of his principles as licence to accumulate personal wealth. After being elected president of Uruguay in 2009, the 74-year-old Mujica announced on his first day in the job that he would be giving 90 per cent of his salary away to fund housing projects. He refused to move into the official presidential residence ('It's four stories. To have tea you have to walk three blocks. Useless. They should make it a high school') and remained with his wife and their three-legged dog in a one-storey farmhouse on the outskirts of Montevideo, driving to work every day in his dilapidated 1987 Volkswagen Beetle. His frugality endeared Mujica, widely known by his nickname 'El Pepe', to the Uruguayan people, and he leveraged his personal popularity to pursue a radical and controversial progressive agenda. He oversaw a transition to the widespread use of renewable energies, radically liberalised the abortion laws and, in 2013, legalised same-sex marriage. There were also bold reforms to legislation on the sale of marijuana, permitting registered households to grow up to six plants and handing responsibility for cultivation and distribution to the government, putting the drug-trafficking gangs out of business. Mujica did much to establish Uruguay's reputation as South America's most forward-thinking modern democracy and he attracted a good deal of foreign investment: perhaps wary of the example set by Hugo Chávez, his opposite number in Venezuela, he took care to maintain good relations with the United States. The Uruguayan economy grew by 3.6 per cent annually during his five-year tenure. José Alberto Mujica Cordano was born in Montevideo on May 20 1935, into what he called 'dignified poverty' as the son of Demetrio Mujica Terra, a farmer of Spanish heritage, and Lucy Cordano Giorello, a flower seller. Although he did well academically, he dropped out of high school and drifted until he became interested in radical Marxism and joined the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement in the late 1960s. This was originally a Robin Hood outfit that stole from the rich – in one instance pulling off a $6 million jewellery heist – and redistributed their gains to the poor, winning a good deal of support from the public. But in the early 1970s the Tupamaros became more violent: they murdered the US government official Dan Mitrione and kidnapped the British ambassador to Uruguay, Sir Geoffrey Jackson, holding him to ransom for eight months. Mujica later claimed to have argued against the move towards more violent tactics; if so, he was ineffectual. A wanted man, Mujica was spotted by police in a bar in Montevideo in 1970 and shot half a dozen times before being arrested and subsequently jailed. The following year some 100 Tupamaro rebel prisoners, Mujica among them, managed to tunnel out of Punta Carretas prison to freedom. In the end the Tupamaros were self-defeating, however, as the havoc they caused served as an excuse for the imposition of a Right-wing military dictatorship, following a coup d'état in 1973. The new government cracked down mercilessly on Leftists and Mujica was reinterned. He suffered torture and beatings so severe that he was left incontinent, and spent a total of more than a decade in solitary confinement, including two years in a hole in the ground with rats and frogs. He was finally released in 1985 after democratic government had been restored. Founding a new political party, the Movement of Popular Participation, he embraced the mainstream. 'Some old compañeros won't understand,' he admitted. 'They don't see our battle against people's everyday problems, that life is not a utopia.' After the party was absorbed into the Broad Front coalition, Mujica was elected to the lower house of congress in 1994 and to the senate in 1999. When Broad Front came to power for the first time in 2004, President Tabaré Vázquez appointed Mujica agriculture minister; his policy of reducing the cost of beef made him extremely popular with voters. He won the presidency by a landslide in 2009. Mujica's style was folksy and homiletic, although he had an earthier way of speaking in private. In 2013 a microphone caught him saying 'This old hag is even worse than the cross-eyed man,' in reference to the Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner. He issued a grovelling apology, although the remark did him no harm domestically. Permitted to serve only a single term by the constitution, he stepped down in 2015 and returned to the senate before retiring in 2018. He remained popular, and his campaigning last year on behalf of his Broad Front colleague Yamandú Orsi was seen as a key factor in his election as president. In 2005 José Mujica married his partner of many decades Lucía Topolansky, who had been one of his fellow Tupamaro rebels; she was vice-president of Uruguay from 2017 to 2020. José Mujica, born May 20 1935, died May 13 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Economist
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Economist
José 'El Pepe' Mujica became the antithesis of a caudillo
It is not a flashy country and José Mujica, who died on May 13th aged 89, became its epitome. As Uruguay's president from 2010 to 2015 he continued to drive a battered sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle and to lunch in workaday bars on the main street of Montevideo, the capital. Foreign dignitaries or journalists who sought an audience with 'El Pepe' usually had to trek to his scrabbly farm with its three-roomed concrete house where he lived for the last 40 years of his life. He often dressed in a tracksuit and fleece. He gave away much of his presidential salary. If it was partly a theatrical act, almost a caricature, it was one he lived to the full. He had a deep and genuine hatred of pomp and flummery, which he saw as inimical to the egalitarian principles of a democratic republic.
New Indian Express
15-05-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
José Mujica, Uruguay's humble president who changed his country and charmed the world, dies at 89
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay: 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. A colorful history and simple philosophy 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.
Hindustan Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
José Mujica became the antithesis of a caudillo
It is not a flashy country and José Mujica, who died on May 13th aged 89, became its epitome. As Uruguay's president from 2010 to 2015 he continued to drive a battered sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle and to lunch in workaday bars on the main street of Montevideo, the capital. Foreign dignitaries or journalists who sought an audience usually had to trek out to his scrabbly farm with its three-roomed house of grey concrete where he lived for the last 40 years of his life. He often dressed in a fleece and tracksuit. He gave away much of his presidential salary. If it was partly a theatrical act, almost a caricature, it was one he lived to the full. He had a deep and genuine hatred of pomp and flummery, which he saw as inimical to the egalitarian principles of a democratic republic. This frugal authenticity was one factor that turned Mr Mujica into a global icon, especially for those uncomfortable with a voracious and environmentally predatory consumer society. Another was his extraordinary life story, for the journey to the presidency had been long, tortuous and hard. The son of a florist and of a smallholder farmer who died when he was six, at 29 he joined the Tupamaros, an urban guerrilla group inspired by Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution. They were fond of Robin Hood stunts such as robbing supermarkets to distribute food to the poor. Mr Mujica was hit by six bullets when he and three comrades exchanged fire with police who had found them in a bar. He was imprisoned for a total of 14 years (he twice escaped), ten of them in solitary confinement, two at the bottom of a well with only ants and mice for company. Far from fighting for democracy as leftist myth holds, Mr Mujica and the Tupamaros fought to extinguish it in what had long been a peaceful country. In that they succeeded: in response to guerrilla violence, the armed forces staged a coup in 1973 and ruled for 12 years. At least incarceration gave Mr Mujica time to think, which he said he did a lot (as well as 'listening to the ants', he added). He emerged a changed man. Though he never made an explicit self-criticism of his guerrilla past, his actions offered one. He became a parliamentarian and a minister (of agriculture), accepting the market economy, foreign investment and liberal democracy—'and I have to make it work as well as I can,' he told The Economist. The 'enormous advantages' of democracy, he concluded, were that 'it doesn't believe itself to be finished or perfect' and its tolerance of disagreement. Because of that and because of the suffering he underwent, Uruguayans pardoned his past. A third factor in his fame he owed to Uruguay. It is a secular, progressive country, one of the first to establish a welfare state. Younger members of Mr Mujica's coalition drew on that tradition to propose new rights. As president he legalised cannabis, abortion and gay marriage. Unlike other Latin American leftist leaders, such as Rafael Correa in Ecuador or, more recently, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, he did not try to 'refound' his country. Nor did he try to rewrite the rules, in contrast to Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico with her espousal of elected judges. When Uruguay's courts knocked down six of his government's laws, he accepted it without criticism. He was not particularly good at governing. He tried and failed to reform a deteriorating education system dominated by an over-mighty trade union. He was good at talking. With a twinkle in his small, penetrating eyes, he enjoyed the cut and thrust of argument. Above all, he was not vindictive, not even against his jailers. 'I don't hate,' he said. 'Can you imagine the luxury it is not to hate?' He disappointed his own supporters by rejecting attempts to put the dictators on trial. 'Justice has the stink of vengeance,' he insisted. In that he was in tune with majority opinion in his country. He retained a vestigial, if misplaced, loyalty to the Cuban regime (he acted as a discreet messenger between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro when the two negotiated a diplomatic thaw between their countries). But in practice he had evolved into a social democrat, one who mistrusted extreme positions. He came to believe that the key to a lasting change in material conditions was to change cultural attitudes and that was harder and took longer. Ironically, perhaps, for a former Marxist, he became a tribune for anti-materialism, at least up to a point. He invited young people to live modestly because 'the more you have the less happy you are'. In a region not known for it, he was self-deprecating. 'I dedicated myself to changing the world and I didn't change anything, but it was amusing and gave sense to my life,' he said in one of his final interviews last year. His lasting legacy to the Latin American left was that he became the antithesis of a caudillo. Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
