Jose Mujica, Uruguay’s former leader, rebel icon and cannabis reformer, dead at 89

Jose Mujica, one -time guerril and later president Uruguay who was driving a beaten VW Beetle and brought in progressive reforms that carried his reputation far beyond South America, died at the age of 89.

The Mujika, which is directly, known to many Uruguays by the nickname of “Pepe”, led the left -wing government of a small agricultural country from 2010 to 2015. After convincing the voters his radical past was a closed chapter.

Former Uruguayan President Jose Mujica announces the diagnosis of esophageal cancer

“With a deep sadness, we announce the death of our comrades by Pepe Mujica,” said President Yamando Orsi Ua Post on x. “Thank you for all that you have given us for your deep love for your people.”

As a president, the Mujica accepted what was then a pioneering liberal attitude about issues related to civil freedom. He signed a law that allows gay marriage and abortions in early pregnancy and supported the proposal for legalization of marijuana sales. Gay marriage and abortion measures were a great shift for Catholic Latin America, and the move on marijuana was almost unprecedented at the time.

Regional leaders, including left -wing presidents in Brazil, Chile And MexicoHe mourned Mujika’s passing and praised his example.

“He defended democracy as a few others. He never stopped advocating for social justice and the end of all inequality,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Mujic’s “Size went beyond Uruguay and his presidential term,” he added.

During his term of office in power, the Mujica refused to move to the presidency, decided to stay in his modest home where he kept a small flower farm in the Montevideo suburb of the capital.

Avoiding a festive suit and a tie, it was common to see him driving on bugs or eating at restaurants in the city center where office workers had lunch.

In an interview with May 2024. With Reuters in a house with a roof that Mujica shared with his wife, former Senator Lucia Topolansky, he said he had retained his old beetle and was still in a “phenomenal” condition.

But, he added, he preferred to turn the tractor, saying that he was “more fun” than the car and was a place where “you have time to think”.

The critics tested the tendency to Mujica to break through with the protocol, while his blunt and occasionally rude statements sometimes forced him to explain himself, under the pressure of opponents and political allies.

But it was his ground style and progressive thoughts that fascinated him with many Uruguays.

“The problem is that the world is managed by old people who forget what they were when they were young,” Mujica said during the 2024 interview.

The Mujica himself was 74 when he became president. He was selected with 52% of the vote, despite the concern of some voters because of his age and past as one of the leaders of the Tuparamaros rebel group in the 1960s and 1970s.

Lucia Topolansky was a Mujica long -term partner, dating from their days in Tupamaros. The couple got married in 2005, and she was a vice president from 2017-2020.

After they abandoned their duties, they remained politically active, regularly participating in the inauguration of Latin American presidents and providing key support to the Uruguay candidates, including ORSI, who took office in March 2025. They stopped growing flowers on their small posture, but continued to nurture vegetation, including tomatoes that are topolan acidic in the acidic period.

Behind bars

The born newspaper Jose Mujica recorded him as born in 1935, although he claimed there was a mistake and that he was actually born a year earlier. He once described his upbringing as “dignified poverty.”

Mujina’s father died when he was 9 or 10 years old, and as a boy he helped his mother hold a farm where they raised flowers and held chickens and several cows.

At the time when the Mujica became interested in politics, the Uruguaya Left was weak and broken, and began his political career in the progressive wing of the National Right Center National Party.

In the late 1960s, he joined the Gerilic Movement of the Marxist Tuparamaros, which sought to weaken the conservative government of Uruguay through robberies, political abductions and bombing.

Mujica later said he had never killed anyone, but was involved in several violent conflicts with police and soldiers, and once shot six times.

Uruguayan security forces received the advantage over Tuparamaros by the time the army moved to power in a 1973 national hit, marking the beginning of a 12-year dictatorship in which about 200 people were abducted and killed. Thousands of more were closed and tortured.

The Mujica spent almost 15 years behind the bars, many in a lonely closed, lying at the bottom of the old horse with only ants for society. He managed to escape twice, once tunnel into a nearby house. His biggest “vice”, as he approached 90, said later, talking to himself, alluding to his time isolated.

When the Democracy was returned to an agricultural land of approximately 3 million people in 1985, the Mujica was released and returned to politics, gradually becoming a prominent figure on the left.

He served as a minister of agriculture in the coalition of the left center of his predecessor, President Tabaré Vázquez, who would succeed him from 2015 to 2020.

The Mujica’s support base was on the left, but held a fluid dialogue with opponents within the right center, inviting them to traditional grills in his house.

“We can’t pretend to agree on everything. We have to agree with what exists, not with what we love,” he said.

He believed that the drugs should be decriminalized “under the strict control of the condition” and depends on addiction.

“I do not defend the use of drugs. But I cannot defend (the ban), because now we have two problems: drug addiction, which is a disease, and narcotics, which is worse,” he said.

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He retired decisively optimistic.

“I want to convey to all young people that life is beautiful, but he is worn out, and you fall,” he said after the cancer diagnosis.

“It’s a point to start over and over every time you fall, and if you get angry, turn it into hope.”