Uruguay's Jos Mujica, world's 'poorest president', dies
9 hours ago
Gerardo Lissardy
BBC News Mundo
AFP/Getty Images
Former Uruguayan President José Mujica, known as "Pepe", has died at the age of 89.
The ex-guerrilla who governed Uruguay from 2010 to 2015 was known as the world's "poorest president" because of his modest lifestyle.
Current President Yamandú Orsi announced his predecessor's death on X, writing: "thank you for everything you gave us and for your deep love for your people."
The politician's cause of death is not known but he had been suffering from oesophageal cancer.
Because of the simple way he lived as president, his criticism of consumerism and the social reforms he promoted - which, among other things, meant Uruguay became the first country to legalise the recreational use of marijuana - Mujica became a well-known political figure in Latin America and beyond.
His global popularity is unusual for a president of Uruguay, a country with just 3.4 million inhabitants where his legacy has also generated some controversy.
In fact, even though many tended to see Mujica as someone outside the political class, that was not the case.
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José Mujica and Lucía Topolansky have long been married to one another — and their leftist political cause.
José Mujica, left, and Lucía Topolansky belonged to a leftist guerrilla group, the Tupamaros, when they met in the early 1970s.Credit...Dado Galdieri for The New York Times
By Jack Nicas
Reporting from Montevideo, Uruguay
By Jack Nicas
Reporting from Montevideo, Uruguay
Aug. 23, 2024
He led a band of armed rebels. She was an expert in forging documents. They robbed banks, they staged prison breaks and they were in love.
It was the early 1970s, and José Mujica and Lucía Topolansky were members of a violent leftist guerrilla group, the Tupamaros. To them, their crimes were justified: They were fighting a repressive government that had taken over their small South American nation, Uruguay.
He was 37 and she was 27 when, during a clandestine operation, they first came together. “It was like a flash of lighting in the night,” Mr. Mujica, now 89, recalled many years later of their first night together, hiding out on a mountainside.
Amid war, they found love. But just weeks later, they were thrown in prison, where they were subjected to torture and abuse. Over 13 years, they managed to exchange only a single letter. The guards confiscated the rest.
In 1985, Uruguay’s dictatorship ended. They were released on the same day, and they quickly found one another. It was a critical moment in their extraordinary love story. After more than a decade apart, their love was still alive — and so was the shared cause that had first united them.
“The next day we started looking for a place to gather our companions. We had to start the political fight,” Ms. Topolansky, 79, said in an interview in their home last week. “We didn’t waste a minute. And we never stopped, because it’s our vocation. It is the meaning of our life.”
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