José Mujica, a former president of Uruguay, guerrilla fighter and stalwart of leftist leadership in Latin America, died on Tuesday. He was 89. Known as Pepe, Mr. Mujica was elected president in 2009 at the age of 74 as a generation of leftist Latin American governments were losing their populist luster.
A self-described philosophical anarchist, he was known for his brash charisma, his skepticism of capitalism’s excesses, his modest way of life and his intent to inject purpose and humility into government during a time when Uruguay’s left was ascendant.
Believing world leaders should dispense with the trappings of power, he and his wife, Lucía Topolansky, a senator at the time, opted to live in a single-story home on a plot of farmland instead of on a staffed presidential estate. He sometimes drove to work in his pale blue 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.
On his first day as president, Mr. Mujica announced that he would give away most of his salary to help build housing for Uruguay’s neglected towns. Called the “world’s poorest president,” he nevertheless saw his standing differently. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor,” he told The New York Times in 2013, quoting the Roman philosopher Seneca.
— source nytimes.com | May 13, 2025