Pepe Mujica, the former president of Uruguay, passes away

José Mujica, a former guerrilla warrior, former president of Uruguay, and a mainstay of Latin American left-wing political leadership, passed away on Tuesday. He was eighty-nine.

The cause and location of Mujica’s death were not disclosed in the statement issued by President Yamandú Orsi. In April 2024, Mujica disclosed that he had esophageal cancer. He lived on the outskirts of Montevideo, the capital. «President, referent, driver, and militant.» «Viejo querido, you will be greatly missed,» Orsi remarked.

Known as Pepe, Mujica was elected president in 2009 at the age of 74, when a generation of Latin American leftist governments was losing its populist splendor. Although he had a reputation as an intelligent leader of Uruguay’s progressive coalition, Mujica’s informal governing style baffled the establishment.

A self-described philosophical anarchist, he was known for his brash charisma, his skepticism of the excesses of capitalism, his modest lifestyle, and his intention to bring determination and humility to government during a time when the Uruguayan left was on the rise.

Under Mujica’s leadership from 2010 to 2015, Uruguay became the first nation in the world to fully legalize and regulate marijuana, and the second in Latin America to decriminalize abortion and legalize equal marriage. His remarkably casual appearance—tie-less, unkempt, and tending to his chrysanthemum fields with his wife and their three-legged dog, Manuela—was nearly as striking as his discourse on the perils of excessive consumerism.

In one of his last interviews, in 2024, he reflected on the responsibility of world leaders. “The problem is that the world is run by old people,” he commented, ”who forget what they were like when they were young.”