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

May 14, 2025 , 07:12 AM

(May 14, 2025, REUTERS) – Jose Mujica, a one-time guerrilla and later president of Uruguay who drove a beat-up old VW Beetle and enacted progressive reforms that carried his reputation well beyond South America, has died aged 89.

The straight-talking Mujica, known to many Uruguayans by his nickname “Pepe”, led the small farming country’s leftist government from 2010 to 2015 after convincing voters his radical past was a closed chapter.

“It is with deep sorrow that we announce the death of our comrade Pepe Mujica,” President Yamandu Orsi said in a post on X. “Thank you for everything you gave us and for your deep love for your people.”

As president, Mujica adopted what was then a pioneering liberal stance on issues related to civil liberties. He signed a law allowing gay marriage and abortions in early pregnancy, and backed a proposal to legalize marijuana sales. The former were a big shift for Catholic Latin America, and the latter move was at the time almost unprecedented worldwide.

Mexico’s leftist President Claudia Sheinbaum joined a host of regional leaders in mourning Mujica’s death.

“We deeply regret the passing of our beloved Pepe Mujica, an example to Latin America and the entire world for his wisdom, foresight, and simplicity,” she wrote on X.

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

Shunning a formal suit and tie, it was common to see him driving around in his Beetle or eating at downtown restaurants where office workers had lunch.

In a May 2024 interview with Reuters in the tin-roofed house that he shared with his wife, former senator Lucia Topolansky, he said he had kept the old Beetle and that it was still in “phenomenal” condition.

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

Critics questioned Mujica’s tendency to break with protocol, while his blunt and occasionally uncouth statements sometimes forced him to explain himself, under pressure from opponents and political allies alike.

But it was his down-to-earth style and progressive musings that endeared him to many Uruguayans.

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

Mujica himself was 74 when he became president. He was elected with 52% of the vote, despite some voters’ concerns about his age and his past as one of the leaders of the Tupamaros rebel group in the 1960s and 1970s.

(Reporting by Helen Popper and Lucinda Elliott; Additional reporting by Raul Cortes and Sarah Morland)

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