Jose Mujica, extensively recognized by his nickname, “Pepe,” was beloved for his modesty and progressive social reforms.
On the peak of his political profession as president of Uruguay, Mujica’s month-to-month wage was $12,500 (€7,200) — however he solely drew one-tenth of it.
The remaining he gave away.
$1,250 was “greater than sufficient,” stated Mujica, who would normally drive himself round in his pale-blue VW Beetle, which he refused to promote even when supplied $1 million for it.
This farmer from the west of the capital, Montevideo, by no means anticipated that he would at some point obtain such reputation — and it was most likely by no means his purpose.
He instructed DW again in 2015, simply earlier than the top of his presidency, that he was a political animal.
“I have been in politics since I used to be 14 years previous,” he stated. “And if I do not lose my wits, I will proceed in politics till they carry me out ft first.”
Political underground to solitary confinement
Jose Mujica was born in Montevideo in 1935 to a farming household of Basque and Italian origin.
Their circumstances had been modest: Mujica was 5 when his father died, and he and his sister labored on the household flower farm from an early age.
He did go to high school, although, and went on to check regulation, later dropping out as he grew to become more and more concerned within the pupil motion.
Earlier than lengthy, Mujica and others based the city guerrilla group often called the Tupamaros. On the time, the early Sixties, there was mass unemployment in Uruguay.
Mujica dreamed of “a society with out social lessons.” To this finish, he and the Tupamaros robbed banks, kidnapped politicians and planted bombs.
Mujica at all times claimed that he had by no means killed anybody.
“We had been naive, however one shouldn’t lose sight of 1’s purpose,” Mujica as soon as stated in an interview with DW.
His targets landed him in jail. He was convicted of murdering a police officer after a shootout with the police in 1971 and spent 14 years in jail, the place he hung out in solitary confinement and was tortured.
Mujica later described this section of life as “routine for many who resolve to vary the world,” including that he had an excessive amount of time to get to know himself throughout his time in jail.
From solitary confinement to the presidency
From 1973 to 1985, Uruguay was below a army dictatorship.
When this got here to an finish, an amnesty regulation was handed below which noticed Mujica and different political prisoners freed.
He and his future spouse, Lucía Topolansky, a fellow Tupamara launched on the identical time, moved to a small farm the place they offered tomatoes and chrysanthemums and engaged in political exercise.
The Tupamaros developed into the left-wing political social gathering Movimiento de Participación Well-liked (Motion of Well-liked Participation, or MPP), and 10 years after his launch from jail, Mujica was elected as a member of parliament.
A well-liked story relates that, on his first day, he traveled to parliament by moped. The porter, mistaking him for a courier, requested, “Are you staying lengthy?” and Mujica replied, “I hope so.”
His hopes had been fulfilled. In 2005, for the primary time in its historical past, Uruguay elected a socialist president: Tabare Vazquez, the chief of the left-wing coalition Frente Amplio (Broad Entrance). He appointed Jose Mujica as his minister of agriculture.
5 years later, in 2010, Mujica was elected president with 52% of the vote.
Authenticity the trump card
Even within the highest workplace of the state, Mujica remained true to himself. He usually appeared at Cupboard conferences sporting a cardigan, sandals and an previous pair of trousers. He by no means wore a tie, not even on official events. He did put on a three-piece swimsuit as a visitor on the White Home in 2014, but it surely was barely too brief.
Despite this — or maybe due to it — his host Barack Obama, US president on the time, described him as having “extraordinary credibility.”
The famend Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano as soon as stated of his Mujica: “He is a plain man. Folks acknowledge themselves in him, which is why he evokes such enthusiasm and hope.”
Uruguaya’s experiment
As president, Mujica, an avowed atheist, turned the nation the other way up. He legalized homosexual marriage and abortion, a transfer that was properly forward of the prevailing instances in Latin America.
In Mujica’s logic, this act was neither leftist nor liberal. “The world has to simply accept sure issues which are unalterable,” he stated.
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