José Mujica
José Mujica was president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015, the former Tupamaro guerrilla who had been shot six times, escaped from prison twice and spent thirteen years in military custody, two of them at the bottom of a well, who as president lived on his wife's farm outside Montevideo with a three-legged dog, drove a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle, gave ninety per cent of his salary away, and signed the laws that made Uruguay the first country to legalise and regulate the sale of cannabis, the second in Latin America to allow abortion on request and the second to allow same-sex marriage. The world press called him the poorest president and he said he was not poor, he was sober. He was born in Montevideo in 1935, a flower-grower's son, and joined the Tupamaros in the 1960s, the urban guerrillas who robbed banks, kidnapped and, in 1970, killed a CIA adviser. He was captured in 1970, escaped in 1971 through a tunnel with a hundred others, was recaptured in 1972 wounded, and after the coup of 1973 was one of nine hostages the military held in isolation and moved between barracks for the length of the dictatorship, threatened with death if the movement acted. He came out in March 1985 half mad, he said, talking to frogs. With his comrades he turned the movement into a party inside the Broad Front. He was elected deputy in 1994, senator in 1999, was agriculture minister under Tabare Vazquez from 2005, and won the presidency in the run-off of November 2009 against Lacalle. The economy grew, poverty fell below ten per cent, the cannabis law of 2013 was passed against a majority of public opinion because, he said, the drug war had been lost, and he took Guantanamo prisoners nobody else would take. He spoke to the UN in 2013 about the sober life, and the speech went round the world. He handed back to Vazquez in 2015, sat in the senate until 2020, and died at his farm in May 2025 of cancer of the oesophagus, with the tributes of every president in the hemisphere and the flowers of his neighbours.
- Lived: 1935 CE – 2025 CE
- Nationality: Uruguayan
- Roles: president, guerrilla, politician
