He was prefaced as the "poorest leader on the planet" by the news networks of the universe in the 5 years he remained in the highest office of his country.
And it was one of those times where every word was literal. THE president he donated 90% of his salary to the poor, the even poorer ones, that is, by himself, in order to be paid with the average salary of the citizen.
He never settled in the Presidential Palace, preferring to stay in his hut with the Hellenes on the outskirts of the city. In the mud, in this piece of land that he always cultivated with his own hands his beloved chrysanthemums With the same tractor, as before.
He had no guards. He was not wearing suits. He did not travel in the presidential limousine, except in his small boat, a "Scarab" of 1987. With his dog as a stable co-driver. He had none of what the world's political leaders have. Because he did not want them. Because he did not believe them. Because he hated them.
The reason for the 40th president of Uruguay, the man for whom politics was something much more sacred, much bigger than even the highest parliamentary office.
Former President Jose Mujica, a former leader of the Tupamaros, was a rebel, and he knew in his own skin what struggles and demands meant. He was imprisoned by the junta for twelve whole years and suffered horribly torture.
Woe he did not forget when he was elected president in 2010 and forced the whole planet to bow to his humility. But also his vision. And the brave reforms that stabilized the national economy.
After all, Muhika never felt poor, these were the words of journalists, he used to complain: "Poor is not the one who has little, but the one who needs more". But come on, his people also called him "Poor President" (El Presidente mas pobre)!
It would indeed be a pity to exhaust the references to "El Pepe" to how violently he denied luxuries and privileges. Because he was one of the most charismatic Latin American politicians of recent decades. A simple man who was elected to do what he advocated from his childhood.
And he did. He left no power to erode him. He did not let any protocol change his way of life. And he was deified. From young and old. With a groundbreaking reform program that put man at the center. And it used to record one of its highest growth rates GDP worldwide!
At 84, happily, "Pepe" remains a completely idiosyncratic man, one of those personalities who become older than life itself. Or, to be more precise, as Kusturica called him in the documentary he made about him in 2018: "The last hero".
When he resigned as an MP in August 2018, as he grew up and could not perform his duties as he would have liked, he hit one last time. And it hit hard again. He refused to receive a parliamentary pension!
Pepe was called by his competitors in Tupamaros, Pepe and his comrades in a decade and put in prison. And as Pepe, the broad masses would necessarily learn him, first as a revolutionary, then as a politician, then as a minister and finally as president. Only he was always a farmer!
Born in May 1935 into a poor rural family, his small farming father, Vasco, originally, went bankrupt before closing his eyes prematurely in 1940. So he grew up with his mother and his Italian emigrant grandparents in the fields, making one -one day.
As an idealistic and militant child and politically active from his adolescence, he took part in the agrarian movement and leftist ideas, joining the fledgling Tupamaro national liberation movement in the mid-1960s, the transformation of revolutionary peasant and workers' unions into guerrillas. By the standards of the Cuban Revolution.
He was in fact the leader of one of the 6 military arms of the movement and the rebel who first entered Panto in 1969, during the short-lived occupation of the city next to Montevideo.
In March of the following year, he almost lost his life in a Montevideo bar, in a police ambush. He ate six bullets, injured two police officers and was miraculously rescued by the hospital's shift surgeon. They said that Tupamaros was the doctor. It was not. It was just doctor.
President Jorge Pacheco, who had already begun drastically restricting constitutional freedoms since 1968, responded by declaring the country a state of emergency. The hunt for the revolutionaries was fierce.
Mujica fell into the hands of the regime four different times, starting in 4. Both of them he was released from prison. He was found in the iron by the military coup of 1971, which declared him an enemy of the regime and put him in isolation.
They thought they would break him. All they did was to weaken his will. "I slept on the prison floor for years and the nights I had a mattress I was happy. I survived on nothing. That's why I started to appreciate the little things in life and the limits of things. If I dedicate myself to prosperity, I will have to spend a large part of my life in maintaining it. "
Twelve years of psychological and physical torture later, he had to wait for the restoration of democracy in 1985 and a general amnesty for Comrade Pepe to be released from prison. With old fighters from the Tupamaros, they formed a left-wing party (Movement for Popular Participation) and united with workers 'and peasants' organizations in the left-wing United Wider Front.
He was elected Member of Parliament in 1994 and Senator in 1999. Charismatic and with a vision, he became increasingly popular. So popular that in 2004 he received more votes than any other candidate for senator. Solemnly re-elected…
With his party becoming the largest left-wing coalition, he's the one who effectively ousted Tavare Vazquez in 2005, Uruguay's first ever left-wing president. Basques included him in his government as Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries. That is, what he knew well.
In the 2009 elections it was his time when he became president of the Enlarged Front and easily won the election. What did he achieve? To stabilize the economy and crack down on proverbial Latin American corruption in the public sector. According to the BBC's Wyre Davies, "Mujica left the presidency leaving a relatively healthy economy and social stability that only its biggest neighbors can dream of."
At the same time, in a controversial move at the time, he legalized cannabis to root out this $ 40 million illegal activity and rid the country of a good chunk of organized crime that plagued the small country so much. The situation in Uruguay today obviously justifies him.
Both an idealist and a pragmatist, he argued for cannabis legalization: "Cannabis use is not the most worrying problem, but drug trafficking, 150.000 people smoke marijuana in Uruguay and I could not leave them alone. "It's much easier to control something that is legal and that's why we do it."
Always progressive, he legalized abortions until the fourth month gay marriage and adopted a truly humanitarian agenda in its broad reform agenda. He fought for public education, making higher education more accessible to the people, and legislated widely for the financially disadvantaged and the rural population.
During his five-year term, Uruguay experienced a record low in all unemployment rates and saw drastic increases in wages and pensions. In a climate where its neighbors stumbled financially. "America of Switzerland" was now called the small country…
They say that nothing corrupts man faster than money and power and the truth is that Pepe knew both well. Only it did not corrode.
From the day he swore allegiance to the Constitution and the Institutions, he decided that he could live well with a little less than 1/10 of that 10.000 euros of the presidential salary. With 775 euros, he earned it, as well as the average salary in Uruguay in 2010. The same was done by his wife, then senator Lucia Topolanski.
"What should I do with all this money?" He protested. "Most Uruguayans live on much less." He only went to the Presidential Palace when he had a formal meeting, as he continued to stay in the stall with the Hellenes just outside Montevideo. And dress the way she did, with these old-fashioned sweaters and faded t-shirts.
As for his means of transportation, it was not the presidential limousine, but the blue "Scarab" of 1987. Which he was even willing to buy an Arab tycoon for… 1 million dollars! Not that Mujica thought about it. Or maybe he thought about it and rejected it, as how would he take Manuela, his old and tripod dog, for a walk? It was, as he said, her only means of transportation!
"I have been called 'the poorest president', but I do not feel poor. Poor are those who work only to acquire and perpetuate a luxurious lifestyle and want more and more constantly. This raises the issue of freedom. "If you do not have so many material goods, you do not have to work as a slave to maintain them, and therefore you have much more time for yourself," he replied wisely.
Rejecting utopia for the sake of realism, he remained a pragmatic leftist who did not allow ideologies and entanglements to take him away from the relentless daily life. "What I ask people to do is not to hate those who think differently," he said in his second year in office.
When he resigned from the presidency in 2015, one was the right move for him: to return to his farm and chrysanthemums, his main source of income even today. Despite the fact that his wife and old partner in Tupamaros took over in 2017 as vice president of Uruguay. He also gives them all to charity.
Pepe returned to the Senate in 2015 and when he saw that he was too old, he resigned! "I may look like an eccentric old man in the eyes of many. But do not forget the right of free will ", he replied to those who criticized him that he gave up everything to gather at home.
But it was never a typical example of a politician and that is exactly how its parliamentary end would be. When he felt that he was exhausted, that he was no longer sufficient for his duties, he stepped aside. And he did not look back. Something if not unprecedented, definitely rare for a political career.
"The motives for the resignation are personal. I would attribute them to fatigue after a long journey. However, as long as my mind works, I can not give up solidarity and the struggle of ideas ", he wrote in the letter that he formally delivered to the President of the Senate and for 13 years his wife, Lucia. The camera caught him a few moments before handing over his seat on his tractor.
Visionary and with the unquenchable spark of the revolutionary, Pepe became the change he wanted to see in the world. If there is one thing we must keep from his legacy, let it be the new fact that with his actions he managed to eliminate the distance that separates the common people from the centers of power.
And if any of his great words remain, let it be this and nothing else: "We do not pay with money. We pay with the time of life we spend to get this money. The difference is that life is the only thing money can not buy. And it is sad to waste one's life and freedom in this way. "
