José Mujica

José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano (20 May 1935 – 13 May 2025) was a Uruguayan politician, revolutionary and farmer who served as the 40th president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. A former guerrilla with the Tupamaros, he was tortured and imprisoned for 14 years during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. A member of the Broad Front coalition of left-wing parties, Mujica was the minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008 and a senator afterwards. As the candidate of the Broad Front, he won the 2009 presidential election and took office as president on 1 March 2010.

Mujica's administration implemented a range of progressive policies, including the decriminalization of abortion, the legalization of marijuana consumption and the legalization of same-sex marriage. Additional measures strengthened the country's trade unions and significantly bolstered minimum wages.

While in office, Mujica was described as being "the world's poorest president" due to his austere lifestyle and his donation of around 90 percent of his US$12,000 monthly salary to charities that support low-income individuals and small entrepreneurs. He was an outspoken critic of capitalism's focus on stockpiling material possessions which do not contribute to human happiness.

Early life and education

José Alberto Mujica Cordano was born on 20 May 1935 in the Paso de la Arena neighbourhood of Montevideo to Demetrio Mujica Terra and Lucy Cordano Giorello. Demetrio was a descendant of a Spanish Basque family who arrived in Uruguay in 1842. Through his paternal grandmother, Mujica is a distant relative of several prominent Uruguayan politicians, including Gabriel Terra, who served as the country's 26th president between 1931 and 1938. Demetrio's parents owned several agricultural properties, which were used as training grounds for soldiers to combat the uprisings led by revolutionary leader Aparicio Saravia. A farmer by profession, Demetrio went bankrupt shortly before his death in 1940 when José was five years old. Lucy was born in Carmelo to impoverished Italian immigrants from Liguria, with origins in the municipality of Favale di Malvaro in the former province of Genoa. After she was born, her parents had bought 2 hectares (4.9 acres) in Colonia Estrella, a small town in the Colonia Department, to cultivate vineyards. Her father was an active member of the National Party and a follower of Herrerism, and he was selected on several occasions as an alderman for Colonia and became closely acquainted with Luis Alberto de Herrera.

After completing his primary and secondary studies, Mujica enrolled at the Alfredo Vásquez Acevedo Institute for his undergraduate studies, but did not finish. From 13 to 17, he was a cycler for several clubs in different categories.

Mujica's maternal uncle, Ángel Cordano, was a member of the National Party and had a prominent influence on Mujica's political formation. In 1956, Mujica met politician Enrique Erro through his mother, who was a militant in the same sector. From that point on, Mujica began to actively support the National Party, eventually becoming its general secretary.

The National Party won most of the seats in the senate during the 1958 general election, upon which Erro was appointed Minister of Labor, serving from 1959 to 1960, with Mujica accompanying him, although he did not become an official in the ministry. In 1962, both Erro and Mujica left the National Party to create the Unión Popular, a left-wing party, in collaboration with the Socialist Party. In the 1962 election, they nominated Emilio Frugoni as their candidate for president, but lost decisively receiving only 2.3% of the total votes.

Guerrilla

In the mid-1960s, Mujica joined the newly formed MLN-Tupamaros movement, a far-left armed political group inspired by the Cuban Revolution. He participated in the brief 1969 takeover of Pando, a town close to Montevideo, leading one of six squads assaulting strategic points in the city. Mujica's team was charged with taking over the telephone exchange and was the only one to complete the operation without any mishaps. In March 1970 Mujica was seriously injured while resisting arrest at a Montevideo bar; he injured two policemen and was in turn shot six times. The surgeon on call at the hospital saved his life. Tupamaros claimed that the surgeon was secretly Tupamaro and that is why his life was saved. In reality the doctor was simply following ordinary medical ethics. At the time, the president of Uruguay was the controversial Jorge Pacheco Areco, who had suspended certain constitutional guarantees in response to MLN and Communist unrest.

Mujica was captured by the authorities four times. He was among the more than 100 Tupamaros who escaped Punta Carretas Prison in September 1971 by digging a tunnel from inside the prison that led to the living room of a nearby home. Mujica was re-captured less than a month after escaping, but escaped Punta Carretas once more in April 1972. On that occasion he and about a dozen other escapees fled riding improvised wheeled planks down the tunnel dug by Tupamaros from outside the prison. He was re-apprehended for the last time in 1972, unable to resist arrest. In the months that followed, the country underwent the military coup of 1973. In the meantime, Mujica and eight other Tupamaros were especially chosen to remain under military custody and in squalid conditions. In all, he spent 13 years in captivity. During the 1970s and 1980s, this included being confined to the bottom of an old, emptied horse-watering trough for more than two years. During his time in prison, Mujica had a number of health problems, particularly mental issues. Although his two closest cellmates, Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro and Mauricio Rosencof, often managed to communicate with each other, they rarely managed to bring Mujica into the conversation. According to Mujica himself, at the time he was experiencing auditory hallucinations and related forms of paranoia.

In 1985 after constitutional democracy was restored, Mujica was freed under an amnesty law that covered political and related military crimes committed since 1962. Several years after the restoration of democracy, Mujica and many Tupamaros joined other left-wing organizations to create the Movement of Popular Participation (MPP), a political party which was accepted within the Broad Front coalition.

Early career and 2009 presidential campaign

In the 1994 general elections, Mujica was elected deputy and in the elections of 1999 he was elected senator. Due in part to Mujica's charisma, the MPP continued to grow in popularity and votes, and by 2004, it had become the largest faction within the Broad Front. In the elections of that year, Mujica was re-elected to the Senate, and the MPP obtained over 300,000 votes, thus consolidating its position as the top political force within the coalition and a major force behind the victory of presidential candidate Tabaré Vázquez. On 1 March 2005, Vázquez designated Mujica as the Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (Mujica's own professional background was in the agricultural sector). Upon becoming minister, Mujica resigned his position as senator. He held this position until a cabinet change in 2008, when he resigned and was replaced by Ernesto Agazzi. Mujica then returned to his seat in the Senate.

2009 presidential campaign

Even though President Vázquez favored his Finance Minister Danilo Astori as the presidential candidate of the then-unified Broad Front to succeed him in 2010, Mujica's broad appeal and growing support within the party posed a challenge to the president. On 14 December 2008, a special party convention proclaimed Mujica as the official candidate of the Broad Front for the 2009 primary elections, but four more precandidates were allowed to participate, including Astori. On 28 June 2009, Mujica won the primary elections to become the presidential candidate of the Broad Front for the 2009 presidential election. After that, Astori agreed to be his running mate. Their campaign was centered on the concept of continuing and deepening the policies of the highly popular administration of Vázquez, using the slogan Un gobierno honrado, un país de primera ("An honorable government, a first-class country") – indirectly referencing cases of administrative corruption within the former government of the major opposition candidate, conservative Luis Alberto Lacalle. During the campaign, Mujica distanced himself from the governing style of presidents like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela or Evo Morales of Bolivia, claiming the center-left governments of Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Chilean socialist Michelle Bachelet as regional examples upon which he would model his administration. Known for his informal style of dress, Mujica donned a suit (without a tie) for some stops in the presidential campaign, notably during visits to regional heads of state.