The News
Former Uruguayan President José Mujica, who garnered widespread acclaim for his remarkable personal austerity, died aged 89.
Mujica rose to prominence for co-founding a Marxist-Leninist guerilla movement that carried out kidnappings and assassinations, and spent more than a decade in prison during Uruguay’s dictatorship, enshrining himself as a dominant figure on the Latin American left.
Yet it was his time as president that won him the most attention abroad: Mujica refused to live in Montevideo’s presidential palace, instead residing in a small farmhouse, commuting in a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle, and donating most of his salary to charity.
He was, El País said, “a rare kind of leader, who… voiced warnings tinged with pessimism, yet never lost faith in humanity.”