Former Uruguayan President José “Pepe” Mujica died on Tuesday. He was 89.
Mujica, a farmer, was a member of Tupamaros Nationwide Liberation Motion, a leftist guerrilla group that carried out financial institution robberies and bombings and kidnapped politicians and businessmen within the South American nation in the course of the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies.
Mujica spent practically 15 years in jail. The proper-wing army dictatorship that ruled Uruguay from 1973-1985 tortured him and held him in solitary confinement for a decade.
Mujica in 1989 joined the Motion of Fashionable Participation, a celebration that’s a part of the Broad Entrance, a leftist political coalition. Mujica was Uruguay’s president from 2010-2015.
Legal guidelines that prolonged marriage rights to same-sex {couples} and legalized abortion took impact in 2013 and 2012 respectively. Mujica in 2013 additionally signed a legislation that legalized leisure marijuana in Uruguay.
Mujica earlier this yr introduced he wouldn’t endure additional therapy for esophagus most cancers that had unfold to his liver. The AP notes he died in his small home exterior of Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.
“With profound ache we introduced that our buddy Pepe Mujica has died,” stated Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi, who at present leads the Broad Entrance, on X. “President, activist, information, and chief. We’re going to miss you very a lot, expensive previous man. Thanks for all the pieces that you simply gave us and in your profound love in your individuals.”
Esteban Paulón, a homosexual congressman in neighboring Argentina, celebrated Mujica as a “information” for “Latin American progressivism.”
“He made humility, honesty and austerity his hallmarks,” stated Paulón on social media.
