José “Pepe” Mujica didn’t have a lot use for Uruguay’s three-story presidential residence, with its chandeliers, elevator, marble staircase and Louis XV furnishings.
“It’s crap,” he informed me final yr. “They need to make it a highschool.”
So when he grew to become president of his small South American nation in 2010, Mr. Mujica determined he would commute from his residence: a cluttered, three-room shack the scale of a studio condo, filled with a wooden range, overstuffed bookcases and jars of pickling greens.
Earlier than his death on Tuesday, Mr. Mujica lived there for many years with his lifelong partner, Lucía Topolansky — herself a former vp — and their three-legged canine, Manuela. They farmed chrysanthemums to promote in native markets and drove their sky blue 1987 Volkswagen Beetle to their favourite tango bars.
It was a political masterstroke. His presidency was, by many coverage measures, unremarkable. However his austere way of life made him revered by many Uruguayans for dwelling like them, whereas giving him a platform within the worldwide press to warn that greed was eroding society. He insisted it was really how he wished to stay, however he additionally acknowledged that it served as an example that politicians had lengthy had it too good.
“We’ve got executed the whole lot doable to make the presidency much less honored,” Mr. Mujica informed my New York Occasions predecessor in South America, Simon Romero, in 2013, sharing with him a gourd of mate, the natural drink handed forwards and backwards over dialog on this a part of the world.
I visited Mr. Mujica at his similar residence final yr. He was bundled in a winter coat and wool hat in entrance of a wooden range, frail and hardly capable of eat on account of radiation remedy for a tumor in his esophagus. However dealing with a journalist who may unfold his concepts to the world for maybe one of many closing occasions, he held courtroom for almost two hours, expounding on how you can discover function and wonder in life and the way, he informed me unprompted, “humanity, because it’s going, is doomed.”
He additionally defined why he believed that the trimmings of elected workplace — the palaces, the servants, the luxury jets — had been the alternative of what democracy was imagined to be about.
“The cultural remnants of feudalism stay — contained in the republic. The purple carpet, the bugles when the feudal lord got here out of the fortress onto the bridge. All that is still,” he mentioned. “The president likes to be praised.”
He recalled a go to to Germany whereas he was president. “They put me in a Mercedes-Benz. The door weighed about 3,000 kilos. They put 40 bikes in entrance and one other 40 in again,” he mentioned. “I used to be ashamed.”
The worldwide press nicknamed him the world’s “poorest president,” noting his web price was $1,800 when he took workplace. Mr. Mujica detested the moniker and infrequently quoted the Roman court-philosopher Seneca: “It’s not the person who has too little, however the man who craves extra, that’s poor.”
It will be exhausting to discover a extra placing distinction to President Trump, who has made dwelling a gilded life central to his id. In our interview, three months earlier than the election, Mr. Mujica repeatedly introduced up Mr. Trump. “It looks as if a lie — a rustic like america having a candidate like Trump,” he mentioned. “Democracy on the peak of a doormat.”
Mr. Mujica entered politics within the Sixties as a bank-robbing leftist guerrilla. His group, the Tupamaros, gained notoriety for his or her violence. Mr. Mujica mentioned they tried to keep away from harming civilians, however added that the leftist battle typically required power.
After escaping jail twice, he was imprisoned for 14 years below Uruguay’s army dictatorship, a lot of his sentence spent in solitary confinement. Trapped in a gap within the floor, he mentioned, he befriended rats and a small frog to outlive psychologically.
He was launched as Uruguay re-established democracy and was finally elected to Congress, drawing consideration for displaying as much as work on a Vespa. In 2009, voters made him president of the nation of three.3 million.
Underneath Mr. Mujica, Uruguay decriminalized abortion, legalized same-sex marriage, pushed into renewable energy and have become the primary nation to fully legalize marijuana. But lots of his objectives, like considerably lowering inequality and bettering training, fell sufferer to the realities of politics.
However as information of his demise unfold on Tuesday, individuals internationally remembered him not for his insurance policies. It was his humility that was his legacy.
Earlier this yr, his political protégé, a former historical past instructor named Yamandú Orsi, took workplace as Uruguay’s new president. He has commuted to work from his household residence, and Uruguay’s presidential mansion has principally remained empty.
