José Mujica

Uruguayan guerrilla fighter and politician

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Lived 1935–2025, aged 90

Wikipedia
93 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1935–2025
Aged 90
Known for
El Pepe: A Supreme Life
2019

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

A former guerrilla who spent 14 years in prison under dictatorship, then became president and gave away 90 percent of his salary. Mujica governed Uruguay from a farmhouse, wore old sweaters to summits, and called capitalism a trap that buries happiness under things no one needs.

Biography

About

José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano was born 20 May 1935 in Uruguay. He joined the Tupamaros, a revolutionary guerrilla movement, and was tortured and imprisoned for 14 years during the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. After democracy returned, he entered politics with the Broad Front coalition, serving as minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008, then as a senator. He won the 2009 presidential election and took office 1 March 2010. His administration legalized marijuana, abortion, and same-sex marriage, and strengthened trade unions and minimum wages. He…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from José Mujica

José Mujica

said2022

That NATO advance makes no sense. It is going to lead us again to a division of the world.

— Referring to 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Quoted in José Mujica habla así de Putin y augura qué va a pasar: alucinan hasta los

José Mujica

said3 Apr 2015

Anyone who looks at a map to say that Venezuela could be a threat has to be quite mad. Venezuelans have a marvelous Constitution – the most audacious in all of Latin America.

— Quoted in Why is the US So Frightened of Venezuela?, Maria Paez Victor, CounterPunch (3 April 2015)

José Mujica

said8 Dec 2014

That (Guantanamo Bay detention camp) isn’t a prison.

— Quoted in U.S. Transfers 6 Guantánamo Prisoners to Uruguay, Democracy Now! (8 December 2014)

José Mujica

said21 Aug 2014

Liberalism has the idea that democracy is its invention, that liberalism had to come about for democracy to exist...

— Quoted in: A conversation with President José Mujica, M.R. and H.C. Montevideo, The Economist , (21 August 2014)

José Mujica

said21 Aug 2014

Bourgeois democracy: I defend it and I criticise it. What do I criticise? That it promises a degree of equality that it does not fulfill in practice..

— Quoted in: A conversation with President José Mujica, M.R. and H.C. Montevideo, The Economist , (21 August 2014)

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