José Mujica obituary: idiosyncratic president of Uruguay

Before José Mujica became president of Uruguay in 2010 he was best known as a former guerrilla leader who drove a battered 1987 powder-blue Volkswagen Beetle, grew chrysanthemums and lived in a dilapidated single-storey farmhouse 20 minutes outside Montevideo with his wife, also a former revolutionary, and Manuela, their three-legged yappy black mongrel.

Little changed in office. Known as “the most humble president in the world”, Mujica turned the 100-year-old Estévez presidential palace into a museum, crawled to work in his Beetle and donated 90 per cent of his £7,100-a-month salary to social projects. “I am rich here,” he told a journalist, tapping his chest as he brought out two tatty cushions and plonked them on a pair of rusty garden chairs. Those who considered

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