José Mujica, Leftist President of Uruguay Known for Humility, Dies at 89 • Serving from 2010 to 2015, he refused to accept a presidential salary or live on a presidential estate as he sought to improve the lives of ordinary citizens.

José Mujica, a former president of Uruguay, guerrilla fighter and stalwart of leftist leadership in Latin America, died on Tuesday. He was 89.

President Yamandú Orsi announced the death in a statement, which did not say where Mr. Mujica died or cite the cause. Mr. Mujica announced he had esophageal cancer in April 2024. He lived in the rural outskirts of Montevideo, the capital.

“President, comrade, mentor, leader. We’ll miss you,” Mr. Orsi wrote.

Known as Pepe, Mr. Mujica was elected president in 2009 at the age of 74 as a generation of leftist Latin American governments were losing their populist luster. Though he had a reputation as a savvy leader of Uruguay’s progressive coalition, his informal governing style baffled the establishment.

A self-described philosophical anarchist, he was known for his brash charisma, his skepticism of capitalism’s excesses, his modest way of life and his intent to inject purpose and humility into government during a time when Uruguay’s left was ascendant.

Although his ambitions were often bigger than his ability to deliver on policy promises, the progressive legislation that his administration did pass earned global praise and paved the way for a leftist ally to succeed him.

A flower farmer by trade, Mr. Mujica championed rural communities and was a consummate defender of liberal ideals. Believing world leaders should dispense with the trappings of power, he and his wife, Lucía Topolansky, a senator at the time, opted to live in a single-story home on a plot of farmland instead of on a staffed presidential estate. He sometimes drove to work in his pale blue 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.

On his first day as president, Mr. Mujica announced that he would give away most of his salary to help build housing for Uruguay’s neglected towns. Called the “world’s poorest president,” he nevertheless saw his standing differently. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor,” he told The New York Times in 2013, quoting the Roman philosopher Seneca.

Under Mr. Mujica, who served from 2010 to 2015, Uruguay become the second country in Latin America to decriminalize abortion and legalize gay marriage, and the first country in the world to legalize and fully regulate marijuana. His speech on the ills of unchecked consumerism were nearly as sensational as his startlingly casual appearance: tieless and disheveled, often as he tended to his chrysanthemum fields with his wife and their three-legged dog, Manuela.

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Additional reading:

• From a Tin-Roof Shack, Pepe Mujica Removed the Pomp From Politics • The former Uruguayan president, who died on Tuesday, showed the value in world leaders living like their constituents. (New York Times)