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On May 13, Jos\u00e9 Alberto \u201cPepe\u201d Mujica Cordano, who served as president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015, died of cancer<\/a> at his farmhouse in\u00a0Rinc\u00f3n del Cerro\u00a0outside the capital city of Montevideo.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve never heard of Mujica, that\u2019s not surprising. Uruguay is a small nation of only 3.5 million people, squeezed between the comparatively behemoth countries of Brazil and Argentina. The country holds little political power within South America. Its major exports are beef, soy, and some of the best<\/a> professional soccer players in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n But for a brief period after his election, Mujica was an international celebrity, the subject<\/a> of glowing<\/a> profiles<\/a> by journalists and filmmakers<\/a> from around the world. One writer for The New Republic <\/em>even described<\/a> the attention that surrounded him as a \u201cglobal Mujica cult.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs chief of state and representative of Uruguay to the world, he was extraordinary,\u201d says Adolfo Garc\u00e9, professor of political science at the University of the Republic in Montevideo. \u201cWhen he was president, the world talked about Uruguay not only because of soccer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In some ways, Mujica\u2019s international notoriety was understandable. It is easier to idealize political leaders who are not your own, distanced from the day-to-day compromises that tarnish even the most compelling political figures. But Mujica drew acclaim by behaving in a way that was, well, un-presidential. He refused to move into the presidential residence in the capital city of Montevideo. He preferred his small farmhouse at the end of a dirt road outside of town, surrounded by poor and working-class neighbors. His selected mode of transportation was not a stately black Mercedes, but a light blue Volkswagen Beetle that he drove<\/a> to the presidential office each day. He gave away<\/a> 90 percent of his presidential salary to charity causes and small entrepreneurs. The pomp and ceremony of high office was abandoned, as well as the usual retinue of fawning political aides.\u00a0<\/p>\n In his youth, Mujica was a Marxist revolutionary. Inspired by Argentinian Ernesto \u201cChe\u201d Guevara and the Cuban revolution, Mujica and his revolutionary colleagues called themselves Tupamaros<\/em>, after the eighteenth-century Peruvian revolutionary T\u00fapac Amaru II<\/a>. The group robbed banks, bombed government buildings, and kidnapped and killed people. Garc\u00e9 describes the Tupamaros <\/em>as a \u201ccrazy enterprise\u201d that contributed to Uruguay\u2019s 1973 military coup d\u2019\u00e9tat.<\/p>\n Mujica was convicted<\/a> in 1971 of killing a policeman\u2014a charge he denied\u2014and spent nearly fifteen years in prison during the military dictatorship that ruled Uruguay between 1973 and 1985. He spent<\/a> ten of those years in solitary confinement. After being released from prison in 1985, he turned from revolution to democracy, helping to expand a broad leftwing political coalition called the Frente Amplio<\/em>, or \u201cBroad Front\u201d in English.<\/em><\/p>\n In 2015, not long after Mujica\u2019s presidential term ended, I drove to his small farm with my Uruguayan wife and a video camera. I had been a union organizer for several years, and had documented and written about construction workers for two decades. I wanted to talk to Mujica about why he loved farming and working with his hands, and what was lost when a society diminishes the importance of what we call \u201cmanual labor.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There were no signs along the dirt road leading to his home that read \u201cThis way to the former president\u2019s house<\/em>.\u201d Driving there, I thought about how difficult it would be to arrange a conversation at the home of any former U.S. President.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n After stopping to ask a neighbor where \u201cEl Pepe\u201d\u2014Mujica\u2019s nickname\u2014lived, we were directed to a small dirt lane where a stop sign stood about fifty yards from a tiny makeshift guard shack. There, a guard named Turco stood, wearing a dark blue T-shirt, cargo pants, and alpargatas<\/em>\u2014a casual shoe associated with gauchos or rural workers. He smiled as he walked towards our car. He carried a thermos tucked under one arm, as well as a small round cup full of yerba mate, Uruguay\u2019s national drink.<\/p>\n We walked to Turco\u2019s guard house just across from Mujica\u2019s cement-walled home topped by a light green corrugated aluminum roof. Grass, plants, dense shrubbery, and radiant flowers grew wildly in the former president\u2019s front yard. The famous blue Beetle was parked snugly in a small garage at the side of the house.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As we set up the camera and waited for Mujica to arrive, I noticed a small pistol placed haphazardly on the wooden shelf, inadvertently pointed towards the chair I was provided for the interview. Given Mujica\u2019s politics and his radical past, he certainly still had bitter enemies in Uruguay, but it was hard for me to imagine someone making a serious effort to harm him.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mujica walked into the shed, sat down on a stool, rolled a cigarette, and lit it. He asked Turco to let him know if his wife Luc\u00eda Topolansky\u2014also a former Tupamaro<\/em> rebel and the former vice president of Uruguay\u2014might be approaching the shed. She didn\u2019t approve of him smoking. Between drags he glanced out the window towards his house.\u00a0<\/p>\n We talked for an hour about using tools, theories of history, technology, and the growth of consumerism, his dark eyes narrowing as he drilled down on his ideas. Raising his hands in front of his face as he spoke, Mujica suggested that using your hands in work has a \u201cprofound impact on the way we reason about the world around us,\u201d and that the way that human hands evolved allowed trades and crafts and culture to develop. When I brought up the writer Matthew Crawford, who has written about the \u201ccognitive richness\u201d required in the skilled trades, Mujica agreed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I talk to people,\u201d he said, \u201cI like to shake their hands, because their hands tell me something about their social position.\u201d He smiled when pointing out that there are brilliant intellectuals who are unable to change a car tire. He added, \u201cManual ability should be a component in education, and it is a disaster for society when this is lost.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Mujica also spoke about the \u201cpathology\u201d of growing worldwide inequality that has left so many living on the margins of society. He evoked social-democratic Sweden rather than his once beloved Cuba. \u201cWith a more equal distribution of wealth, there are fewer people who are going to become criminals,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is not a coincidence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Mujica spoke with the passion of the self-educated philosopher at a youthful debating club. \u201cWhat is the sense of an unconscionable accumulation of wealth?\u201d he mused. \u201cNo one can buy more than the one life we have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At a United Nations gathering in 2013, he lectured<\/a> the delegates, telling them that the \u201cmarket god . . . organizes our economy, our politics, our habits, our lives . . . . It seems we have been born only to consume.\u201d<\/p>\n During his time in office, Mujica was sometimes criticized for talking about big ideas while lacking the personal or political shrewdness needed to turn them into effective legislation. Even some former allies suggested<\/a> he was a \u201cfil\u00f3sofo de la barra<\/em>\u201d\u2014a \u201cbar philosopher\u201d who regales people with grand agendas but then goes home to sleep it off.\u00a0<\/p>\n Uruguayan journalist Lucas Silva sees it differently. \u201cI think you can be a kind of philosopher and an intelligent politician at the same time, and with Mujica, both things are true,\u201d he tells me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As president, Mujica wasn\u2019t much of a hard-line socialist, a fact that disappointed his more orthodox leftwing detractors. He invited business leaders to invest in Uruguay, touting the country\u2019s highly educated workforce. No major industry was taken over by the state or by worker\u2019s committees. While he presided over a healthy economy and a reduction in poverty<\/a>, his most memorable achievements were in social policy. Gay marriage and abortion were both<\/a> legalized<\/a> during his term, as was the sale and use<\/a> of marijuana through a deeply controversial law.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As an outsider, I don\u2019t know what Mujica\u2019s long-term legacy will be in Uruguay, one of the most stable democracies in South America. Uruguay is also, like most democratic countries, increasingly polarized between left-leaning and right-leaning political factions. While neighboring Argentina is experimenting<\/a> with the libertarian capitalism of Javier Milei, Mujica\u2019s Broad Front party won back<\/a> the presidency in last November\u2019s Uruguayan elections after five years of conservative government under Luis Lacalle Pou.\u00a0<\/p>\n Garc\u00e9 and Silva both believe that Mujica\u2019s legacy is the attention he gained for Uruguay on the global stage. \u201cHis legacy will certainly not be his early life as a guerrilla fighter,\u201d Garc\u00e9 said. \u201cHe was an authentic politician who did not seek money or prestige or power, but wanted to serve the people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n If his youthful hero Che was burdened with a \u201cfrightening abstract hatred,\u201d according to<\/a> writer<\/a> Alma Guillermoprieto, Mujica insisted that carrying around resentment of others was unproductive. \u201cHatred doesn\u2019t make any sense. It\u2019s a poison,\u201d he told<\/a> The Guardian<\/em> in 2014. \u201cYou can\u2019t spend life trying to collect debts no one is going to pay. Life is tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite his inability to dramatically transform capitalism or bring global capital to heel, Mujica is deeply mourned<\/a> in the poorest sections of Montevideo and among the broad political movement he helped to create. People around the world are now pausing to remember the unconventional Uruguayan president who spoke like a philosopher, refused the trappings of power, and rejected the chimera of endless consumption.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople want to be rich and mirror their peers which is understandable,\u201d he once told me. \u201cThese values are not imposed by armies or brute force, but have become the common thinking that the mass media promotes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When I look at my own country and beyond, I see the resurgence of authoritarianism fueled by anger, resentment, and fear. I cannot know all of the motivations of Mujica\u2019s supporters. I only know that in the brief time I spent exchanging ideas with him, I felt like I was talking to a unique politician who offered a hopeful solution to those impulses.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n ————-\u00a0<\/p>\n A version of this article previously <\/em>appeared<\/em><\/a> on the website of the International Democracy Community. You can also view a portion of Candaele\u2019s <\/em>interview<\/em><\/a> with Mujica on YouTube.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On May 13, Jos\u00e9 Alberto \u201cPepe\u201d Mujica Cordano, who served as president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015, died of cancer at his farmhouse in\u00a0Rinc\u00f3n del Cerro\u00a0outside the capital city of Montevideo. If you\u2019ve never heard of Mujica, that\u2019s not surprising. Uruguay is a small nation of only 3.5 million people, squeezed between the comparatively […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[40917,16930,17780,90204,19944,30225,89944],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-246160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-afternoon","tag-dispatches","tag-jose","tag-kelly-candaele","tag-latin-america","tag-mujica","tag-south-america"],"yoast_head":"\n