Pepe Mujica, the man who taught the world that politics is not just about personal interest.

It's not easy to avoid rhetoric when discussing a unique figure like José Pepe Mujica, who passed away on May 13, 2025. But let's first focus on the facts. His long biography tells the story of four lives: the guerrilla fighter, the prisoner, the president, and the philosopher. With a single thread, truly rare today in the behavior of the world's ruling classes: a simple and consistent obsession with doing something for others, with contributing to the utopia of making the world a little less unjust. With concrete choices and decisions.

Mujica's early life began in Uruguay on May 20, 1935, when he was born to a landowner father who had lost his entire marriage and a peasant mother. More than studying, he enjoyed farming and was drawn to politics, eventually joining the ranks of the National Liberation Movement, the Tupamaros, committed to fighting the country's regime, sometimes through violent and subversive actions. This choice cost him 13 years in prison, and by the time he was released, Mujica was a mature fifty-year-old, aware of his mistakes and ready to reject, for the future, any shortcut tainted by violence.

And so comes the third life: free from dictatorship and at peace with the Tupamaros, Uruguay discovers democracy in Mujica, who in the meantime had resumed farming. He becomes a member of parliament, with a style that is very attractive, especially to young people, for its simplicity, modesty, and stubbornness. Thus, on March 1, 2010, the former Tupamaro guerrilla and ex-convict becomes president of Uruguay and immediately makes a very significant symbolic gesture. He donates 90 percent of his salary to social causes and continues to live on his farm, getting around in an old 1987 Volkswagen.

In 2015, his final life began, that of a philosopher: Mujica renounced all public office to make room for the new generations, and limited himself to giving advice to those who came to his farm to listen to him. Knowing I'm meeting a man who has never lost his passion for working and thinking for others.

The key ideas of José Pepe Mujica

A concentration of his history and his political thought is contained in the book A black sheep in power (Lumi publishing group), written by journalists Andrés Danza and Ernesto Tulbovitz. Here are some of Mujica's most incisive and useful statements.

• Future. "Life is the future, not the past. This doesn't mean the past doesn't exist. The past exists, but what matters is the future. This is what gives you the ability to forget, or rather, to move beyond, what you've experienced."
• The neighborhood bars. "I still go to the bars in my neighborhood and keep the same friends I had before. Most people call me 'Pepe,' not 'President.' Luckily."
• Poor people. "It's not just those who live in poverty. Those who only chase money are also poor, because they live like prisoners."
• Common sense. "One of the main sources of knowledge, even for a politician, is common sense. If you put ideology above reality, then reality suddenly hits you like a punch and knocks you to the ground. I must fight to improve people's lives in today's concrete reality, and not doing so is immoral."
• Politics. "A daily struggle for everyone's happiness. And as politicians, we must live as the majority of people do, not as a minority."
• The power. «It shows people for who they really are.»
• The defeats. "In life you are defeated most of the time; but you have to get up and continue."
• To accumulate. “Obsessively accumulating money, possessions, and power is crazy.”