Posted on 05/15/2025 11:34:44 AM PDT by Ennis85
José Mujica, a member of a Marxist rebel group that terrorized Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s who later became a mainstream politician and one of his country’s most venerated presidents, died May 13 at his home in Rincón de Cerro, in the rural outskirts of Montevideo. He was 89.
Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi, a protégé of the former leader, announced the death. Mr. Mujica said in April 2024 that he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and that any treatment with chemotherapy and surgery would be complicated by an autoimmune disease he also had.
Mr. Mujica, widely known as “Pepe,” had been a mid-ranking urban guerrilla with the Tupamaros, a group that conducted a bombing and kidnapping campaign to overthrow Uruguay’s floundering civilian government. Through bitter experience — Mr. Mujica was nearly killed in a shootout and was tortured during 14 years in prison — he learned to reject armed revolution and embrace gradual progress.
“I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white,” Mr. Mujica said in a 2009 speech while campaigning for the presidency. “I have repented.”
After winning the election, he told the British newspaper the Guardian: “I need capitalism to work … to attend to the serious problems we have. Trying to overcome it all too abruptly condemns the people you are fighting for to suffering, so that instead of more bread, you have less bread.”
As president from 2010 to 2015, Mr. Mujica oversaw an economic boom as well as a reduction in poverty and the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and marijuana. His accomplishments made him one of the most successful leaders during the “pink tide,” the wave of left-wing presidents elected across Latin America in the early 21st century
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and marijuana. “
And they think this is a good thing.
““Same-sex marriage, please, it’s older than the world.””
News to me...
He’s a good Communist now.
There was a President of Venezuela for about a year in the 1990s who had Mujica as part of his name (it was his mother’s maiden name). Venezuela is a long way from Uruguay so the two men may not have been related.
Former Uruguayan President Jose Mujica blasts the behavior of six ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees
Associated Press ^ | April 5, 2016 | AP
Posted on 4/7/2016, 10:17:20 PM by OddLane
Uruguay’s former president says the conduct of six former Guantanamo Bay detainees resettled in the South American nation has been “abysmal” and has hurt efforts to resettle others.
Former President Jose Mujica, who oversaw the resettlement in late 2014, made the comments Tuesday to La Republica newspaper.
Mujica, now a senator, says the men’s behavior discouraged other Latin American countries that were considering taking in former detainees...
(Several of those detainees escaped Uruguay later)
KGB Col. Vadim Kotchergine opened a “chain of training camps” in western Cuba in 1966.[1] These camps trained guerrillas and terrorists including individuals from Al Fatah, the Sandinistas, El Salvador’s FMLF, the Tupamaros, and the Weather Underground.[2] One of the most famous graduates of the Cuban camps was Illich Ramirez Sanchez, aka “Carlos the Jackal”.[3]...
I vacationed with family in Punta del Este Uruguay in the sixties, a very different country then. Beautiful beaches and Cuban cigars!
Born in 1935. Did not marry until 2004, to a woman revolutionary he lived with for many years.
Never had children. Never built any thing substantial, never ran a business.
In other words, never had any skin in the game.
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