Uruguay’s late Jose Mujica was famously poor, like Mahatma Gandhi

Uruguay doesn’t often come across most people’s radar. But it should have.

The small South American country once had the wisdom to elect as its president a man with an instinctive humility about his greatness, José Mujica.

When Mujica passed, a light went out of the world. Now that he is gone, it’s worth remembering what was so remarkable about him.

I’ve been fascinated by Mujica for years, ever since I was based in Haiti in 2013.

Here are two blogs I wrote back then mentioning Mujica. They are from January 2014 and December 2013.

One quotes The Guardian’s report on Mujica as a man who has “forsworn a state palace in favour of a farmhouse, donates the vast bulk of his salary to social projects, flies economy class and drives an old Volkswagen Beetle”.

Mujica was famously poor, in the mould of Mahatma Gandhi, who always travelled third class on the train.

For Mujica it was about living as president in his own one-room house, insisting on just two plainclothes officers for security, flying economy class, declaring a net worth of a few thousand dollars and giving 90 per cent of his salary away to good works.

After he left office he stayed on where he was and continued to grow chrysanthemums.

By the end of tenure as president, Mujica’s popularity in Uruguay was nearly 70 per cent. With his trademark candour, he expressed astonishment at the way the world fastened on his modest lifestyle:

“So what it is that catches the world’s attention? That I live with very little, a simple house, that I drive around in an old car? Then this world is crazy because it’s surprised by [what is] normal,” he reflected before leaving office.

Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com