José “Pepe” Mujica did not have much use for Uruguay’s three-story presidential residence, with its chandeliers, elevator, marble staircase and Louis XV furniture.
“It’s crap,” he told me last year. “They should make it a high school.”
So when he became president of his small South American nation in 2010, Mr. Mujica decided he would commute from his home: a cluttered, three-room shack the size of a studio apartment, crammed with a wood stove, overstuffed bookcases and jars of pickling vegetables.
Before his death on Tuesday, Mr. Mujica lived there for decades with his lifelong partner, Lucía Topolansky — herself a former vice president — and their three-legged dog, Manuela. They farmed chrysanthemums to sell in local markets and drove their sky blue 1987 Volkswagen Beetle to their favorite tango bars.
There was no reason, he said, that a new job should require a move.
That meant that, after sitting side-by-side with Barack Obama in the Oval Office or lecturing world leaders on the dangers of capitalism at the United Nations, Mr. Mujica would fly home in coach to a life resembling that of a poor farmer.
José Mujica and his lifelong partner, Lucía Topolansky, at home last year. Ms. Topolansky served as a vice president of Uruguay.Credit…Dado Galdieri for The New York Times
It was a political masterstroke. His presidency was, by many policy measures, unremarkable. But his austere lifestyle made him revered by many Uruguayans for living like them, while giving him a platform in the international press to warn that greed was eroding society. He insisted it was truly how he wanted to live, but he also recognized that it served to illustrate that politicians had long had it too good.