In Colombia, the question "power for what?" is engraved in political history as a symbol of an ethical vision of leadership. It was uttered by Darío Echandía, a Liberal leader and former president of Tolima, as a reminder that power is not exercised to dominate, but to serve.

Few figures in Latin America embodied this idea more authentically than José "Pepe" Mujica, former president of Uruguay, who died on Tuesday at the age of 89. His life was a lesson in coherence, marked by the renunciation of the privileges of power and a firm conviction that politics should be at the service of others, not of personal ego.

Mujica was a guerrilla fighter, prisoner, legislator, minister, president and farmer. But, above all, he was a simple man, faithful to his farm on the outskirts of Montevideo, to his life partner Lucía Topolansky and to his famous Volkswagen Beetle. He refused to move into the presidential residence, lived with his three-legged dog and donated a large part of his salary.

From jail to the Palace

In the 1960s, Mujica co-founded the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional-Tupamaros, a Marxist-inspired urban guerrilla movement that began by stealing from the rich to redistribute to the poor, but later escalated into kidnappings, bombings and armed confrontations.

He was arrested, shot several times, escaped from prison and was recaptured. He spent all the years of the Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985) in prison, in extreme conditions of isolation, torture and physical deterioration. According to his own account:

"Being tied up for six months with wire, with his hands behind his back. Leaving my body for not being able to hold on in a truck (...) Being two years without being taken to bathe and having to bathe with a cup of water and a handkerchief."

When he was free, he turned to politics. He founded the Movement for Popular Participation (MPP) in 1989, was elected deputy, then senator and Minister of Livestock. In 2010 he assumed the presidency, a position he held until 2015.

Reforms, austerity and rebellion

During his mandate he promoted laws that marked history: legalization of abortion, equal marriage and cannabis, in a model of unprecedented state regulation.

His sober style contrasted with the traditional forms of power. In 2012, in an interview with AFP, he said:

"I am not a poor president. I do not live with poverty, I live with austerity, with renunciation. I need little to live."

And in 2014 he added in his radio audition:

"They have made us famous as a poor president (...) We are not poor, we are sober (...) If I have too much, I have to waste an awful lot of time attending to those things. If I have just enough, I live light on baggage and I have the most time left".

He was also a critical voice of the global development model. At the UN, he said:

"The great crisis is not ecological, it is political (...). We have to realize that the water crisis and the aggression to the environment is not the cause. The cause is the model of civilization we have set up."

And later he questioned consumerism: "We razed the real jungles and implanted anonymous concrete jungles. We confront sedentary lifestyles with walkers; insomnia, with pills; loneliness, with electronics."

An ethics of power

Mujica can be accused of mistakes in public management and controversial decisions. But even his critics recognize that he never used power for personal gain, nor to silence his opponents, nor to cling to office.

This differentiates him -without needing to name names- from certain current leaders who hold on to power by appealing to fear, division and theatricality, even when this puts institutional stability at risk.

Mujica, on the other hand, retired in time. In 2020 he gave up his seat in the Senate for health reasons, but continued to militate. Even with the cancer he was diagnosed with in 2024, he campaigned for his political heir, Yamandú Orsi, until his last days.

In January of this year, he said it bluntly: "My cycle is over. Honestly, I'm dying. The warrior is entitled to his rest."

He asked to be buried in his farm, next to his dog. He had no children, but he leaves behind ideas, values, words.

"To succeed in life is not to win, to succeed in life is to get up and start again every time you fall."

"Power for what?" asked Echandía. Mujica answered it with his life: to serve, not to serve oneself.

With information from AFP