José Mujica.......the World's Poorest President.

Hi Guys,

*     While surfing through news channels, I saw a programme on this GREAT MAN, who is unknown outside Latin America. I thought of sharing this with you all and request you to share it further with your friends and loved ones. What a shame that presidents of the third world live like kings when millions in those countries live below poverty line.    

*      José Mujica,  is the President of Uruguay since 2010. A former guerrilla fighter and as the candidate of the Broad Front, he won the 2009 presidential election and took office as President in  March 2010.

*    Mujica was born on 20 May 1935, to Demetrio Mujica, of Spanish Basque ancestry, and Lucy Cordano, a daughter of Italian immigrants. Mujica's father was a small farmer who went bankrupt shortly before his death in 1940, when his son was five. His mother's parents were  poor immigrants from Linguria. Lucy Cordano was born in Carmelo, where her parents had bought five acres in Colonia Estrella to cultivate vineyards. Between the ages of 13 and 17, Mujica cycled for several clubs in different categories.

* In the early 1960s, he joined the newly formed Tupamaros movement, an armed political group inspired by the Cuban revolution. He participated in the 1969 brief takeover of Pando, a town close to Montevideo, and was later convicted by a military tribunal. Mujica was captured by the authorities on four occasions, and he was among those political prisoners who escaped Punta Carretas Prison in 1971. He was eventually re-apprehended in 1972, and was shot by the police six times. After the military coup in 1973, he was transferred to a military prison. In all, he served 14 years. During the 1970s, this included being confined to the bottom of a well for more than two years.

*     During his time in prison, he remained in contact with other leaders of the Tupamaros, including Frente Amplio Senator Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro and the founder and leader of the Tupamaros, Raul Sendic. In 1985, when constitutional democracy was restored, Mujica was freed under an amnesty law that covered political and related military crimes committed since 1962.

*  In 2005, Mujica married Lucia, a fellow Tupamaro member, after many years of co-habitation. The couple has no children. Having declined to live in the opulent presidential palace, they live on an austere farm on the outskirts of Montevideo, where they cultivate chrysanthemums for sale. His humble lifestyle is reflected by his choice of an aging Beet as transport. His wife owns the farm they live on. 

*   He is "the world's 'poorest' president", due to his austere lifestyle and his donation of around 90 percent of his $12,000 (£7,500) monthly salary to charities that benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs.