Uruguay’s frugal president

last updated 8 January 2015

José Mujica is the world’s most frugal national leader, said Jonathan Watts in The Guardian (U.K.). Uruguay’s president lives in a one-bedroom farmhouse in the middle of a field—he turned the presidential palace into a homeless shelter—drives an old Volkswagen Beetle, and donates 90 percent of his salary to charity. Mujica, 78, has been called “the world’s poorest president,” but dislikes the title. “I’m not the poorest president,” he says. “The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live.” Mujica learned to live modestly in the 1970s, when his involvement with a Marxist revolutionary group led to his being jailed for 14 years—including two years spent in solitary confinement at the bottom of a well, where he kept his sanity by speaking to frogs. “My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. There have been times when I would have been happy just to have a mattress.” The president has struggled to reconcile his thrifty philosophy with the need to grow Uruguay’s economy. “I’m president,” he sighs. “I’m fighting for more work and more investment because people ask for more and more.” At the same time, he encourages Uruguayans to recycle, use renewable energy, and live within their means. “That’s an ideal, but it may not be realistic because we live in an age of accumulation.’’