Meet Uruguay's President - who's chosen to live on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay
Jose Mujica: The world's 'poorest' presidentBy Vladimir Hernandez
BBC Mundo, Montevideo
November 15 2012 Last updated at 00:29
It's a common grumble that politicians' lifestyles are far removed from those of their electorate. Not so in Uruguay. Meet the president - who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay.
Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.
This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders.
President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife's farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo.
The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.
This austere lifestyle - and the fact that Mujica donates about 90% of his monthly salary, equivalent to $12,000 (£7,500), to charity - has led him to be labelled the poorest president in the world.
"I've lived like this most of my life," he says, sitting on an old chair in his garden, using a cushion favoured by Manuela the dog.
"I can live well with what I have."
His charitable donations - which benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs - mean his salary is roughly in line with the average Uruguayan income of $775 (£485) a month.
In 2010, his annual personal wealth declaration - mandatory for officials in Uruguay - was $1,800 (£1,100), the value of his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.
This year, he added half of his wife's assets - land, tractors and a house - reaching $215,000 (£135,000).
That's still only about two-thirds of Vice-President Danilo Astori's declared wealth, and a third of the figure declared by Mujica's predecessor as president, Tabare Vasquez.
Elected in 2009, Mujica spent the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Uruguayan guerrilla Tupamaros, a leftist armed group inspired by the Cuban revolution.
He was shot six times and spent 14 years in jail. Most of his detention was spent in harsh conditions and isolation, until he was freed in 1985 when Uruguay returned to democracy.
Those years in jail, Mujica says, helped shape his outlook on life.
"I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more," he says.
"This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself," he says.
"I may appear to be an eccentric old man... But this is a free choice."
Mujica could have followed his predecessors into a grand official residence
The Uruguayan leader made a similar point when he addressed the Rio+20 summit in June this year: "We've been talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of poverty.
"But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left?
Instead, he chose to stay on his wife's farm
"Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet."
Mujica accuses most world leaders of having a "blind obsession to achieve growth with consumption, as if the contrary would mean the end of the world".
More: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243493
= new reply since forum marked as read
Flip-Flopper's slaves probably live better than that!
Kudos to Mujica for not selling out.
This guys values are exemplary.
Amen.
We made our decision after Campain/Election 2004 (our system is fucked), and Katrina. I was in New Orleans immediately after the storm. When I returned to Minneapolis I told my wife, "Its time."
We made a list of our necessities & preferences:
*Far from Urban & Industrial Pollution
*Surrounded by National Forest
*On property source of abundant clean water
*Long Growing Season
*Low Cost of Living
*Far from Large Factory Farms and GM contamination
*Hilltop location (no downflow contamination from neighbors)
*Undeveloped, pristine area.
Unzoned, No building Permits, No Inspections, No HOA, no close neighbors
*Minimum 10 acres
*Inside our price range
(The list was longer, but those were the main points)
Like everybody, we wanted the Pacific North West, preferably around Portland. we looked for a year, but nothing was anywhere close to our price range, or fit our requirements.
We finally found a place that matched our needs in the Ouachita Mountains of West/Central Arkansas.
It met every requirement, and more.
We live there today with no regrets.
We have a great Veggie Garden that keeps getting better as we learn more
and develop methods of stretching our growing season.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x11812
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x12169
We have established fruit trees, various berries, and mature Asparagus plots.
We have too many chickens, but love them all,
and two healthy, productive European Honey Bee Colonies.
We are producing a good percentage of our food,
and could survive on our own with the addition of the plentiful wild game if that became necessary, though Winters would be bleak.
It IS a process.
We have changed our goal from "Completely Independent, Sustainable Lifestyle"
to an attainable one of becoming more Independent/Sustainable every year.
Next year, we will CONSUME less.
General Rule of Thumb:
It will cost twice as much,
take 3 times as long,
and require 5 times as much Labor
as your most conservative estimate.
Good Luck with your dream.
It is SCARY to Take the Leap.
It took a disaster on the scale of Katrina/New Orleans to push us off our Safe Place.
2003, sold small city condo and moved to mini-farm in Maine. Grow most of my own veggies. Horse in back yard. One of these days I may add hens, but I'm afraid after they stop laying they'll become another set of retired freeloaders 
The only change I see coming to me is if I'm able to sell this place, I'll move further out. The house here is nearly twice the square footage I wanted or needed, but it was the closest I could find to my size. I have my eye on a little cottage to my north w/10 acres fields and woods and a spring-fed stream...
My only real luxury is my horse, but someday when the oil and gas run out, I'll teach her to drive, I'll be the wealthiest woman in town and taxi services will be my final career 
even their poop has value - lol
and those hens are good bug eaters even after they quit laying!
Speaking of horse-drawn taxis, I was admiring my neighbors' cart and pony on election day; I'm gonna have to teach the horses to pull the car if I don't get a cart of my own soon...just trying to figure out what to hook the harness to on the car, the door frames? 
Also: been studying the Travellers for something I'm writing, and they have these awesome little horse drawn houses. If all else fails, we can become gypsies....
The only thing that really works is that Mane'n'Tail detangler for me. Funny, have you read about the people who say the faeries braid the horses hair at night? Sometimes it seems so, when you comb them out nice and the next morning they're in "braids."
I had to blanket the old girl finally. She can't handle the cold. I tried to blanket the Arab, but she was "no way!" about it. Man would I love to train her to log, but she's so spooky sometimes I'd probably end up knocked upside the head with a tree.
Guinea hens are cool, just never grab them by the tail as I learned the hard way. 
edit: main for mane for maine?
without cross ties. As long as she gets to sniff it and make certain it's not some evil, foreign snare, she's been good with it. A far cry from the 2 1/2 year old that cracked a rib with a double-barreled kick at point blank range. Ouch.
I like Cowgirl Magic detangler. Maybe I'm just a sucker for cute names, but it does seem to work well and leaves her mane nice and soft without any sticky residue.
Yeah, I can easily imagine Dahli running for her life with a log flying around behind
I'd forgotten about the faeries, but have a vague memory of reading that somewhere, sometime. We definitely have a fairy that visits here every so often
the story of this man to our attention!
