Uruguay's President José "Pepe" Mujica became an instant celebrity in 2012 after the BBC published a feature documenting his austere lifestyle and detailing his past. A former guerrilla fighter who spent 14 years in jail -- more than 10 of them in solitary confinement and two of them in the bottom of a well -- Mujica later swore off violence and became a successful politician of the leftwing Broad Front.
"Years ago, we used to think that there were good wars and bad wars," Mujica told students at American University in May. "Good wars were the ones supported by a just and noble cause, for processes of liberation. Today, with all of our technological and scientific knowledge, war -- whatever its tendency -- ends up becoming a sacrifice for the weakest people in society... The worst negotiation is better than the best war. That's what I think now, because I know the pain and sacrifice of war."
Mujica's international presence was solidified in 2013, as he became famous for legalizing the marijuana trade, a pioneering effort at reining in the power of drug traffickers and transitioning toward treating drug abuse as a public health issue rather than a criminal one.
Even in democracies, few people elected to the presidency live anything like the majority of people whom they are elected to represent. Part of the reason why Mujica gained international celebrity status was that his humble lifestyle and folksy aphorisms struck a nerve in a world where prominent politicians live more luxurious pampered lives than any of us can imagine, while begging for money from people they're supposed to regulate in order to fund their increasingly undemocratic electoral campaigns.
With Sunday's runoff presidential election, Mujica's term in office began winding down.
Here's 13 reasons we'll miss Mujica when he leaves Uruguay's presidency.
Mujica championed the idea, saying that it would wrest power away from drug cartels and allow the government to focus on the issue as a public health matter rather than a criminal one.
"We ask the world to help us create this experience," Mujica told Brazilian daily A Folha de São Paulo last year. "It will allow us to adopt a socio-political experiment to address the serious problem of drug trafficking... the effect of the drug traffic is worse than the drug."
"We could never sell it," Mujica said in November. "We would offend all those friends who pooled together to buy it for us."
“It’s signed by all of them and that surely has a lot of value,” Mujica said, noting that he’s not much of a guitar player. “That instrument must have been invented by an anarchist who was also drunk, because it’s very difficult.”
"I've lived like this most of my life," Mujica told the BBC in 2012. "I can live well with what I have."
"Tell this old guy not to lie," Mujica told reporters, referring to INCB president Raymond Yans. "Any guy in the street can meet with me. Let him come to Uruguay and meet with me whenever he wants... He thinks because he's in an international position, he can tell whatever lie he wants."
For its part, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime criticized Uruguay for legalizing the marijuana trade, while heaping praise on anti-drug efforts in Iran -- a country that executes drug dealers.