The official website of the president of Uruguay, José “Pepe” Mujica, lists the president’s occupation as chacarero floriculture – a small-scale farmer of flowers.

Dubbed “the poorest president in the world,” Mujica, a former left-wing revolutionary, has proven his devotion to the Uruguayan socialist party ‘s cause  through his many feats of austerity, including giving 90 percent of his $144,000 salary to the poor.

Hence the need for the part-time flower work.

Walking the streets of Montevideo – the seaside capital of this socially liberal country of 3.3 million people – nearly every Uruguayan has a story to tell about their president’s stoic lifestyle.

Mujica, 78, refuses to live in the presidential palace, Casa Suáres Y Reyes. Instead he lives in the run-down farm (owned by his wife’s family) on the outskirts of Montevideo with his wife and three-legged dog.

Saturday, in the Plaza Independencia, Miguel Arcangel, a 51-year-old dock worker, told me that Mujica’s farm specializes in Chrysanthemum flowers and that he has his own brand of perfume.

Gabriel Fleitas – Arcangel’s coworker – added, between sips of maté, that the president arrives at government meetings and national ceremonies in a dirty work coat and boots. Mujica never wears a tie – always a contrast to his slick-dressed ministers, several of whom were recently sent to prison on corruption charges (more on that later).

Mujica commutes to the glass-walled skyscraper called Torre Ejecutiva in the Plaza Independencia every morning driving a beat-up 80s-model Volkswagen Beetle, another Montevideano told me.

Clearly Mujica and his strange perfume have seduced the Uruguayans, who proudly view him as an image in their own likeness.

“It is with immense pride to have this old man, short, fat and ugly serving as my president,” Fleitas said. “That means something to me.”

Revolutionary words

Recent feats of stoicism are only the latest chapter in the life of this bold leader.

Mujica was imprisoned for 14 years during Uruguay’s military dictatorship – which lasted from 1973 to 1985 – for his involvement with the leftist guerilla group, the Tupamaros. Much of his sentence was spent in solitary confinement, where he befriend a frog and a rat, whom he shared his crumbs with, he told the New York Times in January.

He was freed in 1985 after “order returned to democracy in Uruguay,” the president’s website said.

His rise in politics was driven by the deep reflection he held in prison, he has said. In 2005, when he was reelected as a senator, he earned more votes than any politician in Uruguayan history. Uruguayans elected Mujica president in November 2009. He will serve his term through 2015.

Anti-corruption stance

Daniel Erosa, editorial director of Brecha, one of the country’s two leading political newspapers, said that Mujica is the second president elected from the Frente Amplio political party, a coalition of left-wing parties which includes the Socialist Party. Tabaré Vázquez, another Frente Amplio politician, served as president from 2005-2010.

However, Mujica’s presidency has been the most interesting to cover, Erosa said.

Erosa, who visits the president’s home often, said that in 2008, under Vázquez, the Uruguayan government passed its first comprehensive freedom of information laws. But Vásquez didn’t have the openness of Mujica.

“Mujica is always out in public speaking about the issues,” Erosa said.

His quotations are used around the world to champion liberal movements supporting same-sex marriage, abortion and legalization of Marijuana. (See below)

Economic boom

Good public safety and well established welfare programs make Uruguay one of the happiest Latin American countries to live in, said Renzo Manfredi, manager of Estancia del Puerto, a restaurant in Montevideo’s famous Mercado del Puerto mall.

Uruguay has also become one of the most expensive countries in South America,  partly driven by increased taxes used to pay for public programs which have helped the country’s poorest, according to a survey in 11 cities by the a group of newspapers from the Americas.

Prices continue to rise at the grocery store, but still a family of four with a car, house and private school tuition can live comfortably on a $2,000 monthly salary, Manfredi said.

“The people that didn’t have anything before now have more, but the people that have a lot now have less,” Manfredi said. “It’s better because there is more security. People are positive.”

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Mujica quotes

“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.”

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor.”

“Nowhere in the world has repression yielded results,… We know we are embarking on a cutting edge experiment for the whole world.” – about a proposal to legalize Marijuana in Uruguay.