José Mujica, who has died aged 89, was a Marxist terrorist who reinvented himself to become a popular liberalising president of Uruguay in his 70s; ostentatiously rejecting the rewards of office, he earned the soubriquet “the world’s poorest president”.

Former Uruguayan President José Mujica, a onetime Marxist guerilla and flower farmer whose radical brand of democracy, plain-spoken philosophy and simple lifestyle fascinated people around the world,

He oversaw an economic boom, a reduction in poverty, and the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and marijuana.