Position: Uruguay's president
Incumbent: Jose Mujica
Born: May 20, 1935
Term: Elected in November 2009 for a five-year term
Key facts:
-- A straight-talking former guerrilla fighter, Mujica won a 2009 election that extended the rule of a moderate leftist coalition credited by voters and Wall Street for maintaining growth in one of the region's most stable economies. Mujica has broadly continued the market-friendly economic policies of his predecessor, Tabare Vazquez.
-- Mujica, who served previously as agriculture minister, was jailed for 14 years, mostly during Uruguay's 1973-85 military dictatorship, for his activities with the Tupamaros, a leftist group that kidnapped government officials and businessmen.
-- He founded the Popular Participation Movement (MPP), the mostly left-wing party in the ruling Frente Amplio coalition. Many former Tupamaros belong to the MPP.
-- Known to many Uruguayans simply by his nickname, "Pepe," Mujica refused to move to the presidential residence when he took office, choosing to stay in the modest house and flower farm he shares with his senator wife in a suburb of the capital, Montevideo.
-- His government has imposed a new tax on large landholdings, a measure Mujica said would stop vast tracts of farmland falling into the hands of a few. He has also vowed to sign a controversial bill to decriminalize abortion and pushed legislation that essentially scrapped an amnesty law, clearing the way for fresh investigations into dictatorship-era human rights abuses. (Reporting by Helen Popper and Felipe Llambias; Editing by David Cutler and Paul Simao)
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