Il Nuovo Postiglione - Uruguay's leftist icon Jose Mujica has cancer: doctor

On Monday, the 88-year-old had told reporters in Montevideo that a tumor had been discovered on his esophagus during a medical checkup.

"It is something obviously very compromising," he said -- doubly complicated because he suffers from an immune disease that would make radiation and surgery difficult.

"This is not the first time the Grim Reaper has been hanging around me," said Mujica.

"This time it seems to me that he comes with the scythe at the ready and we will see what happens," he added.

On Thursday, his doctor Raquel Panone said the tumor has been confirmed to be malignant, but the cancer had not spread.

Mujica will start radiotherapy next week, she said.

The former guerilla fighter became a cult figure during his 2010-2015 rule, partly for his modest lifestyle.

On his watch, Uruguay passed a number of progressive laws -- legalizing abortion and gay marriage and becoming the first country in the world to allow recreational cannabis use, in 2013.

He remains a figurehead of the Broad Front, the leftist coalition in power from 2005 until it was ousted in 2019 elections by center-right leader Luis Lacalle Pou.

Mujica resigned from frontline politics in 2020, quitting his Senate seat amid the coronavirus epidemic, saying a weakened immune system put him at risk and staying in the office was no alternative to going out and meeting people.

Mujica was part of the MLN-Tupumaros rebels that waged an insurgency during the 1960s and 70s against democratic governments.

Though popular, many Uruguayans blamed them for provoking the 1973 military coup that ushered in a dictatorship that lasted until 1985.

Mujica spent 12 years in prison during that time, much of it in solitary confinement.

E.Scozzafava--INP