MONTEVIDEO, May 15, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The death of former Uruguayan president Jose "Pepe" Mujica brought the curtain down on one of the great love stories of Latin America.

Mujica, 89, died at home on his farm, with his wife Lucia Topolansky, 80, by his side.

The pair had met as youthful left-wing guerrillas robbing from the rich to give to the poor as members of the Marxist-Leninist movement Tupamaros, which Mujica co-founded in the 1960s.

From its Robin Hood beginnings, Tupamaros escalated its campaign to overthrow the "bourgeois" state to include bombings and assassinations.

Topolansky joined the Tupamaros in 1969 and met Mujica while he was in hiding.

"We were in a moment of great danger... And when you live in great danger, perhaps subconsciously you need love much more than usual," Mujica told AFP in an interview last November.

By the mid-1970s they were both behind bars, in separate prisons, where they would remain until the end of Uruguay's 1973-1985 military dictatorship.

Upon their release, the relationship resumed.

"I went to meet Pepe... and the next day we started campaigning," Topolansky recalled in a 2021 interview with Argentina's Encuentro TV channel.

Once freed, "everything had to be rebuilt from scratch," she said.

While they were leading the left's rise to power in Uruguay, a country of 3.4 million people long dominated by the center-right, the couple's relationship blossomed.

On their small farm outside Montevideo, they grew flowers, sipped mate (the bitter herbal tea beloved of Uruguayans) and cared for their dogs, including Mujica's beloved three-legged pet Manuela, with whom he asked to be buried.

Even as Mujica's political star rose, Topolansky was forging her own path, first as an MP and then a senator.

The power couple they formed was on full display when Topolansky swore Mujica in as president in 2010, as the senator who had garnered the most votes.

During "Pepe's" presidency, the ranch of the "world's poorest president" -- as Mujica was dubbed for his humble lifestyle -- became a place of pilgrimage for left-wing politicians from near and far.

- 'We talk politics' -

After his five years in power -- Uruguayan presidents cannot serve two consecutive terms -- Topolansky became vice-president under Mujica's successor Tabare Vazquez.

Living with her was "a sweet habit," Mujica said.

"We talk about politics, other things, we watch soccer, we are comrades, we are friends," he said in 2014.

After decades of cohabitating, Lucia, the daughter of a well-off Montevideo family, and "Pepe," the son of farmworkers, got married in 2005.

"I have been with him for more than 40 years, and I will be until the end; that is what I promised," Topolansky said Monday as she announced Mujica was nearing the end of his life.

Long before formalizing their relationship, the pair had made another commitment: to be lifelong activists.

For Mujica, that meant never having children. "I dedicated myself to changing the world," he told AFP.

In later life he cited that decision as his one regret.

His heirs were instead his left-wing understudies, such as President Yamandu Orsi, for whom an ailing Mujica campaigned energetically last year while battling cancer.

On Wednesday, Topolansky and Orsi led Mujica's funeral procession through the streets of Montevideo, where thousands turned out to pay their respects.