MONTEVIDEO, May 16, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva joined tens of thousands of Uruguayans who said a final farewell to iconic former president Jose "Pepe" Mujica on Thursday.

An estimated 100,000 people paid their respects to the famously humble ex-leader over two days of lying in state after his death on Tuesday aged 89 from cancer.

Emotions ran high in the Legislative Palace as people queued to file past the coffin of the former leftist guerrilla, who was imprisoned during the country's 1973-1985 dictatorship, but later helped the left win power through the ballot box.

Some of the mourners carried flowers, while others wore the banner of his party around their shoulders.

Mujica passed away at his farm on the outskirts of Montevideo with his wife, fellow former guerrilla fighter Lucia Topolansky, 80, by his side.

A year ago, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which later spread to his liver.

Lula, from the same generation of leftist leaders that formed a "pink tide" in Latin American politics in the early 2000s, eulogized him as "a superior human being" who "tried to change the world."

Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, Mujica's political heir, and Chile's leftist President Gabriel Boric also attended the wake, which ended with a mass rendition of the liberation hymn "To Don Jose."

After the memorial, crowds lined the street to watch as Mujica's body was removed from the palace for cremation.

His ashes will be kept at his farm.

- 'Happy with little' -

The plain-spoken activist and farmer earned the moniker of "world's poorest president" during his 2010-2015 presidency for giving away much of his salary to charity, driving himself in a sky blue Volkswagen Beetle, and continuing to live a simple life with his wife and three-legged dog.

"He taught us many things -- he taught us to be happy with little, not to live for appearances," Paola Martinez, one of the mourners at the Legislative Palace, told AFP.

On a continent long dominated by conservative forces, he stood out as a champion of progressive values.

He legalized abortion and gay marriage and made Uruguay the first country in the world to allow the use of recreational cannabis.