Mourners wept, raised their arms and marched behind the flag-draped casket of former President José Mujica on Wednesday as thousands bid a poignant farewell to the iconic leader in the Uruguayan capital.

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”.

Jose Mujica, a one-time guerrilla and later president of Uruguay who drove a beat-up VW Beetle and enacted progressive reforms that carried his reputation well beyond South America, has died aged 89.