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.

Uruguay's former president Jose "Pepe" Mujica, a guerrilla fighter and hero of the Latin American left, has died at the age of 89, the government in Montevideo said Tuesday.

Under Jose Mujica's presidency in 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalise marijuana sales