Crowds have poured into the streets of Uruguay’s capital to bid a poignant farewell to former President José Mujica, a guerrilla fighter-turned-pioneering leader who became an icon of the Latin American left,

José Mujica, a member of a Marxist rebel group that terrorized Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s and who later became a mainstream politician and one of his country’s most venerated presidents, died May 13 at his home in Rincón de Cerro,

Uruguay’s president, Yamandu Orsi – Mr Mujica’s long-time interlocutor and protege from his left-wing Broad Front party, declared Wednesday-Friday as national days of mourning in a presidential decree that praised Mr Mujica’s “humanist philosophy”, closing the government to all but necessary operations while flags flew at half-mast.