World’s First Woman President
María Estela Martínez Cartas de Perón (born February 4, 1931), better known as Isabel Martínez de Perón or Isabel Perón, is a former President of Argentina . She was also the third wife of another former President, Juan Perón. During her husband’s third term as president, Isabel served as vice president and following her husband’s death in office, Isabel served as president from July 1, 1974 to March 24, 1976. She was the first non-royal female head of state and head of government in the Western Hemisphere.
María Estela Martínez Cartas was born in La Rioja, Argentina, into a lower middle-class family, daughter of Carmelo Martínez and his wife María Josefa Cartas Olguín[4]. She became a nightclub dancer in the early 1950s, adopting a variant of her saint’s name, Isabela, or Isabel, as her stage name.
She met her future husband during his exile in Panama. Juan Perón, who was 35 years older than she, was attracted to her beauty and believed she could provide him with the female companionship he had been lacking since the death of his second wife, Eva (”Evita”) Perón. Isabel gave up her career in show business and became Perón’s personal secretary.
Perón brought Isabel with him when he moved to Madrid, Spain, in 1960. Authorities in that Roman Catholic nation did not approve of Perón’s living arrangements with the young woman, so on November 15, 1961, the former president reluctantly married for a third time.
Juan Perón died on July 1, 1974, less than a year after his third election to the presidency. Isabel assumed the office and became the first non-royal female head of state and head of government in the Western Hemisphere.
José López Rega, officially Minister of Social Welfare, broadly vetted Mrs. Perón’s domestic and foreign policy until protests forced him to flee to Spain in July 1975.
Although she wholly lacked Evita’s charisma or dilligence, the nation at first rallied to the grieving widow in this, her role of a lifetime. Even, it seemed, extremist groups were publicly offering her support, following their falling out with Juan Perón between May and June. Mrs. Perón, however, abruptly canceled a full agenda of meetings with these people, preferring to entertain the likes of Romania’s Nicolae Ceaucescu, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and the Shah of Iran. The goodwill her husband’s death had left her soon dissipated. Following a string of mysterious murders, public threats from leftist extremists and a wave of industrial strikes in September, 1974, she became, for the first time since the public had become acquainted with her, unpopular.