Isabel Martínez de Perón
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| María Estela "Isabelita" Martínez de Perón | |
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| In office July 1, 1974 – March 24, 1976 |
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| Preceded by | Juan Perón |
| Succeeded by | Jorge Videla |
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| In office 1974 – 1985 |
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| Preceded by | Juan Perón |
| Succeeded by | Herself, officially as President |
| Succeeded by | - |
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| In office October 12, 1973 – July 1, 1974 |
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| President | Juan Domingo Perón |
| Preceded by | Office Vacant; Vicente Solano Lima most recent office holder |
| Succeeded by | Office Vacant; Víctor Martínez next to hold office |
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| Born | February 4, 1931 La Rioja |
| Nationality | Argentinian |
| Political party | Justicialist |
| Spouse | Juan Perón |
María Estela Martínez Cartas de Perón (born February 4, 1931), better known as Isabel Martínez de Perón or Isabel Perón, was the third wife of Argentine President Juan Perón. During her husband's third term as president, Isabel served as vice president. After 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.
In 2007, an Argentine judge ordered the arrest of Isabel Perón over the forced disappearance of an activist in February 1976, on the grounds that the disappearance was authorized by her signing of decrees allowing Argentina's armed forces to take action against "subversives". [1] She was arrested near her home in Spain on 12 January 2007. [2]
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[edit] Early life
María Estela Martínez Cartas was born in La Rioja, Argentina, into a lower middle-class family. She became a nightclub dancer in the early 1950s, adopting a variant of her saint's name, Isabela, or Isabel, as her stage name.
[edit] Career and marriage
[edit] Juan Perón
She met her future husband during his exile in Panama. Perón, who was 35 years older than her, 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 Perón (also known as Evita). 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 the Roman Catholic nation did not approve of Perón's living arrangements with this young woman, so on November 15, 1961, the former president reluctantly married for a third time.
[edit] Early political career
[edit] Ambassador Isabel
As Perón began a more active role in Argentine politics, Isabel was as a go-between from Spain to South America. Having been deposed in a coup years before, Perón was forbidden from returning to Argentina, so his new wife would travel in his stead.
[edit] José López Rega
It was at this time that Isabel met José López Rega, an occult "philosopher" and fortune teller, who later founded the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), a death squad accused of 1,500 crimes in the 1970s. [3] Isabel was interested in occult matters (and as president reportedly employed astrological divination to determine national policy) [4], so the two quickly became friends. Under pressure from Isabel, Perón appointed López as his personal secretary.
[edit] Rise to power
Héctor Cámpora was nominated by Perón's Justicialist Party to run in the 1973 presidential elections and won. However, it was generally understood that Perón held the real power; a popular phrase at the time was "Cámpora al gobierno, Perón al poder" (Cámpora to government, Perón to power). Later that year, Perón returned to Argentina. Cámpora resigned to allow Perón to run for president. In a surprisingly uncontroversial move, he chose Isabel as his running mate. Perón's return from exile was marked by a growing rift between the right and left wings of the Peronist movement. Cámpora represented the left wing, while López Rega represented the right wing. Under López Rega's influence, Juan and Isabel Perón favored the right wing. Isabel had very little in the way of political experience or ambitions, and she was a very different personality from Evita, who was more involved with politics and had been denied the post of vice president years earlier.
[edit] The Martínez de Perón Presidency
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.
Unlike Evita, Isabel was very unpopular.[citation needed] One factor was that López Rega, by this time minister of social welfare, had so much influence over Isabel that he was de facto prime minister. Despite his right-wing views, his status as the power behind the throne greatly frightened the military.
[edit] Fall from power
Isabel agreed to fire López Rega, but the military concluded that with the prevailing climate of widespread strikes and political terrorism, a "weak-willed and inexperienced woman" would not be a suitable president. Her time in power coincided in a spike in the inflation rate and this did not help her.
On March 24, 1976, she was deposed in a bloodless coup. After remaining under house arrest for five years, she was sent into exile in Spain in 1981. She continued to serve as official head of the Peronist Justicialist Party until her resignation in 1985, nearly a decade after her fall from power. Though there were some who desired her return and wished for her return to power, she refused to stand for election to the presidency. She lived in Madrid, maintained close links with Francisco Franco's family, and sometimes went to Marbella, a Spanish coastal city. [5] Though she returned briefly to Argentina in 1984, after democracy was restored, she resumed residence in Spain under a very low profile.
[edit] Arrest in Spain
In November 2006, a judge in Mendoza, Argentina demanded testimony from Isabel, along with other Peronist ministers of her government, in a case involving forced disappearances during her presidency. On January 12, 2007, she was arrested in Madrid. In particular, she was charged by the Argentine authorities with the disappearance of Héctor Aldo Fagetti Gallego on February 25, 1976, and her issuance of decrees over her signature calling to "annihilate … subversive elements throughout the country". [2] The Nunca Mas ("Never Again") report released in 1984 by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons recorded 600 disappearances and 500 assassinations under the Peronist governments from 1973 to 1976, and it is today acknowledged that the Triple A alone murdered about 600 people. [6] The extradition to Argentina was denied in Spain on March 28th, 2008.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Warrant for ex-Argentine leader, BBC, January 12, 2007
- ^ a b Isabel Peron's arrest signals shift in Argentina, Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2007
- ^ 'Argentinian death squad leader' arrested in Spain, The Guardian, December 30, 2006
- ^ Ball, Deirdre (ed.): Insight Guides - Argentina. Second edition. Hong Kong: APA Publications (HK) Ltd. 1992, p. 47
- ^ Detienen en Valencia al ex dirigente de la Triple A argentina Almirón Sena, El Mundo, December 28, 2006 (Spanish)
- ^ L'ancienne présidente argentine Isabel Peron arrêtée à Madrid, à la demande de Buenos Aires, Le Monde, January 13, 2007 (French).
- Guareschi, Roberto (Nov. 5, 2005). "Not quite the Evita of Argentine legend". New Straits Times, p. 21.
| Preceded by Vicente Solano Lima |
Vice-President of Argentina 1973–1974 |
Succeeded by Víctor Martínez |
| Preceded by Juan Perón |
President of Argentina 1974–1976 |
Succeeded by Jorge Videla |
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