Isabel Perón

Isabel Martínez de Perón (, born María Estela Martínez Cartas; 4 February 1931) also known as Isabelita, is an Argentine former politician who served as the 46th President of Argentina from 1974 to 1976.

She was one of the first female republican heads of state in the world, and the first woman to serve as president of a country.

Isabel Perón was the third wife of President Juan Perón.

In the early 1950s she became a nightclub dancer adopting the name Isabel, the saint's name (the Spanish form of that of Saint Elizabeth of Portugal) that she had chosen as a confirmation name.

She met her future husband during his exile in Panama.

Juan Domingo Perón, who was 35 years her senior, was attracted by her beauty and believed she could provide him with the female companionship he had been lacking since the death of his beloved second wife Eva Perón (Evita) in 1952.

Having been deposed in a coup in 1955, Perón was forbidden from returning to Argentina, so his new wife was appointed to travel in his stead.

Perón brought Isabel with him when he moved to Madrid, Spain, in 1960.

Authorities(Which authorities?)did not approve of Perón's cohabitation with a young woman to whom he was not married, so on 15 November 1961 the former president reluctantly married for a third time.

As Perón resumed an active role in Argentine politics from exile, Isabel acted as a go-between from Spain to Argentina.

The CGT leader José Alonso became one of her main advisers in Perón's dispute against Steelworkers' leader Augusto Vandor's Popular Union faction during mid-term elections in 1965; Alonso and Vandor were both later assassinated in as-yet unexplained circumstances.

Isabel met José López Rega, who was a former policeman with an interest in occultism and fortune-telling, during a visit to Argentina in 1965.

She was interested in occult matters (and as president reportedly employed astrological divination to determine national policy), so the two quickly became friends.

Under pressure from Isabel, Perón appointed López as his personal secretary; López later founded the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), a death squad accused of perpetrating 1,500 crimes in the 1970s.

During her husband's third term as president from 1973 to 1974, she served as both Vice President and First Lady of Argentina.

Dr. Héctor Cámpora was nominated by Perón's Justicialist Party to run in the March 1973 presidential elections on the FREJULI ticket (a Peronist-led alliance).

Cámpora won, but it was generally understood that Juan Perón held the real power; a popular phrase at the time was " Cámpora al gobierno, Perón al poder " (Cámpora in government, Perón in power).

Later that year, Perón returned to Argentina, and Cámpora resigned to allow Perón to run for president.

He chose Isabel as his nominee for the Vice Presidency to mollify feuding Peronist factions, as these could agree on no other running mate.

His return from exile was marked by a growing rift between the right and left wings of the Peronist movement; while Cámpora represented the left wing, López Rega represented the right wing.

The latter was, moreover, supported by the CGT labor federation leadership and Isabel herself, and this faction became known by the left as the entorno ('entourage') due to the inner circle status Perón afforded them.

Juan Perón had long been inimical to the left, but cultivated their support while he was in exile.

His sympathies ended, however, after the assassination of CGT leader José Ignacio Rucci by the leftist Montoneros in September.

Perón's victory in a snap election called by Congress in September 1973 was always considered likely, and he won with 62% of the vote.

He began his third term on 12 October, with Isabel as Vice President.

Perón was by then in precarious health, however; a CIA cable at the time described him as alternating between a lucid state and that of senile dependency.

Isabel had to take over as Acting President on several occasions during his tenure.

Following her husband's death in office in 1974, she served as President for almost two years before the military took over the government with the 1976 coup.

Perón was then placed under house arrest for five years before she was exiled to Spain in 1981.

After democracy was restored in Argentina in 1983, she was a guest of honor at President Raúl Alfonsín's inauguration.

For several years, she was a nominal head of Juan Perón's Justicialist Party and played a constructive role in reconciliation discussion, but has never played any important political role afterwards.

Isabel Perón is one of the greatest expressions of the right-wing peronism and mainly of the orthodox peronism.

Ideologically, she was considered close to corporate neo-fascism.

During her short tenure in office, she relied, at different points in time, on pro-neoliberal capitalism politicians, politicized military, and trade unions.

In 2007, an Argentine judge ordered Perón's arrest over the forced disappearance of an activist in February 1976, on the grounds that the disappearance was authorised by her signing of decrees allowing Argentina's armed forces to take action against "subversives".

She was arrested near her home in Spain on 12 January 2007.

Spanish courts subsequently refused her extradition to Argentina.

Since the death of Carlos Menem on 14 February 2021, Perón is the oldest living former Argentine president.

María Estela Martínez Cartas was born in La Rioja, Argentina, daughter of María Josefa Cartas Olguín and Carmelo Martínez.

She dropped out of school after the fifth grade.