As the United States draws nearer to the possible election of its first female president, Panoramas decided to take a look at the female presidents Latin America has had in the past. Below are the profiles of each of these eleven women, whose successes and trials reflect the history of women in politics around the world.
Isabel “Isabelita” Perón, Argentina, 1974. Isabelita was the first female head of state of Argentina and of the entire Western hemisphere. Her husband, Juan Perón, had served as president off and on through the previous three turbulent decades, building the politically wide-ranging Peronist movement and reshaping Argentina’s socioeconomics with an authoritarian ruling style. Isabelita, Perón’s third wife, became Perón’s vice president for his third term and took office when he became ill and died in 1974. She had to follow the universally beloved Evita, Perón’s second wife who had tragically died of cancer in 1952. After Evita the Argentine public resented and distrusted Isabelita, who failed to wield any significant power and whose brief time in office ended when the military staged a coup to remove her in 1976. Isabelita’s deposition began Argentina’s “Dirty War,” the seven-year period of state terrorism that “disappeared” some 30,000 civilians.
Lidia Gueiler Tejada, Bolivia, 1979. Bolivia’s first female president served for a short eight months during a particularly unstable period in Bolivia’s history, but has been remembered as a hardworking and respected figure. Gueiler had been the president of Bolivia’s parliament before a violent military coup removed previous president Walter Guevara in 1979, and Gueiler found herself being sworn into office. Little more than half a year later, she was deposed by another military coup led by her own cousin. She spent the rest of her life afterwards as a diplomat and a warrior for human rights, especially those of women.
Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, Haiti, 1990. Pascal-Trouillot was not only Haiti’s first female president but had also been the country’s first female Supreme Court justice beforehand. In 1990, a coup ousted the dictator Prosper Avril and brought Pascal-Trouillot to provisional presidency, an position that she used to organize a truly free general election—an enormous feat in Haiti during this period. The winner of this election was Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and before he even took office, a preemptory coup of sorts was staged against him, resulting in the removal and arrest of Pascal-Trouillot. Within a few days the military crushed the coup and Pascal-Trouillot was released, ushering in the Aristide era.
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, Nicaragua, 1990. Violeta Chamorro has the distinction of being the West’s first female president who was elected to the office rather than ending up there due to a coup or the line of succession. Her husband, Pedro Chamorro, was a famous journalist who was highly critical of the Somoza dictatorship during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. After a period of exile and several imprisonments, Pedro was assassinated in 1978, helping to spark the Sandinista revolution that overthrew the Somozas in 1979. At first Violeta Chamorro supported the Sandinistas and even served on the ruling junta for a year, but by the early 1980s she had returned to journalism, actively protesting the Marxist policies of the Sandinistas. When she was elected president in 1990, she controversially reversed many of these policies. She retired from office after her term was over in 1997.
Rosalia Arteaga, Ecuador, 1997. Rosalia Arteaga had become the vice president of Ecuador a year before the National Congress, supported by the military, accused president Abdala Bucaram of corruption and moved to remove him in 1997. The Ecuadorian constitution of the time did not specify who should take the presidency in this situation, and Arteaga sparred over it with the president of the Congress, Fabián Alarcón, until the National Congress assured Alarcón that the constitution would be rewritten to allow him to take the post. Alarcón surrendered, and Arteaga became Ecuador’s first female president. However, she only remained in office for two days, because the Congress quickly produced a new constitution and installed Alarcón as president.
Janet Jagan, Guyana, 1997. Janet Jagan was a vital member of the movement to establish Guyana’s independence from British rule. She helped create the nation’s first modern political party, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), in 1950 and later became a member of Parliament in 1973. Her husband was elected president in 1992, and after his death Jagan became Guyana’s first female prime minister and first vice president. She won the subsequent presidential election in 1997 as the PPP’s candidate, and was awarded the Gandhi Gold Medal for Peace, Democracy and Women’s Rights. In 1999 Jagan resigned from the presidency due to health issues.
Mireya Elisa Moscoso, Panama, 1999. Mireya Moscoso was the wife of former president Arnulfo Arias and held many small government positions before she created the Arnulfista Party in 1990, with which she ran for president in 1994 and 1999. On her second try she was elected. Moscoso oversaw the long-awaited transfer of the Panama Canal from U.S. to Panamanian hands in 1999. She left office in 2004.
Michelle Bachelet, Chile, 2006, 2014. Chile’s first female president is one of the earliest female Latin American politicians to launch a political career without the help of her husband’s name. During the 1970s she and members of her family publicly opposed and were detained and tortured by the Pinochet dictatorship, which made it hard for Bachelet to find work in politics until Pinochet finally fell 
from power in 1990. After running for president in 2005 for the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (CPD) and winning in the following runoff election in 2006, Bachelet faced tumultuous unrest among laborers and students and saw her popularity plummet.
However, her economic policies allowed Chile to pull through the global financial crisis in 2008 with relative ease, which resulted in her popularity spiking again. The Chilean constitution did not allow Bachelet to serve another consecutive term, so Bachelet stepped down for four years and then was elected again to the presidency in 2014. She immediately set about introducing reforms, including tax reform which increased the corporate tax rate and education reform to better fund public higher education. But in early 2015, Bachelet again saw her approval ratings drop sharply when multiple corruption scandals threatened the Chilean public’s confidence in its government. Bachelet addressed this by asking her entire cabinet to resign, but the Chilean people continued to express more and more discontent. In September of 2016, Bachelet’s approval rating became her lowest in history, reaching 19 percent.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina, 2007. “Queen Cristina” accomplished an enormous amount during her presidency, which was preceded by decades of political activism and a period of time as a senator before she was elected president in 2007. Cristina and her husband, Néstor Kirchner, president from 2003 to 2007, were something of a power couple until he died in October 2010. Cristina ran for reelection afterwards, taking the presidency in 2011 and leaving the post at the end of last year. Thanks to a majority in Congress, the leftist self-described Peronista was able to pass plenty of legislation, the most noteworthy of which included the approval of same-sex marriage (Argentina was the first Latin American country to do so), a plan to support children in poverty and in schools, and the reopening of cases against human rights offenders from Argentina’s “Dirty War” era three decades ago.
Cristina was consistently popular during her presidency due to her glamorous image and fiery passion, and despite the accusations of corruption and the scandals that she found herself in, especially nearing the end of her presidency. Even after her term ended, Cristina was not able to leave the national spotlight—the scandal in which she was embroiled has only expanded, resulting in formal charges of corruption for the former president and many of her associates in May 2016. Cristina maintains that she is innocent of all wrongdoing.
Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica, 2010. Costa Rica’s first female president was faced with a series of difficult situations during her presidency, the foremost of which was a border dispute with Nicaragua that almost turned into an armed conflict. Though Chinchilla was internationally praised for managing the incident well, the public complained that she did not give enough attention to domestic issues such as tax reform, and this combined with accusations of corruption throughout her administration contributed to low approval ratings that lasted through the end of her term in 2014.
Dilma Rousseff, Brazil, 2011. Dilma, Latin America’s most recently elected female president, is also Latin America’s first female president to be impeached. Once upon a time, Dilma was the popular, 
beloved protégé of popular, beloved former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as simply Lula), who prepared her for years to be his predecessor in 2011. Dilma enjoyed some success in tax reform and human rights investigations, but this success was soon threatened by Brazil’s growing economic problems.
Things have been looking bad for Dilma for over a year, since countless officials in the federal government—both allies and opponents of Dilma’s—were caught up in the Lava Jato scandal in 2015. Though Dilma herself was not directly tied to Lava Jato, she was accused of fixing federal accounts to cover up a deficit, and was removed from office in August. Now in power is Michel Temer, who had been Dilma’s vice president and who is nearly as disdained by the Brazilian public as she is. Temer himself has recently been found guilty of breaking campaign funding limits and accused of accepting bribes. Dilma and her successor are just two examples of Brazil’s historic struggle with government corruption.
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