Brazil’s New Woman President

Latin America has had its fair share of women leaders. (Think Argentina’s infamous Eva Peron, Chile’s first woman President Michelle Batchelet, and Argentina’s Cristina Kouchner). But the new president of Brazil has a more melodramatic background than any of them. Dilma Rousseff was born to an upper-middle-class family, attended a proper Catholic school where she majored in piano and French. But when she shifted to public school, just as the underground movement was forming in response to the military dictatorship in 1965, she joined the armed underground resistance at 17 and became a guerrilla leader. Married, divorced, married a second time, and again divorced (although she had a daughter), she kept up her militant underground activities until she was captured and imprisoned for  three years, and, by all accounts, tortured while in prison.

Once released from prison, she went to college and earned a degree in economics. When democracy was restored in Brazil in 1985, she joined the government and worked her way up to be Secretary of Energy. In that post, and later, as Executive Secretary to President Lula da Silva, she won a reputation for leading Brazil’s burgeoning economy, which has become the wealthiest in Latin America. She also worked with President Da Silva on the conditional cash transfer program (Bolsa Familia) which reduced the number of people living in poverty by 20 million.

Her mentor and enthusiastic supporter is President Da Silva who, prohibited by law from running for a third term himself, has championed the 62-year-old  economist to take over his job. “She won’t only carry on my legacy,” he told the press, “She will perfect it.”

There were 10 candidates who ran for the post of president. Eight of them, according to the ambassador of Brazil to the Philippines, Alcides Prates, had little chance of winning. Her principal opponent was Jose Serra, the well-respected governor of Sao Paulo state. Ambassador Prates also corroborated Western press reports that Ms. Rousseff was considered a good manager in her posts as Minister of Energy and Executive Secretary. “She has been active in running the country.”

Today, thanks to its impressive agricultural revolution, Brazil has emerged after 30 years of testing different systems, as the leading tropical food giant, changing its global role from importer to exporter. (Of cotton, corn, soybeans, and beef.)

Ms. Rousseff did not join President Lula’s party until 2001. But with his enthusiastic backing and promises that she would continue his successful pro-poor and macroeconomic policies, she was a clear winner. The majority of Brazil’s 136 million voters thought so.