Изабель Мартинес де Перон: Аргентинаның тұңғыш әйел президенті

President of Argentina from 1974 to 1976

Isabel Martínez de Perón (isaˈβel maɾˈtines ðe peˈɾon, born María Estela Martínez Cartas; 4 February 1931) 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. Perón was the third wife of President Juan Perón. During her husband's third term as president from 1973 to 1974, she served as both the 29th Vice President and First Lady of Argentina. From 1974 until her resignation in 1985, she was also the 2nd President of the Justicialist Party. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Dr. Héctor José 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. Isabel had to take over as Acting President on several occasions during his tenure. Although she lacked Evita Perón's charisma, the grieving widow at first attracted support from the nation. She pledged to uphold the social market economy policies embodied in the 1973 "Social Pact" as well her husband's long held orthodox Peronism and economic nationalism; her first significant economic policy decisions were the enactment of a new, pro labor employment contract law and the granting to YPF a monopoly over filling stations. Even leftist groups, having fallen out with Juan Perón in previous months, publicly offered support to her. However she cancelled meetings with various constituent and political groups, and the sympathy resulting from her husband's death soon dissipated. Her government purged most leftists from university posts and the administration, and (as her husband and other Argentine presidents had done) used Federal intervention powers to unseat leftist governors. Following a string of political murders and a break by the Montoneros with the government, on 30 September Perón signed the Anti Terrorism Law. This was the first in a series of measures which eroded constitutional rights, ostensibly for the sake of combating leftist violence. Atrocities were also being committed by left wing extremists. Organised in 1968, the anarchist Montoneros murdered former head of state Pedro Aramburu, popular CGT union Secretary General José Ignacio Rucci, construction workers' union leader Rogelio Coria, former Interior Minister Arturo Mor Roig and U. S. Consul John Egan, among other murders and kidnappings. Throughout 1974, the rise of a new and nearly as violent Trotskyite group, the ERP, added to the cycle of violence. Having gained notoriety after the murder of FIAT executive Oberdan Sallustro, the ERP began the year with a violent assault on the Azul barracks. It murdered, among others, a criminal court judge, Jorge Quiroga; the writer Jordán Bruno Genta; and the publisher of La Plata's centrist El Día, David Kraiselburd. The kidnapping of Esso executive Victor Samuelson, freed for a ransom of US$12 million, ignited what would become a rash of such crimes. However, the government and paramilitaries used this environment to target and murder many legitimate opponents of the regime, as listed above. Following the murder of Buenos Aires Police Chief Alberto Villar (one of López Rega's closest collaborators in the Triple A) and his wife, as well as amid increasing activity by the ERP in the Province of Tucumán, Perón was persuaded to declare a state of siege on 6 November (suspending, among other rights, habeas corpus). Censorship also increased markedly, culminating in the closure by decree of one of the leading news dailies in Latin America (Crónica) and several other publications, as well as the banning of Argentine television figures such as talk show host Mirtha Legrand and comedian Tato Bores. Operation Independence began in Tucumán on 5 February 1975. This military campaign, though successful from a military standpoint, gained notoriety for its brutality; in addition to going after insurgents, it attacked elected officials, magistrates, University of Tucumán faculty, and even secondary school teachers. The government turned on the labor movement, the mainstay of Peronism for the better part of a quarter century, classifying it as "subversive" and subject to reprisals. The November 1974 election of a left wing union shop steward at a Villa Constitución steel mill and its disapproval by steelworkers' leader Lorenzo Miguel (a leading figure in the paramount CGT), resulted in a brutal 20 March 1975 police assault on the facility. The raid, executed jointly with Triple A heavies, led to the "disappearances" of many of the 300 workers arrested. Stacking the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) with Fascists loyal to him, Lopez Rega hastened unprecedented intrigue, culminating in the kidnapping of Jorge and Juan Born, prominent local executives who paid US$60 million for their release (a world record at the time). Using contacts from among the Montoneros' many double agents, the agency kept the Born brothers in a known SIDE safehouse for nine months until their June 1975 release without public suspicion of SIDE involvement, a successful false flag operation that led to others (albeit less ambitious ones) in the following months. Isabel Perón initially maintained the Social Pact inherited from her husband, and succeeded in enhancing it with reforms such as the enactment in December 1974 of payroll taxes to strengthen the Public Retirement System. Yielding to pressure from labor she ignored the incomes policy aspect of the Social Pact, however, and while the economy remained otherwise stable, a price/wage spiral ensued with inflation rising from a low of 12% a year at the height of the Social Pact in May 1974 to 80% a year later. The Social Pact also faced growing opposition by employers, particularly after conservative members of the General Economic Council (CGE) split from the conciliatory CGE in March 1975 to form the more combative APEGE; this group would later adopt the tactic of staging recurring lockouts against the administration. Faced with record trade and budget deficits, the new Economy Minister, Celestino Rodrigo, proceeded to apply economic shock therapy in June. These measures doubled rates and fares and ordered a surprise halving of the peso's value, which, by forcing those who could to stampede towards the U. S. dollar, destroyed the fragile financial balance that had been maintained to that point.

López Rega left the country on 19 July. Shortly afterward, Perón dismissed her protégés in the Economy Ministry, Celestino Rodrigo, and in the Armed Forces High Command, General Alberto Numa Laplane, whom she replaced in August with General Jorge Videla, a quiet career officer with an uneventful military record. The Montoneros, moreover, began a series of audacious attacks on military installations, including August dynamiting of the nearly finished destroyer Santísima Trinidad near the port of La Plata and the Operation Primicia, a terrorist attack on a military base in Formosa Province on 5 October. Anxious to placate the exasperated public, the military, hard line labor leaders (particularly the steelworkers' Lorenzo Miguel), and most other Peronists, on 6 October she and Lúder signed new measures giving blanket immunity for the Armed Forces that they may (in her words) "annihilate subversive elements throughout the country" – in effect a nationwide extension of the state of siege that had been imposed in Tucumán. and with the resignation in January 1976 of Interior Minister Ángel Robledo, her chief legislative and military point man. Isabel Perón granted ever more significant policy concessions to the largely conservative military in the early months of 1976, from security matters to economic. The media were by then openly counting down the days to the expected coup d'état, and several newspapers published editorials calling for Perón's overthrow. Even as the joint chiefs professed loyalty to La Presidente, the Armed Forces High Command had already given final approval to a coup, code named 'Operation Aries', when the president returned from her leave of absence in October 1975. After working late into the evening of 23 March 1976, in the hope of averting a renewed business lockout, Perón celebrated her executive assistant's birthday with staff. Alerted to suspicious military exercises, she boarded the presidential helicopter shortly after midnight. It did not fly her to the Quinta de Olivos presidential residence but to an Air Force base in nearby Jorge Newbery International Airport, where she was formally deposed and arrested. and relocated to a townhouse in the western suburb of Villafranca del Castillo. Following the restoration of democracy in Argentina, Perón was pardoned from charges of corruption during her presidency and returned in December 1983 as a guest of honor at President Raúl Alfonsín's inauguration, and in May 1984 to participate in policy talks arranged by Alfonsín and opposition leaders. Still nominally head of Juan Perón's Justicialist Party, she played a constructive role in the talks, supporting cooperation between the restive CGT labor union (her party's political base) and Alfonsín. The talks concluded with a weak agreement, and she resigned from her post as titular head of the party. She returned to Argentina in 1988 to resolve probate disputes concerning the Perón estate, then resumed residence in Spain under a very low profile.

A judge in Mendoza, Argentina in November 2006 demanded testimony from Isabel Perón, along with other Peronist ministers of her government, in a case involving forced disappearances during her presidency; on 12 January 2007, she was arrested by police in Madrid. She was charged by the Argentine authorities with the disappearance of Héctor Aldo Fagetti Gallego on 25 February 1976, and for crimes related to her issuance of 6 October 1975 decree calling the Armed Forces to "annihilate subversive elements." The 2006 capture in Spain of Triple A death squad overseer Rodolfo Almirón, who had also been in charge of López Rega's and Isabel Perón's personal security, shed further light on the extent of Triple A involvement in the early stages of the Dirty War. Isabel Perón's extradition to Argentina was refused by Spain on 28 March 2008. Spain's National Court ruled twice that the charges against her did not constitute crimes against humanity, adding that the statute of limitations on the charges expired after 20 years.