Argentina's first elected female leader, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has announced that she has thyroid cancer. She became president in 2007 immediately succeeding her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, but she will hand over power to her vice president on Jan. 4 for 20 days so she can undergo surgery. Fernandez, who has been compared to Argentina's icon Evita, is extremely popular and just won a second term in a landslide victory this past Fall. Her husband died suddenly in October 2010 from a heart attack, but a spokesperson said her diagnosis is good.
From 2003 to 2007 Fernandez, 58, was the country's first lady, although she's always been a politician herself, elected repeatedly to Argentina's National Congress. After her husband declined to run for a second term, she was nominated for the presidency and won. Although she's the first woman to be elected president in Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner isn't the first woman to serve in that role, nor the first former first lady to. Isabel Martínez de Perón was vice president to her husband, then President Juan Perón, and she assumed the presidency when he died in 1974, becoming the first non-royal woman head of state in the Western Hemisphere.
Take a look at President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner through the years now.
2 Comments