Isabel Martínez de Perón

Isabel Martínez de Perón was born Isabel Martínez on February 4, 1931, in La Rioja, Argentina. She would become the third wife of Juan Perón and President of Argentina from July 1974 to March 1976.

She met her future husband during his exile in Paraguay. At the time Isabel was a nightclub dancer. Perón was attracted to her beauty and believed she could provide him with the female companionship he had been lacking since the death of his second wife, Evita.

Perón brought Isabel with him when he moved to Spain in 1960. Authorities in the strongly Catholic nation did not approve of Perón's living arangements with this young woman, so in 1961 the former president reluctantly got married for a third time.

As Perón began to return to an active role in Argentinian politics, Isabel would often be used as a go-between from Spain to South America. Perón was forbidden from returning to Argentina, so his new wife would travel in his stead and report back to him when she returned.

It was also around this time that Isabel met José López Rega, an occult philosopher and fortune teller. Isabel was quite interested in such matters, so the two became fast friends. Under pressure from Isabel, Perón appointed Rega as his personal secretary.

In 1973 Perón was persuaded to return to Argentina and run for president. He agreed and, in a surprisingly uncontroversial move, chose Isabel as his running mate. Isabel had very little in the way of politicial experience or ambitions and she was a very different personality from Evita, who had been denied the post of vice president years earlier.

Perón died on July 1, 1974, less than a year after being elected. Isabel assumed the presidency. By this time, Jose López Rega, who had been slowly consolidating his power over the years by controlling Isabel, emerged as the clear power behind the throne – a notion which greatly frightened the military. Isabel agreed to fire López, but the military concluded that with Argentina's prevailing climate of widespread strikes and political terrorism, a weak-willed and unexperienced woman would not be a suitable president. On March 24, 1976, she was kidnapped and deposed in a bloodless coup. After remaining under house arrest for five years, she was sent into exile in 1981.