orig. María Estela Martínez Cartas
born Feb. 4, 1931, La Rioja, Arg.
Third wife of Juan Perón and president of Argentina (1974–76).
Born into a lower-middle-class family, she was a dancer when she met Perón in 1955 or 1956. They married during his exile in 1961, and she became his running mate in the 1973 presidential election. She succeeded him when he died in 1974, inheriting problems of inflation and political violence, which she tried
ineffectively
to solve by printing money and imposing a state of siege. She was deposed in 1976; after five years of house arrest, she was convicted of corruption but permitted to go into exile in Spain.