With Juan Perón gravely ill, Isabel Perón was sworn in as acting president, becoming the Western Hemisphere's first female head of government.
On 29 June 1974, as her husband President Juan Domingo Perón lay gravely ill, Vice President Isabel Perón was sworn in as acting president of Argentina, temporarily assuming the powers of the presidency under constitutional succession procedures.
This moment marked the first time a woman assumed the functions of head of government and head of state in the Western Hemisphere. It came amid deep economic instability, rising political violence between left-wing Peronist youth factions and right-wing paramilitary groups (notably the Triple A), and uncertainty over the succession within the fractured Peronist coalition.
Isabel Perón, who had risen from being a cabaret dancer and Juan Perón's private secretary during his exile to vice president, now found herself thrust into acting executive authority with virtually no independent political experience, governing structure of her own, or ideological faction to rely upon. Her elevation exposed the fragility of the succession plan devised around a single charismatic leader, Juan Perón, whose health had been declining for months.
This brief period as acting president foreshadowed the permanent transfer of power that would occur just two days later upon Juan Perón's death, and it set in motion Isabel's unprecedented, if troubled, tenure as Argentina's — and the hemisphere's — first woman to lead a nation's executive branch.