President

Institutional context

The President of Bolivia is the head of state and head of government. Bolivia's twentieth-century political history is marked by recurrent transitions between elected civilian governments and military regimes; the presidency was held by men exclusively from the country's nineteenth-century founding through November 1979.

Career path

Lidia Gueiler Tejada (1921–2011) trained as an accountant and entered politics through the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario after the 1952 Bolivian National Revolution. She served in the Chamber of Deputies and as President of the Chamber from August 1979.

Appointment

Following a chaotic period of transitions in late 1979 — the brief presidency of Wálter Guevara, the failed Natusch coup of 1 November, and the subsequent restoration of constitutional order — the Bolivian Congress selected Gueiler Tejada as interim President on 16 November 1979 to administer the scheduled June 1980 election.

Tenure

Eight months. Her interim government was deposed by the so-called Cocaine Coup on 17 July 1980, led by General Luis García Meza. She subsequently lived in exile.

Cluster context

Gueiler Tejada's appointment as interim President is the dataset's earliest first-woman event in South America. As an interim head of state appointed by a deadlocked legislature during a constitutional crisis, her event is structurally different from the elected first-woman heads of state who follow in the region (Chamorro Nicaragua 1990, Moscoso Panama 1999, Bachelet Chile 2006). The dataset preserves the distinction.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Lidia Gueiler Tejada
• Wikipedia — President of Bolivia