LA PAZ: Lydia Gueiler Tejada, who became Bolivia's first woman president, an interim head of state from 1979-80, has died at age 89 after a long illness, local media reported Monday. "She passed away in peace after losing strength over the past few weeks," her grandson Luis Eduardo Siles told Fides radio. Gueiler was just the second woman president in South America after Isabel Peron in Argentina,
who took over after the death of her husband in 1974. A key lawmaker in the 1950s and 1960s, Gueiler was asked by rival political parties in 1979 to head a government restoring democratic rule after a military coup that ousted the elected leader.
During her presidency, Gueiler came under pressure from the armed forces, bristled by the participation of left wing and center left politicians in her government. She was then ousted in an army coup in July 1980.
Gueiler later served as a diplomat and a senator before retiring from public office in the 1990s.
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