Star Stella on brink of historic Brazil win

LATIN America is no stranger to female leaders, but not many can match the radical political trajectory of Dilma Rousseff, the 62-year-old one-time Marxist guerrilla leader who stands to become Brazil's first female president.

• Woman on top: Dilma Rousseff on the campaign trail with president Luiz Incio 'Lula' da Silva Photographs: AFP/Getty Images/AP

For Rousseff, a twice-divorced economist, to become Brazil's president - either by winning outright in elections today, or in a later run-off - would be historic enough. What's more, she would rule a country with the eighth-largest economy in the world, the wealthiest in Latin America.

Until a year ago, Rousseff, the former chief of staff of president Luiz Incio "Lula" da Silva, had worked mostly behind the scenes, by most accounts an effective and respected civil servant in the shadow of the popular president universally known as Lula. Forbidden by law to run for a third term, Da Silva encouraged Rousseff and became her loudest and most passionate cheerleader.

Underrated in the mostly male world of Brazil's electoral politics, Rousseff took off slowly last year, mostly because she was undergoing treatment for lymphoma. She went on the campaign trail in full force in the spring and moved past her main opponent, the ex-governor of So Paulo, Jos Serra, who lost to Da Silva in the race for president in 2002.

Rousseff had a mostly smooth ride until last month, amid allegations that the family of a former aide, Erenice Guerra, who succeeded her as chief of staff, was taking bribes to procure government contracts for businesses. Rousseff was not mentioned in the allegations; she has since wobbled somewhat in the polls but is still widely predicted to best Serra.

If she has a theme, it is her allegiance to Da Silva's policies. "I'm proud to be associated with the government of President Lula because we showed that distribution of income was a necessary condition to make Brazil independent and achieve stability," she said last week during a televised debate.

She emphasised that Brazil - sitting among other things on new oil fields discovered off its coast - no longer needed foreign assistance to meet external obligations.

Victory would place Rousseff in a gallery of female leaders in Latin America, most of them offspring of relatively privileged and educated families. Among these successful Latin American women is Michelle Bachelet, 59, the first female president of Chile, single mother of three and a paediatrician, who survived prison torture, exile and the Pinochet regime to win the presidency in 2006. She served until March of this year.

While Bachelet broke down barriers for women, Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner, 57, president of Argentina and wife of former President Nstor Kirchner, has battled for gay rights, successfully supporting same-sex marriage.Fernndez can seem somewhat erratic, plying unorthodox economic policies, thumbing her nose at the likes of the IMF and having few financial ties to the world. But Argentina's economy is booming, her approval ratings are improving and she may win a second term next year.

In Peru, Keiko Fujimori, the 35-year-old daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, supports the capitalist- oriented framework that has bolstered Peru's economy. Although her father is in jail, a poll taken in late September showed Fujimori leading three potential opponents - all men - in the presidential election set for next spring.

The pragmatic economic policy of Brazil, which Rousseff has stoked in nearly ten years in the Da Silva administration, has helped vault her toward the presidency. She has said that Brazil can keep growing at 7 per cent per year, that she will create millions of jobs, improve infrastructure and use Brazil's new wealth to support social-welfare plans and market-friendly policies.

Such capitalist talk seems far from the days when Rousseff's nom de guerre was Stella, and she handled weapons and commanded male comrades. For her role in the armed underground resistance to the military dictatorship of the 1960s and 1970s, she served three years in prison, where she was repeatedly tortured.

Rousseff grew up in an upper middle-class household in Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais. Her father, Pedro Rousseff, who died in 1962, was born Petar Russev in Bulgaria; her mother, Dilma Jane Silva, was the daughter of ranchers. Young Dilma attended Catholic boarding schools, studied piano and French. But her structured life changed when she went to public school and discovered the underground movement. It was 1965, and she was 17.

In a few years, she joined the underground, got married, imposed herself among men, divorced her husband, married another and gave birth to a daughter, her only child (she has since divorced again).

Out of prison, she left the underground and went to college. When democracy was restored in the mid-1980s, she had an economics degree and soon became energy secretary in Rio Grande do Sul. When Da Silva was elected president she became his energy secretary, and later, chief of staff.

Analysts credit her surge in part to Brazil's high-paced economy and expanded aid for low-income families. But more than any other factor, Rousseff owes her success to Da Silva, who has said, "She won't only carry on my legacy but perfect it and do much more."