Central American women in politics are featured in this August 28 article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Tim Johnson:
GUATEMALA CITY — In a country where machismo is still the rule, Sandra Torres doesn’t cut the demure figure of past first ladies.
She doesn’t host social events or boost charities. What she does do is give orders — lots of them.
Torres oversees President Alvaro Colom’s huge state program of social assistance, which involves anti-poverty handouts to hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. She oversees the work of several Cabinet members.
Now there’s talk that Torres will try to succeed her husband in the presidency in elections late next year. The talk has raised a flurry of heated debate.
“She’s a person who generates a lot of passions,” acknowledged Fernando Barillas, a spokesman for the ruling National Union of Hope party, which Colom and Torres founded.
Torres hasn’t openly declared her candidacy, but if she does, she’ll follow in well-trod footsteps around the hemisphere. Even today, two other active first ladies — in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic — are pondering presidential bids, and in Peru, the first daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori is a front-runner in the presidential race.
Read the rest of the article here.