Dilma Rousseff

As an active member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, banned in 1924, Petar Rusev fled Bulgaria in 1929 to escape political persecution; he settled in France.

He arrived in Brazil in the 1930s, already widowed (he left behind his son Lyuben-Kamen, who died in 2007), but soon moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He returned to Brazil several years later, settling in São Paulo, where he succeeded in business.

Petar Rusev adapted his first name to Portuguese (Pedro) and the last to French (Rousseff).

During a trip to Uberaba, he met Dilma Jane da Silva, a young schoolteacher born in Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro, and raised in Minas Gerais, where her parents were ranchers.

Dilma Vana Rousseff (born 14 December 1947) is a Brazilian economist and politician who is the Chair of the New Development Bank since March 2023.

Dilma Vana Rousseff was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil, on 14 December 1947, to Bulgarian lawyer and entrepreneur Pedro Rousseff (born Petar Rusеv, Петър Русев, 1900–1962) and schoolteacher Dilma Jane da Silva (26 June 1924 – 13 July 2019).

Her father was born in Gabrovo, in the Principality of Bulgaria, and was a friend of the Nobel Prize-nominated Bulgarian poet Elisaveta Bagryana.

Her father died in 1962, leaving behind about fifteen properties.

After the 1964 coup d'état she joined left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship.

In 1964 Rousseff left the conservative Colégio Sion and joined the Central State High School, a co-ed public school where the students often protested against the dictatorship that had been established after the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état.

In 1967 she joined Worker's Politics (Política Operária—POLOP), an organization founded in 1961 as a spinoff of the Brazilian Socialist Party.

Its members found themselves divided over methods; some wanted to advocate for the election of a constituent assembly, but others advocated an armed struggle.

Rousseff was captured, tortured, and jailed from 1970 to 1972.

After her release, Rousseff rebuilt her life in Porto Alegre with her husband Carlos Araújo.

They both helped to found the Democratic Labour Party (PDT) in Rio Grande do Sul, and participated in several of the party's electoral campaigns.

She became the treasury secretary of Porto Alegre under Alceu Collares, and later Secretary of Energy of Rio Grande do Sul under both Collares and Olívio Dutra.

The two married and settled in Belo Horizonte, where they had three children: Igor, Dilma Vana, and Zana Lúcia (who died in 1977).

Igor Rousseff, Dilma's elder brother, is a lawyer.

Pedro Rousseff was a contractor for Mannesmann steel in addition to building and selling real estate.

The family lived in a large house, had three servants, and maintained European habits.

The children had a classical education with both piano and French lessons.

After they overcame the initial resistance of the community to accepting foreigners, the family attended traditional clubs and schools.

Rousseff was enrolled in preschool at the Colégio Izabela Hendrix and primary school at Colégio Nossa Senhora de Sion, a girls' boarding school run by nuns, who primarily taught in French.

In 2001, after an internal dispute in the Dutra cabinet, she left the PDT and joined the Workers' Party (PT).

In 2002, Rousseff became an energy policy advisor to presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who on winning the election invited her to become his minister of energy.

She also previously served as the chief of staff to former and current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from 2005 to 2010.

Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte.

She became a socialist in her youth.

After chief of Staff José Dirceu resigned in 2005 in a political crisis triggered by the Mensalão corruption scandal, Rousseff became chief of staff and remained in that post until 31 March 2010, when she stepped down to run for president.

She was elected in a run-off in 2010, beating Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) candidate José Serra.

In 2014 she won a narrow second-round victory over Aécio Neves, also of PSDB, to serve her second term as president.

Impeachment proceedings against Rousseff began in the Chamber of Deputies on 3 December 2015.

Previously, she served as the 36th president of Brazil from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016.

She is the first woman to have held the Brazilian presidency.

On 12 May 2016, the Senate of Brazil suspended President Rousseff's powers and duties for up to six months or until the Senate decided whether to remove her from office or to acquit her.

Vice President Michel Temer assumed her powers and duties as acting president of Brazil during her suspension.

On 31 August 2016, the Senate voted 61–20 to convict, finding Rousseff guilty of breaking budgetary laws, and removed her from office.

On 5 August 2018, the PT officially launched Rousseff's candidacy for a seat in the Federal Senate from the state of Minas Gerais.

Rousseff finished fourth in the final vote and was defeated for her Senate run.