Carlos Ruckauf

Carlos Ruckauf
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office January 2, 2002 – May 25, 2003
President	Eduardo Duhalde
Preceded by	José María Vernet
Succeeded by	Rafael Bielsa
Governor of Buenos Aires Province
In office December 10, 1999 – January 2, 2002
Preceded by	Eduardo Duhalde
Succeeded by	Felipe Solá
31st Vice-President of Argentina
In office July 8, 1995 – December 10, 1999
President	Carlos Saúl Menem
Preceded by	Eduardo Duhalde
Succeeded by	Carlos Álvarez
Personal details
Born	July 10, 1944 (1944-07-10) Ramos Mejía
Political party	Justicialist Party

Carlos Federico Ruckauf (born July 10, 1944) is a Peronist politician in Argentina, member of the Justicialist Party.

Biography

Carlos Federico Ruckauf was born in the western Buenos Aires suburb of Ramos Mejía. His parents separated when he was seven, and he lived in Mar del Plata, Salta, and Buenos Aires during the remainder of his childhood. Ruckauf enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, and earned a juris doctor in 1967. He was hired as a fingerprint analyst by an insurance company, and was elected Adjunct Secretary of the Insurance Employees' Union, a member union of the CGT, in 1969. He married María Isabel Zapatero, and they had two children.

In this capacity, Ruckauf became a close ally of Lorenzo Miguel, leader of the Steelworkers' Union, and with the return of Peronists to power in 1973, he was appointed to the bench as a Labor court judge. Following a cabinet reshuffle in the wake of the Rodrigazo crisis, Miguel recommended him to President Isabel Perón for the post of Minister of Labour in July, during which tenure he signed decree 261/75. The order, signed on October 6, granted blanket amnesty to the Armed Forces for the "annihilation of subversives," and was an important early milestone in what would become the "Dirty War;" Ruckauf himself was later accused of being responsible for the "disappearance" of 14 Mercedes-Benz workers in 1975. He remained in office until the March 1976 coup, after which he managed to escape arrest, allegedly with the support of Admiral Eduardo Massera, through a Federal Police official, Ramón Ramírez.

Carlos Ruckauf became president of the Buenos Aires City chapter of the Justicialist Party in 1983, when democratic rule was restored. Elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1987, he was designated Ambassador plenipotentiary of Argentina in Italy, Malta and the FAO by the newly-elected President Carlos Menem in 1989, serving as ambassador until 1991. He was returned by voters to Congress in 1991, and named Interior Minister by Menem on March 1, 1993; relatives to the victims of the 1994 AMIA bombing later put his role during the crisis into question. He was nominated as Menem's running-mate for the 1995 reelection campaign, and served as Vice-President of Argentina from 1995 to 1999.

Elected Governor of Buenos Aires Province in 1999, he issued the provincial Patacón bonds in August 2001 to deal with the scarcity of Argentine pesos when the 2001 Argentine economic crisis entered its most acute phase. The new President appointed by a crisis meeting of Congress, Eduardo Duhalde, named Ruckauf Foreign Minister on January 2, 2002. He served in that position until May 25, 2003, when the Duhalde government left office.

Later in 2003 Ruckauf was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies for Buenos Aires Province. He sat in the center-right Federal Peronism caucus opposed to the government of Néstor Kirchner, until leaving Congress in 2007.

External links

Political offices
Preceded by Eduardo Duhalde	Vice President of Argentina 1995 - 1999	Succeeded by Carlos Álvarez
	Governor of Buenos Aires Province 1999–2002	Succeeded by Felipe Solá