Carlos Menem

Born in 1930 to a Syrian family in La Rioja and raised Muslim, Menem became a Peronist after a trip to Buenos Aires and won the governorship in 1973, only to be jailed after the 1976 coup. Re-elected governor in 1983, he rose to the presidency in 1989 as hyperinflation forced his predecessor to resign early. His answer was the Convertibility plan of 1991 - pegging the peso to the dollar, privatizing state industries, and aligning Argentina with Washington and the Gulf War coalition - which worked until it didn't. Constitutional reform in 1994 let him win a second term in 1995, but a fresh economic crisis handed power to the opposition in 1999. He ran again in 2003, then withdrew to avoid a runoff loss; by then the courts had sentenced him twice for arms trafficking and embezzlement, though his senate seat kept him out of prison. He died in 2021 at 90, remembered for both taming inflation and for the corruption trials that followed him to the end.