Sao Paulo, Brazil (AHN) – Dilma Rousseff has been elected Brazil’s first woman president during a runoff. The former guerilla fighter was the Worker’s Party candidate and defeated opponent Jose Serra of the Brazilian Democratic Party.

Brazil’s new leader has never held an elected office. Rousseff has acknowledged that her popularity is largely the result of her endorsement by extremely popular president Lula da Silva, whose two terms in office turned Brazil into a world-class economic powerhouse.

Da Silva, who was ineligible to run for a third term, told voters that a vote for Rousseff was a vote for the continuation of his governing ideas.

The 62-year-old Rousseff, a twice-divorced grandmother, garnered 56 percent of the vote. In the 1950s, she told reporters, she wanted to be a ballerina. However the 1960s brought a military regime and the daughter of a well-educated Bulgarian émigré soon became a fighter for Brazil’s left-wing guerilla movement.

“I quickly discovered that the world had no place for debutantes,” Rousseff told reporters.

She was later charged with subversion and dubbed a “subversive Joan of Arc.”

The military arrested her in 1970 and she claims she was severely tortured. Two years later she was released and the military government in charge forbade her from engaging in political activities.

However, with the restoration of Democratic rule in the 1980s, Rousseff was able to reinvent herself once again. She held numerous political positions and garnered acclaim during her tenure as energy secretary in Rio Grande do Sul state.

Rousseff will assume office Jan. 1 and her term will include overseeing preparations for the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

She’s suggested that she’ll select experienced technocrats for important cabinet posts, a sign that some political analysts say that she is not seeking to radicalize the government.

“Dilma isn’t interested in international prestige; she doesn’t care if she is seen as a great world leader,” Rubens Barbosa, Brazil’s former ambassador to London and Washington, told the New York Times before all the votes were counted. “In the first few years of her administration she is going to concentrate more on domestic and economic policy, and less on taking the lead in international relations.”

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