Brazil's Dilma Rousseff to Visit Her Father's Bulgaria Early in October - Report

Brazil`s President, Dilma Rousseff, speaks during a rally to support the government`s plans to tackle poverty, in Brasilia, Brazil, 17 August 2011. EPA/BGNES

Brazil's Bulgaria-descended President Dilma Rousseff will visit the Balkan country at the beginning of October, sources have told the Bulgarian BGNES news agency.

On September 02, Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov met his Brazilian counterpart Antonio Patriota and confirmed Rousseff will visit Bulgaria soon, but no official date was set.

Dilma Vana Rousseff was born on December 14, 1947, in Belo Horizonte, in the family of Bulgarian immigrant Petar Rusev (1900-1962), aka Pedro Rousseff, a lawyer and construction entrepreneur, and Dilma Jane Silva, a school teacher whose parents were ranchers. Her sister Zana Lucia died in 1977 at the age of 26. Dilma's brother Igor Rousseff is a lawyer. Dilma's Bulgarian father, Petar Rusev, died in 1962 when she was 15.

In 2003, Brazilian President Lula surprisingly chose Dilma for Minister of Energy. She became most famous for implementing a program called "Electricity for All" designed to bring electric power to households of Brazil's underdeveloped and remote regions, and was later picked to be his Chief of Staff.

Dilma has become the first female head of government in the history of Brazil, and the first de facto female head of state since the death of Maria I, Queen of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves in 1816.

Even though her country's economy has slowed down after the boom in the years of her predecessor, Lula da Silva, Rousseff still enjoys a good deal of support and is considered to be one of the world's most influential women.

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