Carlos Saúl Menem was born in Anillaco, Argentina, on July 2, 1930, one of the four children of Saúl and Mohibe Akil Menem, Syrian immigrants. His father, a merchant, sent all his children to college. Carlos Saúl attended the National University of Córdoba, in the second city of Argentina. He graduated in law in 1955 and became a passionate Peronist.
In 1966, he married Zulema Yoma. They had two sons, Zulema Menem and Carlos Saúl Jr., divorced in 1991. In 2001, he married Cecilia Bolocco. They had a son, Máximo, and divorced in 2011. Carlos Saúl Jr. died in a helicopter accident in 1995.
Beyond daughter, Zulema Menem, and her son Máximo Menem Bolocco, survivors include another son, Carlos Nair Menem and a brother, Eduardo.
Mr. Menem was briefly arrested when Perón was overthrown in 1955. He later joined the Justicialista Party, successor to the Peronist Party. In 1973, on returning from exile, Perón returned to seize power. Mr. Menem, leader of his provincial party, was elected governor of the province of La Rioja.
Perón died in 1974 and was succeeded by his third wife, Isabel Martínez de Perón, who was deposed in 1976 by a junta that also dismissed and arrested Mr. Menem for several years. In 1983, after the collapse of the junta, Alfonsín was elected president and Menem was again elected governor of the province of La Rioja. He was re-elected in 1987.
In 1989, when Argentina’s economy began to decline sharply, Menem was elected president, despite ample uncertainty about what he stood for. Analysts said his popularity, like Perón’s, was in his personal appeal, not in any programs, which he did not detail.
“Menem is a kind of Reagan,” a prominent Peronist told The Times during the campaign. “He is a great communicator with a dozen basic ideas, who has a great instinct for dealing with people, but has little interest in detailed programmatic ideas. The result is, inevitably, some ambiguities, but this does not concern his followers. “