Santiago Pena

Santiago Pena Palacios, born November 16, 1978, in Asuncion, has served as the 52nd President of Paraguay since August 15, 2023. An economist with degrees from the Universidad Catolica Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion and Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, he worked as an economist at the Central Bank of Paraguay from 2000 to 2009 and later served as Minister of Finance under President Horacio Cartes from 2015 to 2017. He belonged to the Authentic Radical Liberal Party for about twenty years before joining the conservative Colorado Party in 2016. After losing the Colorado Party's 2018 presidential primary to Mario Abdo Benitez, he secured the party's nomination in 2022 and won the April 2023 general election with 43.9 percent of the vote, defeating Efrain Alegre by about fifteen points. At 44, he became Paraguay's youngest president since the restoration of democracy in 1989.