MIAMI— Janet Rosenberg Jagan, Guyana’s only female president
and one of the few Jewish heads of state in Caribbean history, has died.

Rosenberg, a veteran politician and co-founder of Guyana’s People’s
Progressive Party, died Saturday from an abdominal aneurysm. She was 88.

She was believed to be the only Jew living in Guyana, a nation of
740,000 dominated by Hindus and Muslims of East Indian descent, and
Christians of African origin.

Her husband, Cheddi Jagan, was elected president in 1992, and his
wife took over the job shortly after his death in 1997. She resigned
after nearly two years in office because of a heart attack.

Jagan will be given a state funeral Tuesday in Georgetown, the
capital city. President Bharrat Jagdeo cut short his official visit to
the Middle East to attend.

Born into a middle-class Chicago Jewish family, Jagan was a product
of the Great Depression. At the age of 22, while a nursing student at
Cook County Hospital, she fell in love with Cheddi Jagan, a dental
student from British Guiana. Against the wishes of both families, the
couple married and moved to Georgetown.

Their involvement in leftist politics landed both in jail, though in
1966 the Jagans helped win independence for Guyana, an English-speaking
nation that is geographically in South America but considers itself
culturally and politically part of the Caribbean.

"Cheddi and I always believed in socialism," Jagan told JTA in an
exclusive interview three years ago. "To us that meant getting rid of
oppression so the poor man could get out of poverty and enjoy the
fruits of this country."

Despite her worsening diabetes and other ailments, however, Jagan
continued to work at the party headquarters nearly up until the time of
her death.