Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the 2000s. This group included, among others, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Kirchner has been an unconditional supporter of Chávez and Maduro. As Paraguay rejected the incorporation of Venezuela into the Mercosur trade bloc, she took advantage of the impeachment of Fernando Lugo to claim that Paraguay had suffered a coup d'état and proposed to temporarily remove the country from the bloc. With the support of the other presidents, Paraguay was removed
Presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to an unprecedented 23%. Once recovered from the conflict with agrarian interests, Cristina Kirchner's public approval improved; her job approval ratings rose by 30% ("Poliarquía", 08/22/08). Her inflexible handling of the protests and reluctance to review the policies that sparked the protest have led to speculation that it is her husband, predecessor in office and current leader of the Justicialist Party, Néstor Kirchner, who controls her administration. The British weekly newspaper "The Economist" has described this situation as Kirchner "paying the price for her husband's pig-headedness", and as of February 2009, her job approval rating was 28%. On October 20,