| Rossana Chahla | |
| Birthname: | Rossana Elena Chahla |
| Office: | Mayor of San Miguel de Tucumán |
| Term Start: | 28 October 2023 |
| Predecessor: | Germán Alfaro |
| Office2: | National Deputy |
| Term Start2: | 10 December 2021 |
| Term End2: | 28 October 2023 |
| Successor2: | Elia Mansilla |
| Office3: | Minister of Public Health of Tucumán Province |
| Governor3: | Juan Manzur |
| Term Start3: | 29 October 2015 |
| Term End3: | 7 December 2021 |
| Predecessor3: | Pablo Yedlin |
| Successor3: | Luis Medina Ruiz |
| Birth Date: | 3 April 1966 |
| Birth Place: | San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina |
| Parents: | Elías Chahla Amelia Testa |
| Spouse: | Marcelo San Pedro |
| Children: | 3 |
| Education: | Doctorate in Medicine (Gynaecology) Master in Medical Education Diploma in Direction of Health Systems |
| Alma Mater: | National University of Tucumán |
| Occupation: | Gynaecologist |
| Party: | Justicialist Party |
| Otherparty: | Peronist Loyalty Frente de Todos (2019–2023) Unión por la Patria (2023–present) |
| Website: | rossanachahla.com.ar |
Rossana Elena Chahla (born 3 April 1966) is an Argentine gynaecologist and politician. A member of the Justicialist Party, she has been serving as Mayor of San Miguel de Tucumán since 2023, the first woman to hold the office. She was previously a National Deputy from 2021 to 2023 representing Tucumán Province for the Frente de Todos and, before that, the Public Health Minister of Tucumán Province between 2015 and 2019.
As a physician, she specialized in reproductive medicine, colposcopy, obstetrics and public health and is a titular professor of the chair of Gynaecology of the National University of Tucumán, a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists since 2011 and a member of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. She was President of the Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Tucumán between 2000 and 2002 and Director of the Institute of Maternity and Gynaecology "Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes" between 2003 and 2015.[1]
Rossana was born in San Miguel de Tucumán on 3 April 1966 to businessman Elías Chahla, son of a Syriac Orthodox Syrian immigrant from Homs who was himself married to a Maronite Lebanese woman from Beirut, and Amelia Testa, an Italian from Liguria.[2] Rossana was raised Roman Catholic.[2] She completed her primary and secondary studies at the Colegio Nuestra Señora del Huerto in her birth city. She got her license and doctorate in medicine from the National University of Tucumán.[3]
After taking up the governorship of Tucumán in 2015, Juan Manzur appointed Chahla as provincial Minister of Public Health after having positively evaluated her direction in the Institute of Maternity and Gynaecology, which Chahla had been carrying out since November 2003.[4] During her tenure in the ministry, a discussion for the decriminalization of abortion in Argentina took place, which she did not support.[5]
She headed the list of candidates for national deputies of the Frente de Todos for Tucumán in the legislative elections of 2021, being seconded by Agustín Fernández. In them, she obtained the first place with 42.15% of the votes, winning in all the departments of the province except Capital, Chicligasta and Yerba Buena. The competing lists of Juntos por el Cambio and Fuerza Republicana obtained 39.94% and 10.48% respectively of the votes in those same elections.[6]
In the provincial elections of 2023, she was the candidate of the provincial ruling party on the list "Peronist Loyalty" for the municipality of San Miguel de Tucumán, then incumbed by the opposition Germán Alfaro. Despite being one of the three districts where Chahla had lost in the 2021 legislative elections, she won against the opposition candidate Beatriz Ávila (National Senator and spouse of Alfaro) by 6,205 votes, according to the final count of votes. The seat which she occupied in Congress, with a mandate until 2025, will be occupied by Elia Fernández de Mansilla, mayor of the municipality of Aguilares.[7]
She is married to Marcelo San Pedro, who works in the sale of scientific equipment, and has three children. She has a sister named María Emilia Chahla, with whom she is often mentioned in the press in relation to an ongoing filiation lawsuit initiated in 1999 by Ángel Eduardo Páez, who claims to share her biological father.[8] Rossana is not opposed to marriage equality.[9]
| Office | List | Votes | Result | . | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | % | . | ||||||
| 2023 | Mayor of San Miguel de Tucumán | Front of All for Tucumán | 158,564 | 41.96% | 1st | [11] | ||
| Office | List | District | Votes | Result | . | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | % | . | ||||||||
| 2021 | National Deputy | Frente de Todos | 1 | Tucumán Province | 408,245 | 42.18% | 1st | [12] | ||