During a trip to Uberaba, he met Dilma Jane da Silva, a young schoolteacher born in Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro, and raised in Minas Gerais, where her parents were ranchers.

[22] There were many people from Minas Gerais in the Rio de Janeiro cell of Colina (including now-former Belo Horizonte mayor Fernando Pimentel, then 18 years old), but the organization had no shelter for them.

What characterizes us is to have dared to want a better country.Carlos Araújo was chosen as one of the six leaders of VAR Palmares, a "political-military organization of Marxist-Leninist partisan orientation which aims to fulfill the tasks of the revolutionary war and the establishment of the working class party, in order to seize power and build socialism.

"[26] According to Maurício Lopes Lima, a former member of Operação Bandeirantes [pt] (OBAN) – a para-legal structure which included the intelligence and torture services of the Armed Forces—Rousseff was the primary leader of VAR Palmares, and he received reports calling her "one of the brains" of the revolution.

[29][31] Testimonials and police reports indicated that Rousseff was responsible for managing the money from the robbery, paying the salaries of the militants, finding a shelter for the group, and buying a Volkswagen Beetle.

She avoided the risk of keeping them in apartments by moving with a friend (Maria Celeste Martins, who would become her chief of staff assistant decades later) to a simple boarding house in the eastern zone of the city, where they hid the weapons under their beds.

Although she revealed the locations of some militants during torture interrogation, Rousseff managed to preserve the identities of Carlos Araújo (who would be arrested several months later) and Maria Celeste Martins.

[49] She spent some time recovering with family in Minas Gerais, visited an aunt in São Paulo, then moved to Porto Alegre, where Carlos Araújo was finishing the last months of his sentence.

After graduation, she got her first paid job after serving her prison sentence as an intern at the Foundation of Economics and Statistics (Portuguese: Fundação de Economia e Estatística—FEE), an organization linked to the government of Rio Grande do Sul.

At that time, she began attending a discussion group formed by other VAR Palmares former members, such as Rui Falcão, Antonio Roberto Espinosa, and eventually Carlos Araújo.

After the last debate with four other candidates, on 30 September 2010, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which was aired on national TV, Rousseff flew to Porto Alegre for the christening of Gabriel in the Cathedral of Our Lady Mother of God on 1 October 2010.

[57] At a press conference on 25 April 2009, Rousseff revealed that she was undergoing treatment to remove an early-stage axillar lymphoma, a cancer in the lymphatic system, which was detected in her left armpit during a routine mammogram.

[64][65] When asked about the criminal prosecution against Flamengo goalkeeper Bruno Fernandes de Souza, accused of killing his former girlfriend Eliza Samudio, Rousseff said that she opposes the death penalty.

[72] When the mandatory two-party system ended in the early 1980s, Rousseff participated, along with Carlos Araújo, in Leonel Brizola's efforts to restructure the Brazilian Labor Party (of social-democratic President João Goulart, overthrown by the 1964 coup).

[49] In 1995, after the end of Collares' term, Rousseff departed from her political office and returned to the FEE, where she was the editor of the magazine Economic Indicators (Portuguese: Indicadores Econômicos).

Pinguelli invited Rousseff to join the group meetings in June 2001, where she arrived as a shy participant in a team formed by several professors, but soon stood out with her objectivity and good knowledge of the area.

"[49] Another factor which would have weighed heavily on Lula's choice was the sympathy that Antonio Palocci had for Rousseff, recognizing that she would have a much easier dialogue with the private sector than Pinguelli, in addition to her support of the Carta aos Brasileiros (Letter to the Brazilian People), agreeing with several market friendly changes in the Workers' Party.

[49] Her management of the Ministry was marked by the respect of contracts made by the previous administration, by her efforts to prevent further blackouts and by the implementation of an electric model less concentrated in the hands of the state, differently from what Rosa and Sauer desired.

Convinced that urgent investments in power generation were required so that the country would not face a general blackout in 2009, Rousseff entered in a serious clash with then Minister of Environment, Marina Silva, which defended the embargo on several construction sites, concerned with the ecological imbalance that they could cause.

During the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, a similar program, called Luz no Campo (Rural Electrification), was created to encourage agribusiness providing the funding by the recipient.

[82] The program was launched in November 2003, under the name Luz para Todos (Electricity for All), focused in regions with a low Human Development Index and toward families with total incomes equaling, up to, three times the minimum wage.

[93] Rousseff's candidacy was also supported by notable international figures, such as Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro,[94] First Secretary of the French Socialist Party Martine Aubry,[95] and American filmmaker Oliver Stone, who recorded a message on her behalf.

"[100] On 18 October 2010, Brazilian artists and intellectuals held an event in the Oi Casagrande theatre in Leblon, Rio de Janeiro, to show their support to Rousseff's candidacy.

[101] That same day, she received a letter of support by prominent members of the European Green Party, such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Dominique Voynet, Monica Frassoni, Philippe Lamberts, Noël Mamère, José Bové, and Yves Cochet.

[121] In addition to the formal ceremony, Rousseff's inauguration also featured concerts by five female Brazilian singers: Elba Ramalho, Fernanda Takai, Mart'nália and Zélia Duncan, and Gaby Amarantos.

[132] On 7 June 2011, Rousseff's then chief of staff and influential PT leader, Antonio Palocci resigned from office due to a scandal involving his personal wealth evolution.

[144] Rousseff's administration pushed to complete a number of hydroelectric dam projects in the Amazon River Basin, despite appeals from local residents of areas that would be affected, including indigenous tribes, and pressure from both domestic and international groups.

[153] Rousseff was less popular with Brazilian LGBT social movements than expected from a left-wing president, and an often cited reason is that there are many instances in the government's balance of power where disagreements with the right-wing factions may have side effects.

[7][8] On 31 August 2016, the Senate, sitting as a judicial body, voted 61–20 in favor of a guilty verdict, convicting Rousseff of breaking budget laws and removing her from office.

[9][10] In 2022, the judicial investigation into the accusations of accounting manipulations that were the basis for her impeachment was officially closed, as the Brazilian Federal Public Ministry (MPF) did not identify any crime or act of administrative irregularity.