Peggy Cabral


Alba María Antonia Cabral Cornero, known as Peggy, is a Dominican journalist, television host, politician and diplomat. Cabral was co-president of the Dominican Revolutionary Party from 2013 to 2020; she also was vice-mayor of the National District. Since December 2019 she serves as Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Dominican Republic. She is José Francisco Peña Gómez's widow.

Early life and family

Peggy is daughter of the Argentine journalist of Spanish descent Alba María Cornero, a native of Rosario, and Dominican writer and diplomat Manuel del Cabral; she was born in Buenos Aires while her father was serving in the Embassy of the Dominican Republic to Argentina.
Cabral comes from a prominent political family in the Dominican Republic, which has had several presidents, including Buenaventura Báez, Ramón Báez, José María Cabral, Marcos Cabral, and Donald Reid-Cabral. Her grandfather, Mario Fermín Cabral y Báez drafted the bill that in 1935 renamed the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, for Trujillo City in honor of dictator Rafael Trujillo.
In the late 1950s her father defected to Argentina and received political asylum, where the Cabral family lived for 17 years before returning to the Dominican Republic, except for a sister of Peggy who remained in Argentina.
She married young to Diego Fidel Raúl Degaudenzi Rizzo, an Argentine of Italian descent, with whom she had three children, who have given to them twelve grandchildren. Degaudenzi and Cabral divorced. Cabral remarried on 19 December 1986 to Dominican politician José Francisco Peña Gómez, of whom she's the widow. She studied business administration at the University of Buenos Aires. During her youth she lived in Argentina, Spain, Chile and Brazil.

TV and political career

En la televisión dominicana ha sido presentadora del programa Conversando con Peggy Cabral, en el que ha entrevistado a destacadas figuras como Hugo Chávez, Benazir Bhutto, Mahmoud Abbas, Fidel Castro, y Michel Martelly.
She was the Dominican Revolutionary Party candidate for the senate seat of the San Cristóbal province to the congressional elections in 2010, she got 41.07% of the votes, being defeated by the incumbent Tommy Galán.
In August 2013, she was designated acting president of the Dominican Revolutionary Party.
In late 2015, Cabral was appointed Dominican Republic ambassador to Italy.

Awards and honours

She has received several awards throughout her life, including: