She is Argentina's glamorous President, smiling graciously through pearl-white teeth, collagen-enhanced lips and immaculately groomed hair.

But that is only Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's latest incarnation. Until taking over from her husband last year, she had variously been a globe-trotting First Lady, a steely senator, a bare-knuckled barrister and firebrand student orator.

So it was perhaps inevitable that Argentina's 55-year-old leader would be compared to the country's most famous political export, Eva Perón, immortalised in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, Evita. However, as Fernández confronts Argentina's farmers in the first major crisis of her presidency, she is drawing more comparisons to Margaret Thatcher.

Argentina's leaders have mostly buckled before the country's pugnacious interest groups; trade unions, farmers and even pensioners have caused successive governments to tremble. This time, Fernández is refusing to back down, organising a massive rally in Buenos Aires against the blockade and accusing the farmers of holding the country to ransom.

Whether she can hold out remains an open question, but few people doubt her inner steel. Early in her political career, she was dubbed “Queen Cristina” for her forceful and imperious personality.

Cristina Fernández was born in La Plata - once known as “Eva Perón City” - seven months after the early death of Evita from cancer. Nevertheless, she has repeatedly tried to play down comparisons.

She likes Evita's searing oratorical style, which roused Argentina's “shirtless millions” into frenzies of adoration as she excoriated the country's industrialists. But she is less keen on the Evita who handed gifts to those who came begging at Argentina's pink presidential palace. An Evita blamed by some for creating a culture of entitlement that has ever since prevented the country from living within its means.

Fernández's husband may have handed her the presidency of Argentina, but in many ways he also gave her a poisoned chalice. During his presidency, Néstor Kirchner allowed the economy to overheat and earned himself huge popularity in the process. Many called on him to take the unpopular measures needed to stave off a fresh economic meltdown: raising energy prices and interest rates and holding down salaries. He didn't, leaving his wife to dispense the hated medicine instead.

Fernández has tried to raise taxes on the one thing that is profitable in Argentina - food exports. But Argentina's farmers have rebelled, triggering her first major political crisis. As previous Argentine presidents have found, the one thing you cannot mess with is an Argentinian's steak.

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