Will Eduardo "Wado" de Pedro be a candidate for president of Argentina? 1:30

(CNN Spanish) -- He is one of the confidants of the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and occupies a central position in Alberto Fernández's cabinet, such as the Ministry of the Interior, where he is in charge of internal policy issues and the relationship with the governors. However, only now, who sounds like a possible candidate for the presidency of Argentina by Peronism, Eduardo "Wado" de Pedro has begun to raise his profile because, for many, he is still practically unknown.

He was born in 1976 and is the son of those who disappeared during the last military dictatorship, which ruled the country between that year and 1983. According to his official biography, De Pedro is a lawyer from the University of Buenos Aires and is pursuing a Master's Degree in Administration and Public Policy from the University of San Andrés. He served as secretary general of the Presidency in 2015, during the last year of Fernández de Kirchner's presidency. In addition, he was vice president of Aerolíneas Argentinas and Austral Líneas Aéreas in 2009 and national deputy for the province of Buenos Aires between 2011 and 2019.

At the end of that mandate, with the arrival of Alberto Fernández to the Casa Rosada, in an expression of balance between internal sectors of the government coalition, he assumed as Minister of the Interior, a position he currently holds and from where he often marked the passage of the president, as when in September 2021 he was the first of the cabinet to make his resignation available. after the vice president published that first explosive letter where she questioned Fernández's management. Nor has he spared criticism, direct or indirect, of the president on issues on which he seemed to distance himself or diverge from the positions of the vice president, for example, in the negotiations over the debt with the International Monetary Fund.

Beyond his academic and political career, De Pedro has a hard personal history. His official biography says he is the son of Enrique de Pedro and Lucila Révora, "militants disappeared and killed during the last civic-military dictatorship." After being kidnapped for a while during his childhood, De Pedro was rescued by his uncles with whom he grew up in the city of Mercedes, province of Buenos Aires.

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Then he began his militancy for human rights in the group H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Oblivion and Silence), of which he is one of its founders. In addition, together with other political leaders he founded the group La Cámpora, where he militated with the deputy Máximo Kirchner, son of the vice president. In fact, this foundational relationship with La Cámpora and with Máximo Kirchner is the main asset in his bet for the official candidacy, while it is speculated if the vice president and his son will give him their support or if instead they will lean towards some other name.

In his official biography he omits some more painful details, which he himself has related on several occasions.

"Personally it was very hard, first I lost my father in April of '77, I was five months or so. Then in October of '78 they murdered and kidnapped the body of my mother Lucila, who was eight and a half months pregnant," the minister recalled in "Memoria en primera persona," a video made by young film students in which de Pedro told his story.

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"There is a very strong shooting in the house we were living. I was saved from the bullets by my mother's body, she shelters me in the bathtub and gets on top of me," he said, adding: "From there they kidnapped me and I was appropriated by a military family for a few months. Then, due to family arrangements, they return me. We are facing one more fact of the thousands that happened in Argentina during the dictatorship"

During his childhood he began his stuttering, which has earned him some ridicule and abuse, for example on social networks after reporting as interior minister on the 2021 elections. "Last night I read on the networks many queries about my way of speaking. I tell them that I have disfluency (or stuttering), and every day I work to improve and improve myself. I share for those who are interested in the page of the Argentine Association of Stuttering (AAT)," Pedro's response through his social networks at the time.

Far from hiding it, he himself has told of his difficulties. In an interview with the Telam news agency, he said that at one point in his life he got off the bus before or after the destination, "because the stop was on a street that for me was impossible to tell (the driver)," and that many times it happened to him from "dying to eat something and having to ask for what came out" in a restaurant.

His political career began in 2004, as Chief of Staff of the Undersecretary of Tourism of the City of Buenos Aires during the government of Aníbal Ibarra. Two years later, he founded the political group "La Cámpora" along with other leaders.

Now, with less than a month to go to define the candidates for the elections, his name sounds louder and louder for an eventual presidential candidacy. Above all, after the vice president said she hoped "that the children of the decimated generation" would take "the post."

Posters have already begun to appear in the streets, and "Wado" said he wants "to be part of a generation that thinks about different solutions to the problems of Argentines" and said: "If it is my turn and they accompany me I could be a candidate" in the next elections.

Cristina Fernández de KirchnerArgentine elections