Meet Maria: Sanford's Argentinian Mistress Named
Argentinian news sources have outed Gov. Mark Sanford's mistress as María Belén Chapur—some are spelling her last name "Shapur"—a 43-year-old agribusiness executive. According to reports, there are camera crews staking our her apartment right now.
Chapur/Shapur's name has apparently been bubbling up all morning. Politico's Ben Smith linked to a bulletin in the Argentinian web site Terra saying Chapur is an executive at Bunge y Born, an international "grain and oilseed" business headquartered in Argentina, but he did not name her.
According to a Google translation, La Nacion—which renders the mistress' name as both "Chapur" and "Chapura"—says she "lives in an apartment in the Palermo district, has two children from her previous marriage, work for an agricultural company, is a polyglot and remains in excellent physical condition with much sport." Much sport, indeed.
Another newspaper, Clarín, calls her "Bethlehem shapur Mary"—again, according to Google Translation—and says she lives across the street from the zoo.
We imagine that photos will be on the way shortly. None of the name variants floated so far yield any information independent of the Sanford story on Google or Nexis, but that's probably because we're not using tildes correctly, or something.