Evita

In 1949 the most familiar scene in Argentina was the one played out almost daily
at the Ministry of Labor in Buenos Aires. There, under the glare of camera lights, a former
radio star and movie actress, now the most powerful woman in South America, would
enter her office past a crush of adoring, impoverished women and children. Evita Peron,
the wife of President Juan Peron, would sit at her desk and begin one of the great rituals
of Peronism, the political movement she and her husband created. It was a pageant that
sustained them in power. She would patiently listen to the stories of the poor, then reach
into her desk to pull out some money. Or she would turn to a minister and ask that a
house be built. She would caress filthy children. She would kiss lepers, just as the saints
had done. To many Argentines, Evita Peron was a flesh-and-blood saint; later, 40,000 of
them would write to the pope attesting to her miracles.

She was born on May 7, 1919, in Los Toldos, and baptized Maria Eva, but
everyone called her Evita. Her father abandoned the family shortly after her birth. Fifteen
years of poverty followed and, in early 1935, the young Evita fled her stifling existence to
go to Buenos Aires. Perhaps, as some have said, she fell in love with a tango singer who
was passing through.

She wanted to be an actress, and in the next few years supported herself with bit
parts, photo sessions for titillating magazines and stints as an attractive judge of tango
competitions. She began frequenting the offices of a movie magazine, talking herself up
for mention in its pages. When, in 1939, she was hired as an actress in a radio company,
she discovered a talent for playing heroines in the fantasy world of radio soap opera.

This was a period of political uncertainty in Argentina, yet few people were
prepared for the military coup that took place in June 1943. Among the many measures
instituted by the new government was the censorship of radio soap operas. Quickly
adapting to the new environment, Evita approached the officer in charge of allocating
airtime, Colonel Anibal Imbert. She seduced him, and Imbert approved a new project
Evita had in mind, a radio series called Heroines of History. Years later, people would say
that Evita had been a prostitute.

Six months after Evita met Imbert, an earthquake struck Argentina. Colonel Juan
Peron, the secretary of labor in the military government, launched a collection for the
victims. He arranged for the Buenos Aires acting community to donate its time for an
evening's entertainment, with the proceeds going to disaster relief. Evita was present on
the big night, and she wanted to meet the colonel. Peron had risen quickly in the
government and had accomplished a major coup with the unions, essentially taking control
of them. But Evita probably knew nothing of this. Not political in the conventional sense,
she was attracted instead by the colonel's dashing figure and his aura of power. They
talked for hours and left together. Within days Evita had moved into Peron's apartment.

In February, Peron engineered the ouster of the president and took over the war
ministry for himself. Evita continued her radio portrayals of famous women, but her
ambitions lay in the movies. She wanted Peron to help her in her film career, and he did by
procuring the film itself, a commodity difficult to obtain during World War II. He offered
it to a movie studio in exchange for Evita's starring role in a film. When she arrived for the
first day of filming, it was in a war ministry limousine.

Four months into their relationship, Evita was named president of a new actors'
union Peron had created. (Any actors who wanted to work were obliged to join.) Soon
afterward, she began a daily radio broadcast called Toward a Better Future. It was
government propaganda, and it was the first time Evita's dramatic talents had been
harnessed to advance the political interests she was picking up from Peron.

When World War II ended in 1945, Peron, then vice president, became a target of
demonstrations because of his widely known fascist sympathies. In the fall of 1945, the
army demanded his resignation, saying he was a lightning rod for discontent. Peron
acceded, reluctantly.

But he refused to go quietly. Peron controlled the unions, and the unions
controlled millions of men. Appearing in early October before 15,000 unionists (Evita was
present), he announced that his last act as secretary of labor-a post he still held-would be
to grant a general wage increase. His pandering won loud cheers as he exhorted the crowd
to "carry on our triumphal march!"

That evening Peron learned that he was going to be arrested by the army, which
could not risk leaving the popular leader on the street. He and Evita fled Buenos Aires but
were apprehended a short time later. They were driven back to the capital, where Peron
was put aboard a navy boat and spirited away.

Evita and Peron had made no secret of their relationship, despite his being the
most visible man in a country where even the ruthless bowed to Catholic convention. Now
a group of women gathered at their apartment building to shout insults at Evita. One
woman spat on the doorstep. Uncowed, Evita left the apartment to try to get Peron out of
prison. But she could not even learn where he was being held, that became the great
mystery in the streets of Buenos Aires. Where was Peron?

He passed a letter out of prison, and it was published in the newspapers. He also
managed to have himself transferred to Buenos Aires for medical attention, thus contriving
to be in the city because he knew about plans to free him already underway. Many have
claimed that Evita set these plans in motion by offering herself to union leaders. All that is
known for sure is that in the early-morning hours of October 16, groups of workers began
walking toward the center of the capital. Hundreds of thousands of people moved with
such deliberateness that the government could do nothing without shedding blood. The
crowd was demanding only one thing-Peron.

Listening to the demonstrators outside, Peron smugly told his captors to reinstate
him or risk a major uprising. They agreed, and that evening Peron spoke to 200,000
people from the balcony of the presidential palace. He told them to disperse peacefully,
but with this order in mind: they were not to go to work the next day-October 17-but to
celebrate their victory instead. For many years to come, October 17th would be the great
day of Peronist Argentina, transformed by government propaganda into a glorious and
bloody workers' revolution. Four days later, Peron and Evita were married.

Peron soon won the presidency. The very day he was sworn in, Evita caused a
scandal. Still the movie star, she appeared at the inaugural ball in a dress that left her
shoulder-the one practically touching the cardinal in attendance-entirely bare. More than
two years at Peron's side had taught her a great deal about politics.

Evita quickly became the darling of the Argentine media. Their approval was
hardly surprising. After all, her husband controlled them. By 1947, he had already replaced
the justices of the Supreme Court with his own appointees, including Evita's
brother-in-law. In his second term, police torture would become routine. But to win
re-election, he needed a new constitution, one that did away with the one-term limitation
on the presidency. He pushed that reform through in March 1949.

Another innovation Peron sponsored -just as calculated and one for which Evita
was widely credited-was women's suffrage. No one could argue with women's suffrage; it
was long past due. But when the law was enacted, the full power of the propaganda
machine went to turning newly enfranchised women into Peron handmaidens.

Such comments went far toward creating a cult of personality around Juan Peron.
Evita had learned her part so well that, even if she did not write most of the lines, she
improvised to perfection. She would build upon in every speech: "Peron is everything...We
all feed from his light." People were increasingly feeding from the light of Evita Peron as
well.

In 1948 a foundation was created in Evita's name. Its object was to advance social
charity, and while it frequently resorted to extortion the foundation was a phenomenal
success. From the idea of the foundation sprang a range of programs designed to advance
the Peronist cult of personality: youth sports leagues with Evita's profile on every uniform,
hospitals with her initials on the linen, polio vaccines that bore her name. It was around
this time that Evita began her almost daily sessions with the poor.

By 1951 her name was being advanced for the vice presidency, and in August a
labor meeting was called to endorse a Peron-Peron ticket. But on August 22, Evita went
on radio to renounce the post. She wanted only a supporting role in Peron's "marvelous
chapter in history." The date of her renunciation became the second great day of
Peronism. The government portrayed it as an act of supreme selflessness.
Only a month later, Evita was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus. When news of
her illness got out, people began holding special masses. Miracles were reported. She died
professing love for her people and receiving their expressions of devotion in return. In
such an atmosphere, Peron's re-election itself became a sort of ritual, so that when Evita
voted from her hospital bed, the nurses fell to their knees and kissed her ballot box.

After the election, a biopsy revealed that the cancer had spread. In June 1952,
Peron's congress named Evita the Spiritual Leader of the Nation. Her own final
contribution to that deification came in her will, in which she wrote that she wanted "the
poor, the old, the children, and the workers to continue writing to me as they did in my
lifetime." She died on July 26, 1952, at the age of 33.

A specialist was brought in to embalm the body and make it "definitively
incorruptible." Evita's body lay in state for 13 days-and even then the crowds showed no
sign of diminishing.

In the decades that followed, Peronism continued to occupy a place in Argentine
political life, taking the form mainly of anti-government terrorism. In 1971, after a number
of demands by terrorists, the Argentine government agreed to return Evita's body. It was
shipped to Peron in Spain.

That year, Peron was allowed to return to Argentina; two years later he was
president again. He died in office, and it was his wife and successor, Isabel, who brought
Evita's body back to Argentina, in the hope that the aura of a saint would again dazzle the
public.