WHEN EVA PERÓN DIED OF CANCER at age thirty-three on July 26, 1952, the state radio broadcaster sadly announced that “today at 20:25 Eva Perón, Spiritual Leader of the Nation, entered immortality.” Argentina went into official mourning; although Perón had never held an official political office, she was accorded a state funeral. Immediately after her death her corpse was embalmed, with the intention of putting it on public display forever in a planned memorial larger than the Statue of Liberty.

Often called Evita (the Spanish diminutive of Eva), she was one of five illegitimate children born near Buenos Aires to Juan Duarte and Juana Ibarguren. Duarte returned to his legitimate wife and children when Eva was a year old, leaving Juana and her children destitute and dependent on Juana’s sewing for their existence. As they grew older all the children had to work, but Eva apparently also dreamed of becoming an actress.

At fifteen Eva Duarte moved to the cosmopolitan city of Buenos Aires. Although she had little formal education and no connections, she possessed beauty and charisma, and soon she joined a professional theater group with which she toured nationally. She also modeled, appeared in a few movies, and then obtained regular employment as a character on a radio series. By 1943, although only twenty-three years old, she was one of the highest-paid actresses in the country.

In 1943 Eva met widowed Colonel Juan Perón, then secretary of labor and social welfare in the military government that had seized power that year. Juan Perón had grand ambitions, intending to run for president. Eva Duarte became his partner and confidante, and she won him support among the Argentine masses. In 1945 Juan Perón and Eva Duarte married.

A year later Perón won the presidency. Eva had gone out on the campaign trail and organized support for her husband from los descamisados (the shirtless ones), her name for Argentina’s poor. When Perón assumed the presidency, Eva, though not officially appointed, became the secretary of labor. Having come from a childhood of poverty herself, she now worked tirelessly for the poor, for the working classes, and with organized labor. She instituted a number of social welfare measures and promoted a new Ministry of Health, which resulted in the creation of new hospitals and disease-treatment programs. In 1948 she established the Eva Perón Welfare Foundation, which grew into an immense semi official welfare agency, helping the poor throughout Argentina and even contributing to victims of natural disasters in other countries.

From early on, Eva Perón had supported women’s suffrage, and in September 1947 Argentine women won the right to vote. Eva then formed the Female Perónist Party, which by 1951 had five hundred thousand members. Thousands of Argentine women have credited Eva’s example as a reason for their involvement in politics. In 1951 she seemed ready to run for vice president beside her husband. The huge base of women, the poor, and workers assured them victory. Her declining health, however, forced her to turn down the nomination. Juan Perón won the election by over 30 percent, but when Eva died the following year, his authoritarian rule and bad economic policies lost him support, and a military junta forced him into exile.

Eva Perón’s life story is an amazing one, but what happened following her death is just as extraordinary. Before the massive monument intended to hold her embalmed body could be built, the military seized power, and her body disappeared. Seventeen years later the generals finally revealed that it was in a tomb in Milan, Italy. Juan Perón, living in Spain with his third wife, had the body exhumed and brought to Spain, where he kept it in his house. Perón returned to Argentina in 1973 and won the presidential election, but died the following year. His wife, Isabelita Perón, succeeded him as president. Juan and Eva’s bodies were briefly displayed together at his funeral and then, finally, buried.

Source: Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro, Evita: The Real Life of Eva Perón (New York: Norton, 1976).

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