Evita Peron Essay, Research Paper

Evita Peron

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.