Eva Peron: Aftermath, Legacy, and Myth
Eva was given a state funeral, and the public outpouring of grief was so great that eight people were crushed in the dash to be close to her body as it was moved through the streets. Her body was embalmed and kept on display in the Department of Labor. In 1955, the military staged a coup.
The new regime criminalized the act of owning a photo of Juan or Eva, and had her body shipped to Milan. There, it was buried under the name of “Maria Maggi.” Its location was kept a secret until 1971, at which point it was shipped to Juan’s residence in Spain.
Juan returned to Argentina in 1973, and served a third presidential term before dying on July 1, 1974 at the age of 78. His wife Isabel was his vice-president, so she assumed the Presidency after his death. She repatriated Eva’s body from Spain and displayed it alongside Juan’s. Eva’s body was later buried in the Duarte family tomb in Buenos Aires.
From 1976 to 1983, a military regime called the National Reorganization Process ruled Argentina. The regime was horrific, and the military regularly arrested, tortured and murdered thousands of citizens without trial or documentation. It was during the first year of their rule that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice penned the score of the musical Evita. Their writing of the Vivian Ward-esque Evita was the fourth and final step in the creation of the mythology of Eva Peron.
The myth of Eva (top to bottom, left to right): Lisa Simpson as student body president, Eva speaking to a crown off a balcony, Evita singing on stage surrounded by foreign dignitaries and Che Guevara, an Eva Peron campaign card bearing a distinct resemblance to a prayer card, the promotional poster for the musical Evita, Madonna clutching the Golden Globe she won for her portrayal of Eva in the film version of Evita, and Rachel Berry singing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina to an empty aditorium
The third step was taken by the anti-Peronist “historians” who created the Eva who sympathized with Fascist regimes and used public money to pad her Swiss bank account. The second was unknowingly taken by the people, whose love for Eva rivaled the adoration heaped upon the late Princess Diana. And the first was taken by Eva herself the minute she decided that she would never allow her greatest fear to come to pass.
Eva once said that her “biggest fear in life is to be forgotten,” so she set out to ensure that she would live forever. She first turned to acting, a profession which would keep her alive on film and record. In her time as an actress, she mastered the art of creating connections between herself and her listeners. This skill would be instrumental to her future success as a politician and philanthropist.
She began her transformation from actress to glamorous wife of a politician almost immediately after meeting Juan. This is not to imply that she married him for his prestige, but simply that she found a role to play in the relationship which would aid her in her desire to remain forever in the public memory. She began earning the people’s love almost immediately.
However, the Eva the people saw was quite different from the Eva seen by hers and her husband’s colleagues. Juan’s political circle disliked her, as did the upper classes of Argentina. While this can be attributed to snobbishness, it must be said that Eva’s radio and film colleagues were none too fond of her either.
During Juan’s presidential campaign, Eva used her acting skills to align herself with the people, telling them of her impoverished childhood, showing them that she intimately understood their lives, even as she lived a life of luxury. Of this discrepancy she later said “Yes, well I do have plenty of clothes, jewels and money. However I don’t ask for money for myself but if someone gives me money I take it and put it in The Eva Peron Foundation, which gives huge amounts of money to the poor and helps to build hospitals, schools and old peoples’ homes.”
After Juan won election, Eva embarked on her Rainbow Tour of Europe. It is likely that Juan sent Eva in his stead because her strengths lay in connecting to people; if she could connect to the people of Argentina, then she could connect to the people of Europe as well. However, her self-presentation in Europe was remarkably tone deaf. While the people of Argentina took her seriously in her glamorous clothing, the citizenry and governments of countries struggling in the economic aftermath of WWII did not. So she shifted again from glamorous wife of the president to the subtle, elegant voice of the people.
Eva’s detractors often cite the Rainbow Tour as evidence of her burgeoning Fascism, especially in regard to her visit with Francisco Franco. Having looked at the evidence available to us, I do not think Eva held fascist sympathies; I don’t think she understood international politics enough to have said sympathies, and I don’t think she cared about them outside the scope of Juan’s presidency. I may be wrong—as I said, it is difficult to speak conclusively of such recent events—but for now, that is my conclusion.
If we are going to discuss Fascism in relation to Peronism, the conversation should be focused on Juan, whose complex and contradictory relationships with Fascist dictatorships, Nazi criminals, the State of Israel, Switzerland, the Pope, and the Argentinian Jewish community are still being unraveled.
Following her Rainbow Tour, Eva completed her self-transformation by committing herself wholeheartedly to social works. Before the Eva Peron Foundation, the Sociedad de Beneficiencia headed the charity work done in Buenos Aires. It was funded by the government, and its membership consisted of wealthy society ladies. Before Eva, it had been traditional for the Sociedad to elect the current First Lady as their president, however, they declined to elect Eva out the disapproval they felt towards her background and career.
In retaliation, Eva formed her own foundation, and from that point on, the money allocated to the Sociedad was put towards Eva’s foundation. Though her anger is understandable, this move shows the more ruthless aspect of her nature. Of this, all Eva said publically was that “keeping books on social aid is capitalistic nonsense. I just use the money for the poor. I can’t stop to count it.”
Her social work afforded her the opportunity to shift her image yet again. We discussed how her interactions with the poor reflected saint-like imagery; this was a highly intentional act. Eva leaned heavily on Roman Catholic saint/martyr imagery, even in the manner in which she spoke to the people. There are three quotes in particular which epitomize this: “Suffer little children and come unto me;” “If I have to apply five turns to the screw each day for the happiness of Argentina, I will do it;” and, “I will come again, and I will be millions.” Set on the foundation she’d built using her looks, her acting skills, and populist rhetoric, this imagery worked; the people had come to regard her as a saint-like figure.
Though I do think that Eva was shrewd and calculating and carefully weighed how each and every move would affect the public perception of her, I do not think that she lacked genuinity. She was profoundly affected by the poverty of her youth, and that drove her to devote years of her life to ensuring that no one else would ever have to live like that. In the last years of her life, she would devote up to 22 hours a day to her work with the Eva Peron Foundation. Of this she said simply that “One cannot accomplish anything without fanaticism.”
I also do not doubt the motives of her work towards feminist causes. It is true that she was probably aware of what her support for those causes would do for her public image, but as a woman who once lived in poverty, and who faced exclusion and ostracization because of that poverty and because of the perception that actresses were whores, I believe that her devotion to that cause came from a very real place. Though her public statements were very calculated, I think that this one sums it up best: “I demanded more rights for women because I know what women had to put up with.”
However, the most important thing Eva did to cement her carefully crafted image of the saint-like voice of the people ended up being completely out of her control: she died young. She died young at the height of her beauty and popularity, ensuring that her myth would live on, and that her greatest fear would never come to pass.
