Remarkable Argentina - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 337

fashion and elegance. And now the legend of Evita took final form. She engaged dress de-
signers to flatter her petite figure, hairdressers to provide a distinctive coiffeur—hair pulled
back, shimmering in halo gold, and jewelers to adorn her dresses with restrained elegance.
“They want to see me look beautiful,” she said of her adoring crowds. And as a more de-
tached observer put it, the rich were not amused, but the poor found vicarious fulfillment
in Evita.
Juan campaigned for a second term. But Evita was mortally ill with uterine cancer. Her
life might have been saved with appropriate surgery, but she said she had no time for the
hospital. Too weak to stand or comfortably sit, she rode to Juan's inauguration encased,
most agree, in plaster of paris covered by a fur coat. When news of her fatal illness reached
the streets, thousands knelt in prayer. And when she died, eight people also died, and more
than 2,000 were injured in the crush of crowds attempting to pay their respects to Evita.
(The opening scene of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Evita catches the spirit of the moment. And
the entire operetta captures the drama of Evita's life.)
AFTER EVITA, WHAT?
After Evita's death, Peron lost his sure political touch, and without Evita, his rapport
with his followers, the Peronistas , began to slip away. Democratically inclined officers
threatened to bring guns and tanks into the streets. Peron resigned, took refuge in Paraguay
(September 19, 1955), and sailed to exile in Madrid. Had Evita lived, would she have
counseled defiance? Fearing that Evita's body might become a symbol of martyrdom and
opposition, the military hid her body in Milan, Italy. It lay there, a closely guarded secret,
until it was returned in 1963 to Spain to the exiled Peron, by now remarried to a third wife,
Isabelle. The latter reportedly slept on Evita's casket, hoping to acquire some of her magic.
Eventually, Evita's body was returned to Argentina and now lies in an elaborate
mausoleum in the cemetery of the Recoletta Fathers. (The cemetery is a city of the dead,
with imposing statues of grief, of resurrection, of the physical and spiritual beauty of those
entombed in adjacent castles and palaces of the dead.) Evita is entombed in the Duarte
mausoleum, but at his express wishes, Juan is buried elsewhere. As a macabre footnote to
Juan's story, in 1987 vandals broke into his tomb and sawed off his hands, attempting to
hold them for a ransom never paid. Evita's tomb is much visited. The curious are there in
constant flow. But Argentines also come, bringing flowers and lamentations for the woman
they still call Saint Evita.
Even in exile, Peron's followers, the Peronistas , continued to agitate Argentine polit-
ics. In 1973 Peronista candidates won the presidency and a majority in the legislature. And
in a special election (1974), Peron once again became President of Argentina. His politics
swung rightward, and when he died in 1974, his widow Isabel (now Vice President) stepped
into the presidency, but increasing turmoil (terrorism and political violence) between radic-