Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE PERONIST SAINT:
EVA DUARTE DE PERÓN
E
vita Duarte's meteoric rise in the Peronist movement has resulted
in much controversy and myth about her role in Argentine his-
tory. She was born in a small Pampean town in the 1920s, the product
of a relationship between her single mother and a married man of
“the respectable classes.” She got ahead in the only way available for
a beautiful young woman of her social circumstances. Arriving with a
male consort in Buenos Aires in 1935, she launched a career in acting.
Apparently she found advancement in the radio industry by exploiting
her relationships with powerful men. By 1944, Evita had her own radio
talk show and became courtesan to officers in the new military govern-
ment. Several film appearances yielded little critical acclaim. Then Evita
met Colonel Juan Domingo Perón at a fund-raising benefit, and they
married shortly before his presidential inauguration.
Due to her “common origins,” the respectable middle class shunned
the new first lady. The elite loathed and ridiculed her, even as she began to
dress like them in expensive designer gowns and fur coats. But the ener-
getic Evita embraced the mission to which her husband had assigned her:
to serve as a bridge between President Perón and his working-class follow-
ers. Evita immediately became a patroness of the
descamisados
and
cabecitas
negras,
creating a charity foundation to provide orphanages, medical clinics,
and nursing homes for the poor. In her speeches, she extolled the virtues
of Juan Perón and subordinated herself to his guidance. Evita championed
the new Peronist law providing women's suffrage in 1947 and formed the
feminist wing of the Justicialista Party. More women served in Congress
during the second presidential term of Perón than at any time since then.
However, some longtime feminists and advocates of women's suf-
frage objected to elements of control and subordination in the Peronist
reforms. As Evita said, “For a woman to be a Peronist is, before all else,
to be loyal to Perón, and to have blind faith in Perón!” (377).
Evita's health deteriorated in the early 1950s, and she died from
cancer shortly after Perón's second presidential inauguration. The pub-
lic mourning and funeral cortège surpassed even those of President
Hipólito Yrigoyen and Carlos Gardel. In death, as in life, Evita remained
controversial. The pope rebuffed an effort to have her declared a saint
in recognition of her work for the poor.
Source:
Quotation from Hammond, Gregory Sowles. “The Institution
of Eva Perón: Extensions of the State in Argentina.” (master's thesis,
University of Texas at Austin, 2000), p. 377.
