by Barnes, John
Since Perón assumed the Presidency in 1946, the weather had always been fine for his national fiestas. He had his usual good luck again this time, even though August is very much a winter month in Buenos Aires. The skies were clear as the descamisados began to pour into the city by train, river steamer, lorry, bicycle, and three Model-T Fords which chugged 2,500 kilometres from Patagonia. The country people could easily be spotted on the streets with their black hats, tanned skins and ponchos. Everything was free for them — transport, food, and lodging. Thousands slept overnight in the city garages, requisitioned by the government. Free films and sporting events were laid on to entertain them. The CGT declared a general strike so that everybody could attend. As a result, the normal life of the city was virtually paralysed. But the crowds were orderly and good natured, and the government had wisely removed a possible source of disorder by cancelling three football games (football in Argentina is a sport that has been known to turn into near war on occasions).
As the throngs streamed into the vast avenida they chanted their battle-cry: ‘Viva Perón!’ ‘Viva Evita!’ and ‘Perón fulfills his promises!’ Loudspeaker vans edged through the crowds playing ‘We are the Perónist Boys’, and ‘Evita our Captain’. Huge portraits of the Peróns and election slogans hung from government buildings. The noise of the chanting and the songs boomed out from the loudspeakers attached to every lamp-post on the avenida. It sounded as if every Argentine in the country was there that afternoon. But in fact only 250,000 of them greeted President Perón as he stepped up on to the flood-lit platform, decorated with blue and white Argentine flags.
Evita was not with him, and that brought immediate cries of ‘Where is she?’ It was the cue for Jose Espejo to speak up: ‘My General,’ he said: ‘we note one absence, the absence of your wife, of Eva Perón, she who is without peer in the world, in history, in the love and veneration of the Argentine people. Companions, possibly her modesty, which is perhaps the greatest of her merits, has kept her from this gathering, but we cannot continue without Comrade Eva Perón.’ So an escort of CGT officials was dispatched to the Residence to fetch her. Fifteen minutes later she was there on the platform, hatless, in an elegant suit, raising her arms in acknowledgement of the roar of the crowd.
After the national anthem had been played, Espejo asked the President to stand for re-election. His acceptance was unqualified. But when the CGT leader turned to his boss and called on her to accept the nomination for the Vice-Presidency, she hesitated. First she attacked her old enemies, the oligarchs. They could not attack General Perón directly because of the people’s support for him, she said. But they felt they could attack him through her. She was willing, she cried, for her breast to shield her General from all attack. But as for the Vice-Presidency, she asked for four days to make up her mind. From the vast crowd, which seemed to stretch endlessly down the avenida, came the cry that no one would leave until she said yes. She pleaded for twenty-four hours, then two hours. The crowd roared ‘now, now.’ In a half whisper, she promised: ‘I will do what the people say.’
But something was wrong. Everybody knew that. Official acceptance of the nominations had been set for August 24. But the notification was postponed indefinitely. Rumours of an impending military coupe swept the country. Then on August 30, a Brazilian newspaper, O Mundo, owned by a close friend and admirer of the Peróns, Dr Gerald Rocha, carried a story that President Perón had told a group of visiting Brazilian newsmen that his wife could not run for Vice-President because she was too young. If she was 29 years old as she said she was, then she was barred from the Vice-Presidency because one of the qualifications for that office was an age of at least 30. But of course she was not 29. She was born on May 7, 1919, which would have made her 32. Presumably some old-fashioned feminine whim had prompted her to send someone to Los Toldos after her marriage to tear out the entry of her birth from the registrar’s book in the town hall. But no one accepted Perón’s excuse about his wife’s age, anyway. There continued to be no official word. Perónista Party officials flocked into Buenos Aires. The Superior Council of the Party huddled in secret meetings throughout most of August 31. That evening, Evita put an end to the suspense. She broadcast to the nation.
In a voice that trembled with emotion and sounded hoarse and strained, she said: ‘It is my irrevocable decision to refuse the honour which the workers and the people of my country wished to confer on me at the open forum of the 22nd. I declare that this decision was born in my innermost consciousness and is therefore perfectly free and has all the force of my final will.’ Her voice broke and there were moments of silence as she seemed to be gathering her strength to continue. ‘I have passed the best years of my life at the side of General Perón, my master,’ she went on, ‘I have no higher goal in life than to continue to serve him and the people of Argentina.’ She was not going to retire from public life, she made that quite clear. ‘I am not resigning my work, just the honours,’ she said, adding that she would continue as a ‘humble collaborator of Perón’. Then in a final emotion-charged passage she said: I only want history to say of me: There was a woman alongside General Perón; a woman who took to him the hopes and needs of the people, and her name was Evita.’
It was the army which had forced Evita into retreat. Its sense of dignidad had been severely dented during the Perón years of power, humiliations that were angrily blamed on ‘petticoat dictatorship’ over drinks in the Officers’ Club at Campo de Mayo. So the generals told Perón, their old- comrade in arms, that they would not accept his wife as Vice-President. The thought of her as their Commander-in-Chief, which she would be if anything happened to him, was too intolerable to contemplate. This time, the generals warned Perón, they would try their hand at revolution if Evita accepted the Perónista nomination, which they knew was tantamount to election. Perhaps the fact that only 250,000 supporters had turned out on August 22, instead of the promised two million, encouraged them to test their strength. Yet by democratic standards it was a remarkable feat to get that number of people together from all over the country — if one forgot that every agency of the government had been geared to the task. Perón complained bitterly that his descamisados had let him down. He might have called the generals’ bluff with two million chips, but not with only a quarter-of-a million. It meant that Evita had to step down. But that still did not stop the army from trying to bring about a revolution in any case.
First suspicions were aroused before dawn on September 28, when there was unusual activity around the air base at El Palomar, about twelve miles west of Buenos Aires. Officers at the military school, which shares El Palomar with the airmen, reported promptly to the President, who, as usual, was at his desk in the Casa Rosada by 6.30 am. He called in his military leaders, but planes were already flying over the capital, dropping leaflets that urged the people to support the revolt against Perón. They carried the name of a retired general, Benjamin Menendez. But other than sweeping so low over the Casa Rosada that they nearly knocked over the chimney pots, the planes did no damage.
Immediately Perón ordered the summary shooting of any uniformed man taking part in the revolt. A state of siege was declared and censorship imposed. Federal police set up guards over radio stations, newspapers, and state banks. Business establishments dropped their heavy steel shutters. The CGT called a general strike and ordered its members into the streets to help defeat the rebels. But there was little to do, except for occasional fist fights in the streets. Police rescued one man from a mob which was chasing him, and loyal troops went into action at El Palomar and Campo de Mayo. The rebels had apparently controlled both bases for a few hours, but by the afternoon the government had won them back. Artillery shells were fired at El Palomar, but they landed on the runway and did no damage. Only one soldier died, a Sergeant Farina who, according to Perónista newspapers, had fallen with the cry of ‘Viva Perón’ on his lips.
In the afternoon, Perón appeared on his balcony and looked down on a plaza packed with loyal desc
amisados. ‘A group of bad Argentines dishonoured the uniform of the fatherland,’ he told them. Contemptuously, he added that the rebels ‘at the first shots, raised the white flag and surrendered. They are cowards because they did not dare to die the one time they should have sacrificed life for the sake of their honour,’ he said. ‘That is why they will suffer the opprobrious penalty of a coward. As cowards, they will be executed,’ he promised the cheering supporters. ‘Hang them!’ Hang them!’ shouted the crowd. ‘That I will do,’ General Perón yelled, banging his fist on the velvet rail of the balcony. ‘As an example. Everyone must know that those who in future go out to fight against us either will kill us or we will kill them.’ But he did not. Most of the rebels flew off to Uruguay, while General Menendez was thrown in gaol. Juan Perón had more on his mind just then than incompetent revolutionaries. His wife was dying.
She had been taken ill immediately after her renunciation of the Vice-Presidency, suffering from influenza and anaemia, it was said. She had been under treatment for over a year by a Polish blood specialist, Dr Helen Zawarski. Her blood count had fallen to three-fifths of normal. But she had continued her exhausting schedule right up to the moment of her collapse, refusing to pander to the tiredness that must have been tearing at every muscle and bone in her body. When she finally took to her bed, her husband, in tears, told friends that she had pernicious anaemia, which was probably gentle shorthand for leukaemia. However, the news of the attempted coup had her struggling to get out of bed, though in the end she was persuaded to broadcast from there. In a voice that was hardly audible, she expressed her thanks to her descamisados for their support of her husband. ‘To all of you I give a great embrace from my heart,’ she whispered. ‘For me there is nothing in the world but the love of Perón and my people.’
There was still a little strength left. On October 17, a slight figure in a crimson coat appeared on the balcony of the Casa Rosada. She looked frail and haggard. But she managed a smile and a wave for the cheering crowd below. The plaza was packed with her descamisados, just as it had been on October 17 six years earlier. Few of them had known she even existed then. Now they were there to pay her homage. In the new era of television the cameras zoomed in on the tired face as the President pinned on her breast the Grand Peronista Medal, Extraordinary Class, in recognition of her selflessness in renouncing her candidacy. He embraced her and she wept in his arms.
‘This marvellous people,’ said Perón, turning to the microphones, ‘whom we have already qualified as being the best in the world, has decided that this October 17 should be dedicated to Eva Perón. There could be no homage more just, more deep, more honourable than this dedication. She is not only the guide and the standard bearer of our movement but in Argentine history the figure of Eva Perón will be seen as one of the greatest women of humanity.’ Then he pleaded for silence so that his wife could speak without strain. As she did so, his hands cradled her waist to prevent her from falling. In the stillness, she began:
‘My beloved descamisados, this is a day of great emotion for me. With all my soul I have desired to be with you and with Perón on this glorious day of the descamisados. I could never miss this appointment that I have with the people on each October 17th. I assure you that nothing and no one could have prevented me from coming because I have a sacred debt to Perón and to you, to the workers and the boys of the CGT, and it does not matter to me if in paying it I must leave shreds of my life by the wayside. I had to come and I came to thank Perón and the CGT and the descamisados and my people. To Perón, who has just honoured me with the highest distinction that can be given a Perónista, I shall never finish paying my debt, not until I give my life in gratitude for the kindness he has always shown me. Nothing that I have, nothing that I am, nothing that I think is mine; it is Perón’s. I will not tell the usual lie and say that I have not deserved this; yes I deserve it, my General. I deserve it for one thing only that is worth all the gold in the world. I deserve it because all I have done is for love of this country. What I have done is of no value; my renunciation is of no value; what I am and what I have is of no value. I have only one thing of value and that is my heart. It burns in my soul, aches in my flesh, stings in my nerves; it is love for the people and Perón. And I give thanks to you, my General, who have taught me to know you and love you. If the people ask for my life I would give it singing because the happiness of one descamisado is worth more than my life.
‘I had to come to give thanks to the CGT for the laurels with which they have decorated me which are for me the dearest memento of the Argentine workers. I had to come to thank the workers and the CGT who dedicated this day to a humble woman. I had to come to tell you, as I told the General, that it is necessary to keep an alert watch on all sides in our struggle. The danger is not past. The enemies of the people, of Perón and of the patria do not sleep. It is necessary that each Argentine worker keeps on the lookout and that he should not sleep, for the enemies work in the shadow of treason and sometimes they hide behind a smile or an outstretched hand. I had to come to thank all my beloved descamisados from every corner of the patria because on September 28 you knew how to risk your lives for Perón. I was sure you would know, as you have known before, how to act as a trench for Perón. The enemies of Perón and of the patria have known for a long time that Perón and Eva Perón are ready to die for the people. Now they know that the people are ready to die for Perón. I just ask one thing of you today, comrades, that we all swear publicly to defend Perón and to fight for him and we will shout our oath aloud for the space of one minute so that the sound of it may reach the furthest corners of the world.’
The roar of ‘My life for Perón’ echoed and re-echoed round the plaza. Then she continued.
‘I thank you, comrades, for your prayers for my health. I thank you from my heart. I hope that God hears the humble people of my patria so that I may soon return to the battle and continue fighting with Perón for you and with you for Perón until death. I have wanted and I want nothing for myself. My glory is and always will be the shield of Perón and the banner of my people, and even if I leave shreds of my life on the wayside I know that you will gather them up in my name and carry them like a flag to victory. I know that God is with us because he is with the humble and despises the pride of the oligarchs, and so the victory will be ours. Sooner or later we will reach it, cost what it may and fall who must.
‘My descamisados, I would like to say many things to you but the doctors have told me I must not talk. I leave you my heart and I tell you I am sure, as it is my wish, that I shall soon be in the fight again, with more strength and more love, to fight for this country that I love so much, as I love Perón. I ask only one thing of you: I am sure that I will soon be with you, but if because of my health I cannot, help Perón, be loyal to Perón as you have been until now, because this is to be loyal to the patria and to yourselves. And all those descamisados of the interior, I embrace them very close to my heart and I hope that they realise how much I love them.’
The passion, the love, the hatred, it was all there as before. But there was a difference. The crowd knew it. There were many men as well as women weeping openly in the plaza. On November 6, she was operated on for cancer of the uterus. Her newspaper, Democracia, said that before she went under the anaesthetic she cried, ‘Viva Perón!’ which must have shaken Dr George T. Pack, the New York Memorial Hospital cancer specialist who performed the operation.
Five days later a special ballot box was carried to her bedside so that she could vote in the presidential election. She had broadcast to the nation the night before and, weak though she was, there was nothing soft in her words. ‘Not to vote for Perón,’ she said, ‘is for an Argentine — I say it because I feel it — to betray the country.’ She warned the voters that she would be with them in spirit. ‘I will follow you like a shadow, repeating in your ears and your conscience the name of Perón until you have deposited your vote in the urn as a message of love and of faith and of loyalty towards
the leader of the people. May every Perónista vote on November 11 be a silent cry from an Argentine heart, “My life for Perón!”’
For her vote to be legal there had to be a poll watcher of an opposition party present. David Vinas, an Argentine novelist, never forgot that moment. He was a member of the Radical Party. ‘It was a rainy day and we three went in — a member of the election board carrying the ballot box, a Perónista party representative, and me. For a moment we were in the hospital room alone with her. Awed. Her face was made up but quite drawn. Her legs were bent and spread out. On her hospital bed were the different ballots of all the parties. We had to leave her alone to vote and when we came back they were all there but the Perónist ballot. But the most impressive moment of all came when we left and walked through the women kneeling in the entrance and outside the hospital. They were kneeling in the rain and reaching up to try and touch the ballot box because Evita had touched it and her vote was inside. A ballot box had acquired mystical properties!’
There was nothing mystical about the result of the election. There would have been if the opposition Radical Party had won. Its candidates were allowed no newspaper space or radio time and had to depend on rallies to get their message across. But even the rallies were restricted in number and harried by the police. The polling itself was scrupulously honest, as it had been in 1946. The army made sure of that. Even so, Perón piled up an impressive sixty-six per cent of the vote. His party won all 30 Senate seats and all but 14 of 149 places in the Chamber of Deputies. Perónista Governors were elected in all 14 provinces. In some areas of the interior Perón amassed a five to one margin over his opponents. But it was Evita’s Perónista Woman’s Party that performed the best of all. Most of the four million Argentine women voting for the first time cast their ballot for Perón. Not only that, they elected six women Senators and 23 women Deputies. Women were also elected to provincial legislatures, and to municipal, town, and village offices. The old Hispanic attitude of male superiority was never going to have the same force again in Argentina, although the woman who had made that possible had been stopped from holding office herself.
