Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Evita Peron

by Barnes, John

  Ironically, she sat in the Vice-President’s traditional place when Juan Perón took the oath of office on June 4, 1952, to succeed himself as President of Argentina for another six-year term. She sat there because the place was vacant; Vice-President Hortensio Quijano had died since the November election. She looked desperately ill herself, clad in an ankle length mink coat that covered her shrunken body like a shroud. At the Congress building, Perón guided her faltering steps to the Vice-President’s chair, then quickly, with one hand on the bible, swore to defend the constitution. Outside, thousands of members of the Perónista Woman’s Party chanted: ‘Viva Evita, the Vice-President’. But Evita slipped away to return to the presidential estate in suburban Olivos. Perón swore in his new Cabinet, reviewed a parade of cavalry and foot soldiers, waved briefly to 100,000 descamisados in the plaza, and hurried to Olivos to be at his wife’s side.

  13

  DEATH OF THE LEGEND

  That was the last time the descamisados saw their beloved Evita. She was dying. The cancer she had fought off for so long was spreading swiftly with agonising pain through her body. But the Argentine people did not know, although they began to suspect she was more than merely ill when neither she nor her husband put in an appearance at the traditional Flag Day ceremonies on June 19. When she failed to appear at the Independence Day parade on July 9, her doctors tried to still the rumours with a bulletin stating that she needed rest. But, by then, word had leaked out from the Olivos mansion that she was being fed intravenously.

  At the Avenida de Mayo headquarters of the Sub-Secretary of Information, lights burned all night as a special watch of five reporters waited for news of Evita’s health. Perónist leaders, hearing through the political grapevine that death was only a matter of days away, scrambled to outdo each other in their tributes. The Governor of Buenos Aires Province, Carlos Aloe, ordered Evita’s autobiography to be used as a reader in the first grade of Argentine schools, as a textbook for civics courses in the fifth and sixth grades, and in translation as the supplementary text in language courses. Health Minister Ramon Carillo directed that in 508 hospitals and clinics under his department masses should be said for her ‘quick and complete recovery’.

  In the Congress, the Perónist majority voted to build a huge marble and bronze monument to her, with 24 replicas for each of Argentina’s provinces and territories. During one of the 59 impassioned speeches that were made in praise of Evita, Perónista Deputy Mafalda Pió vano dropped on her knees in the aisle and prayed: ‘Oh God, we beseech you to return to Eva Perón the health she has sacrificed to save us.’ Then the Congresswoman fainted dead away. As soon as she was revived, President of the Chamber Hector J. Campora led the 124 Perónista deputies in swearing loyalty to Perón as President and to Evita as ‘Spiritual Chief of the Nation’ — the title by which she had been formally listed in Argentina’s Congressional Record since her final public appearance at her husband’s inaugural.

  The entire Argentine nation was also given its part to play in the homage. Given a half-day holiday, vast crowds stood silently for ten minutes in dusty plazas in cities, towns and villages across the country to demonstrate their love for their dying First Lady. But, as always where Eva Perón was concerned, anger and hatred were as visible as love on that blustery winter’s afternoon.

  In Luna Park Stadium, Evita’s old friend, Jose Espejo, the CGT General-Secretary, whipped a crowd of 50,000 Peronistas into a frenzy with a virulent attack on the American Government, which, he claimed, had prevented the words of their saint from reaching the workers of America. The State Department, he said, had conspired with US publishers to stop an English language version of Evita’s autobiography from being printed in the United States. A backdrop of posters showed a pink octopus sitting on a heap of skulls and gold coins holding Wall Street in one hand and a hatchet in the other directed at Eva Perón’s book. Another showed a voracious-looking black eagle wearing stars and stripes on its neckband swooping down on the same volume. Screamed Espejo: Those clippers of coupons in Wall Street, the Vatican of the dollar, are silencing the voice of love and justice. The hungry wolves of Yankee Imperialism are terrified that our fellow American workers will learn about Argentina’s happiness and abundance.’ But the labour leader promised his delighted audience that the CGT would be sending a copy of Evita’s book to every worker in the United States.

  That never happened of course. If it had, the reaction of American workers would certainly have been the same as that of a growing number of Argentines. For in the few cities captured by the Radical Party in the November Presidential elections. Radical Mayors removed portraits of Eva Perón, as well as copies of her book, from their city halls and burnt them. The Mayors claimed that as she held no official government post, her picture and autobiography had no right to be cluttering up their offices. It was a brave thing to do in a nation where the cult of Evita had reached a pitch of hysteria. But it was not very wise.

  In the two largest cities where it happened, Juarez, 230 miles south of Buenos Aires with a population of 54,000, and Salta, with 25,000 inhabitants, 110 miles northwest of the capital, Perónista workers paralysed both municipalities with general strikes in protest against the mayors’ actions. That gave the fanatical governor of Buenos Aires Province, Carlos Aloe, the opportunity, which he quickly took, to throw out the Radical Mayors and replace them with Peronista Mayors on the grounds that city government had broken down, endangering the welfare of the citizens. There was not even a pretence at making a legalistic examination of the rights and wrongs of the situation. For by mid-winter of 1952, Peronismo had become the law in Argentina, and there was no more fervent upholder of the new judicial order than Carlos Aloe, who had changed the oath of office when he became Governor to include the statement that he was ruling the province on behalf of Juan and Eva Perón.

  Such obsequiousness would have earned warm public praise from the Peróns in earlier days. But at Olivos there was no thought for anything but the approach of death. The weekly Cabinet meetings were cancelled. The President was spending most of his waking hours by his wife’s bedside, holding her hand as she slept, lulled by powerful pain-killing drugs. During one of her periods of consciousness, he presented her with the Collar of the Order of San Martin, named after the nineteenth-century general who led Argentina’s war of liberation against the Spanish. Of all the millions of pounds worth of jewellery that Eva Perón acquired with such squirrel-like zeal during her brief years of power, this gleaming decoration topped them all. The collar contained 758 diamonds, emeralds and rubies, bridged by 3,800 gold and platinum elements. The main pendant consisted of a diamond and emerald rosette, containing an image of Argentina’s liberator against a background of 16 rays of gold and platinum. No matter that the Collar of San Martin is specifically reserved in Argentine law as an honour for chiefs of state. As Eva’s tired, glazed eyes stared at the sparkling Collar lying on her lap on top of her blankets and her bone-thin fingers rubbed over the jewels, she knew only too well the terrible, ironic reason for the award. It meant that when she died she would be eligible for presidential burial.

  Outside the walled grounds of the residence, Peronista women kneeled sobbing on the pavement at all hours of the day and night. Apparently, the sound of the crying must have penetrated the silent, shuttered house. For on July 16, Federal police moved the growing crowds back across the street and posted notices around the neighbourhood calling for ‘no noise’. Two days later, all traffic was diverted from the area and even Cabinet Ministers had to walk the final few hundred yards to the gate of the residence. On the Sunday, July 21, thousands of porteños assembled in heavy rain for an open air mass in the centre of Buenos Aires, where Evita’s priest, Father Benitez, who had accompanied her famous trip around Europe, petitioned for ‘the miracle of her restoration’. In a last despairing bid for human help, President Perón called in two German cancer experts, Professor Paul Uhlenbruck of Cologne, a heart and blood circulation specialist, and Professor Hein
rich Kalk of Kassel, a liver specialist. They arrived on July 24 and were rushed straight from their plane to Olivos, police outriders clearing the way for their car. But it was too late.

  On the afternoon of July 26, Evita’s doctors reported that their ‘illustrious patient’ had declined markedly. Sometime during that afternoon, according to her own newspaper, Democracia, the pain-racked woman whispered to her husband: ‘If I have committed any sins in life I am paying sufficiently for them by this pain. I kissed many tubercular workers thinking God would not send me pain because I did it for the poor. Now God sends me this. It is too much but if it is His work it is well.’

  She was sinking fast. A second bulletin at 6.10 pm reported her condition as serious. At 7 o’clock it was announced that she had lapsed into unconsciousness fifteen minutes earlier. At 8.25, the crowds keeping a hushed but tearful vigil across the street from the residence saw a dim light snapped out in a second floor room. Inside the darkened chamber, President Perón walked away from the bedside of his wife. To waiting family and Cabinet Ministers he said, simply: ‘Evita is dead.’ At her death, the once beautiful woman weighed a gaunt 80 pounds. On that cold July night, for the second time in his life, Juan Perón was looking down at a wife dead of cancer.

  All through the night Argentine radio stations interrupted their programmes of religious music with the news that ‘the Sub-Secretariat of Information fulfills the very sad duty of announcing that at 8.25 o’clock Señora Eva Perón, the spiritual leader of the nation, passed away.’ Churches throughout the country tolled a slow, mournful death-knell. The Cabinet met to declare all official activities suspended for two days, with 30 days of official mourning. Outside the Olivos residence, a man with a crepe-draped Argentine flag perched himself in the fork of a tree and announced dramatically that he would stay there for ever. (Rain soon forced him down.)

  Inside the house, Dr Pedro Ara, a distinguished Spanish pathologist who was cultural attaché at the Spanish Embassy in Buenos Aires, was taken by President Perón to Evita’s bedroom to prepare the body for the next day’s lying in state at the Ministry of Labour. ‘Her face,’ recalled Ara, ‘had a tranquil, beautiful look, liberated at last from her cruel suffering.* One of her doctors, Dr Ricardo Finochietto, had closed her eyes and placed her face in repose. Her mother and her priest. Father Benitez, knelt praying by the bed. ‘I’m going to give you all the keys to my poor wife’s room,’ Peron told him. ‘No one will be able to enter — not the family nor myself — while you are working.’

  Through the windows of Eva Perón’s room, looking out over the grounds to the River Plate, Dr Ara could see the first light of dawn piercing through the storm clouds as he finished his initial work on the body. There were still many more months of work to be done to complete the embalming process. But as he had told Perón the previous night, the success or failure of the embalming process depended critically on those first few hours. But Ara was satisfied now that the body was incorruptible. There was a knock on the door. It was Evita’s dressmaker and hairdresser. Like Ara, the dressmaker had worked through the night cutting and sewing her mistress’s final robe. ‘She looks as though she is sleeping,’ she said as she dressed her. Evita’s hairdresser, Julio, who had known since she was a little girl in Junin, told Ara that during her years in government he had always had the honour of being her first visitor in the morning. ‘No one else cut her hair. I even went to Spain with her,’ he said proudly. ‘If I could just . . .’ Ara cut him short. ‘Go ahead, maestro,’ he told Julio. ‘Perform your art for the last time. But be quick. They are waiting.’ It took the hairdresser an hour to comb and arrange Evita’s hair, during which time her brother, Juan Duarte, came in and cut off a long silver lock to take to their mother.

  Just as Ara was placing her hands around the rosary of silver and mother of pearl that had been given to her by the Pope, one of her maids walked in with her manicurist kit. ‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘before her final moments of suffering, the Señora told me: ‘When I die, take off the red varnish and replace it with a plain varnish.’” The astonished doctor was speechless. He could not believe that the dying woman could have been thinking about such things, consumed as she was with such pain. But just at the moment Perón entered the room. ‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘I heard her. Go ahead and do it, Señorita.’ Then Perón turned to Ara. ‘Tell me doctor. How long will the body remain like this before it decomposes?’ The doctor, who often carried in his luggage the head of an old peasant that he had embalmed, much to the consternation of customs officers in various parts of the world, said quite firmly: ‘General, it will never decompose.’

  Perón then told him that after the Argentine people had been given a few days to see the body, he would have as long as he wanted to finish the embalming process at CGT headquarters, where it was to be kept until the giant monument and crypt that Perón had planned for her in the centre of Buenos Aires was ready. Ara demurred. He pointed out as diplomatically as he could that the CGT was not the quietest place or the most peaceful for doing the kind of delicate work that he had in front of him. There had even been occasions when the place had become the target of disturbances and fights. But Perón just shook his head as Ara suggested that he would much rather do his work in a hospital or even in the grounds of the Olivos residence. ‘No, professor,’ he said. ‘My wife asked that her mortal remains be placed in the CGT until they could be moved to the crypt in the monument, and I’m going to do exactly what she wanted. But I can assure you that you will have all the peace and security that you need. Part of the building is being turned into a laboratory for you. And the men who looked after my wife while she was alive are from today under your orders. Everybody will help you. All the workers adored my wife. To them she was more than a mother.’

  There was nothing more to be said. An hour later, a black van slipped out through the main gates of the residence past the unsuspecting mourning throngs. It carried Evita’s silver-trimmed, white mahogany coffin to the Ministry of Labour building, where her body was laid in state in the gold-domed room where for six years she had wielded the power that formed the backbone of her husband’s regime. The coffin, topped with a full-length glass cover, was placed on a huge horseshoe bier of mauve and white orchids. Flowers covered the second floor auditorium and overflowed into the street. Inevitably, despite the secrecy of the move to enable Perón to pray in peace besides the body and attend a mass conducted by Father Benitez, the word spread swiftly through the city that Evita was at the Ministry. All night vast crowds had kept vigil in the streets, kneeling in prayer on rain-swept pavements. Women wept openly, some in a state of near collapse. Now they swarmed around the Ministry, shouting ‘we want to see her’. The police managed to hold them off for a few hours in the morning. But finally the crowds broke through the police line and were only held in check by a second emergency squad at the doors. Then the order was given to admit the people.

  The whole nation seemed crazed with grief. All flags were at half-mast and draped in black as were lamp-posts and buildings in every city, town and village. For three days no business of any kind was carried out in Argentina. Buenos Aires, one of the world’s great cities, closed down completely. No shops or restaurants were open. There were no buses or taxis. Guests in the elegant Plaza Hotel made their own beds and had to make do on one meal a day. Only the florists remained open and they did a thriving business. Flowers covered the streets around the Ministry of Labour and piled 20 feet high up the walls of the building. When the country’s florists were emptied, flowers were flown in from as far away as Chile.

  Outside the Ministry, the crowds grew longer and longer. Within a fortnight over two million Argentines had made the pilgrimage to Evita’s bier, lining up for more than 15 hours in freezing rain to get a 20-second glimpse of her thin and wasted face. Hysterical women flung themselves forward to kiss the glass of her coffin. Sixteen people were crushed to death by the throngs; over 4,000 were taken to city hospitals to be treated for injuries, and tho
usands more were give first aid on the spot. To feed the 20-block long, four-a-breast queues, the army set up field kitchens, dispensing free sandwiches and coffee.

  Away from the bier, Peronista groups around the country unremittingly tried to outdo each other in paying homage to their First Lady. The eloquence of the oratory was typified by a senator in the Congress who claimed that Evita had not only combined the best virtues of Catherine the Great of Russia, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Joan of Arc and Isabelle of Spain but had also multiplied these virtues in herself to an infinite degree. The Minister of Public Health, Ramon Carillo, ordered a 220-lb candle, the height of Evita (5ft 5in) to be installed in the Ministry and lighted for an hour on the 26th day of every month (the day Evita died). Carillo thought the candle would last 100 years or more. The Argentine Post Office ordered the printing of new stamps of all denominations bearing the picture of Eva Perón and prohibited the sale of any other stamps for a year. Argentines throughout the world, including the athletes who were at the Olympic Games in Finland, were told to wear black bands of mourning, and all members of the Peronista Party were ordered to wear black ties at party functions for the rest of their lives. Even the children were caught up in the frenzy. The Feminist Peronista Party asked the government to build an ‘Eva Perón shrine’ in all schools so that ‘children may slake their thirst for knowledge of the works of this great woman.’ Schools were given prizes to be distributed to children who wrote the best poems and essays praising Evita.