Eva Peron

Until I was uhm… 22 - I used to say ‘I believe in equality for women, but no – I am not a feminist.” I figured, I’m a girl, I’m a geek, I’m somewhat *odd* – I’m fighting battles on enough fronts as it is. The feminists with their poetry, their marches, and their murky agendas could do without me.

Then I looked up the *definition* of feminism, discovered it was *equality* and was like ‘damnit! – I am a feminist.”

I then become a bit of an annoyance to family members and certain guy friends as I’d demand ‘are you a feminist?’ and if they said no, or more usually ‘I don’t know’ – I’d respond: ‘ oh so you don’t believe in equality? Then you can stand over there with your good friend HITLER’

Which is to say, I don’t feel like I organically came to feminism as much as it was foisted upon my aggreived shoulders – feminism is equality? Really? That’s it? This still requires a movement? I have to explicitly opt into equality? How *dumb*. Who are these non-feminists and why aren’t they in jail?

ALL OF THIS is a long way to say, Eva Peron, loved by the feminist movement, wasn’t really on my radar when I arrived in Buenos Aires. Sure I was vaguely aware of her thanks to my sisters taste in musicals (I can warble out ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ with the worst of them’) , but it took over ten days before I got around to the Eva Peron museum or learning anything about her life.

The first thing I learned was that she died at 33. The first thing I thought was: man, I’ve got to get going on my life and do something.

Bare facts:

- born out of wedlock in 1919 (at a time when society discriminated against illegitimate children), although it was totally accepted/ encouraged that a man would have mistresses. (LOGIC FAIL)

- age 15 to 25 ish rose to some status/success in the entertainment industry

- age 25 meet Juan Peron at a charity benefit

- age 26 married Juan

- age 27 Juan Peron is elected president (he was 49) - his first wife died of cancer, Eva was second, his third became his V-P and was later President after his death. Seems like a stand-up guy – too bad at age 58 he took a 14 year old mistress. Not to mention that he thought Mussolini was one of the greatest men of the century, and set his countries policy to harbour Nazi war criminals,

- Nonetheless –it was he that allowed her to sit and attend various meeting, who listened to her, who publicly supported her in a society that disapproved of her influence. Hats off to those that support logically correct/beneficial yet unpopular causes. (Although should be noted, it was hardly without benefit to himself – for while he may have been receiving the unwanted disapproval of his peers,

- Eva, by hook or by crook, was exploiting/ publicizing her humble origins, her delicate appearance, emphasising her ‘Virgin Mary’ parallels (a woman with zero sex-appeal, was a common descriptor) to gain massive support of the Argentina ‘Humbles’ or the poor working class. They adored her, nicknaming her their ‘little eva’ or Evita.

- Over the 6 years of Juan’s presidency (and through his arrest and subsequent release at the peoples demand) she became powerful in trade unions (on behalf of the labourers and their rights), championed woman’s right to vote, set up institutions for orphans and the elderly.

- Also: potentially was funnelling funds away from all these causes into a swiss bank account (Roger Ebert thinks so).

- Nominated for Vice-presidency which she had to decline due to her failing health (cervical cancer – drs hid her condition from her – one of the first recipients of chemotherapy).

- In order to be able to properly stand and wave from the campaign car, she had a special contraption built to hold her up, hidden under her coat and dress.

- At age 33 – Congress gave her the title : Spiritual Leader of the Nation.

- Then she died.

- Her body was embalmed and put on display while waiting for the monument to be finished. However, the gov’t was overthrown in a military coup, Juan fleed, and Evita’s body disappeared for 20 years. (Secretly buried under a false name in Italy).

- Eventually tracked down, returned to Argentina where it was buried in La Recoleta Cementary in her family’s tomb.

- The military gov’t , determined not to have any more disappearances of her body (fearing that a missing body = reappearance of the myth) took every measure to secure the body – it is said that her tomb could withstand a nuclear attack.

And what is her myth?


Latin American myths are more resistant than they seem to be. Not even the mass exodus of the Cuban raft people or the rapid decomposition and isolation of Fidel Castro's regime have eroded the triumphal myth of Ché Guevara, which remains alive in the dreams of thousands of young people in Latin America, Africa and Europe. Ché as well as Evita symbolize certain naive, but effective, beliefs: the hope for a better world; a life sacrificed on the altar of the disinherited, the humiliated, the poor of the earth. They are myths which somehow reproduce the image of Christ



Ironically, Eva Peron didn’t consider herself a feminist. She also had strong connections to Nazism.

I’m just saying.


;)