Money was raised to build a tomb,
a monument to Evita. Only the pedestal
was completed and Evita’s body
disappeared for seventeen years.
--Evita

Eva’s Body

Eva Perón did not rest in peace. During the three years between her death and the overthrow of Perón’s government, her body resided in a laboratory on the third floor of the CGT headquarters and suffered the complex ministrations of pathologist Dr. Pedro Ara Sarria. Often credited with having preserved Lenin’s body (he didn’t), Dr. Ara was the perfect choice to fulfill Eva’s dying wish for permanent display. Her marble image already graced a thousand buildings in Argentina, but she wished for more. Her preserved remains were to be the focal point of a tomb taller than the Statue of Liberty, topped with a towering descamisado. The structure was to be 448 feet high, resplendent with Eva’s words etched in stone and plentiful statuary including an 800 pound silver figure of an idealized Eva. Only the monument’s enormous base and several sculptures of Carrara marble by Italian Leon Tomassi were completed.

Dr. Ara was brilliant technician and used his secretly developed process involving alcohol and glycerin to fill out her wasted body to its former lines of health and loveliness. Death, funerals and corpses are important in Argentina, and this only added to the power of Eva’s body, and it seems to have won Dr. Ara over completely. His memoirs, published posthumously in 1974 reveal a macabre romance as he talks to the corpse, speaking to it with terms of endearment. He developed a possessive jealousy over the body, defending it against dust, fire, the press, curiosity seekers, mourners, government flunkies and two military coups. He did not, however, have to defend it against Juan Perón, who only visited his wife’s body once.

In addition to his embalming chores, Dr. Ara spent weeks deciding on the proper facial expression and clothing for the body. Dismissing those who wanted her to wear a fierce, revolutionary look for eternity, Ara chose to place her face in repose, taking advantage of her considerable overbite (which was responsible for her brilliant smile), which gave her face a soft smile. After daily dippings of the body in various chemicals, he had a friend make a simple white shroud and Dr. Ara dressed the body in it, placed the Argentine flags over the lower part as they had been at her funeral, restored the jeweled peronista broach to her shroud and placed the rosary the Pope had given her in her hands. He dictated that the body never be exposed to direct sunlight, temperatures over 25 degrees Celsius, and kept the only key to the locked coffin. He was paid $100,000 for his work.

Perón Is Ousted

During the height of the last coup, Dr. Ara desperately tried to get a meeting with Perón in order to secure custody for Eva’s body. But it was not to be. He did get a written note from Eva’s mother, saying that if Perón did not take custody, Dr. Ara was to do whatever he could to safeguard the corpse. Juana then took her family to the Ecuadorian embassy and eventually into exile in Chile. Perón was virtually overthrown by a naval junta in June, and in September, was taken to a Paraguayan gunboat under guard.

After daily attendance for three years, Dr. Ara last saw his masterpiece in the early hours of 24 November 1955, when he turned it over to Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Moori Koenig of military intelligence. Moori Koenig had headed the commission charged with authenticating the body under the junta president, General Eduardo Lonardi, and had survived the November coup which placed General Pedro Aramburu in office. Exhaustive x-rays and examinations had been done for a month to determine that the body was in fact really Eva’s and not a wax replica.

Dr. Ara helped Moori Koenig and a detachment of soldiers place the body back into its one-ton bronze and crystal coffin, which was then crated in plain wood. It was then taken to an army base, where the commander learned what the box contained and refused to admit the contingent. He evidently feared or cared no more for Eva dead than when she was alive. The crate was taken to various military depots, but by this time, peronista gangs were roaming the city in search of the body, while bizarre rumors spread concerning its condition and location. On 5 January 1956, Moori Koenig placed his deputy, Major Antonio Arandia, in charge. Arandia took the body to his apartment, fearing attempts on headquarters, and kept a gun nearby. That night, hearing a sound, he fired, killing his pregnant wife who was on her way to the bathroom.

The body was immediately dispatched to military intelligence headquarters, placed in a larger crate marked "radio sets" and it remained there for several months until it was discovered by Hector Cabanillas, new chief of the secret service. He wanted no part of this politically sensitive corpse, and, after an unsuccessful attempt to convince Eva’s mother to accept delivery in Chile, he set up a secret disposal unit. Thus, the "radio sets" were sent to the Argentine Embassy in Brussels, then to Bonn, while negotiations proceeded with the Vatican for a secret burial. Finally, the corpse was shipped to Rome and Milan, where it was buried under the name of Maria Maggi De Magistris in the Musocco cemetery on 17 May 1957.

Presidents came and went in Argentina between 1955 and 1974. None were successful in halting the inflationary spiral. The cost of living rose 650 percent from 1960 to 1970—nearly matching the inflation rate for the ten years Perón was in power. They were also ineffectual in their attempts to unite the many political factions in the country. Revolutionary guerilla groups including the Montoneros and the People’s Liberation Army mounted offensives against the army. These groups represented the left wing of peronismo and held Eva as their standard bearer in the fight against the groups trying to prevent Perón’s return.

Meanwhile, Cabanillas was sent to the Vatican to locate Eva’s grave. He then arranged for swift and secret transportation from Milan to Madrid, where Perón, his third wife Isabel and Dr. Ara opened the coffin on 4 September 1971. Perón and peronismo returned briefly to Argentina, but he was an ill and faded savior, dying less than a year after his re-election. His wife, María Estela (Isabel) took over but was unable to maintain control of the country. Believing implicitly in the mystical power of Eva’s body, she brought it to Buenos Aires from Spain and paraded it down the streets with Eva’s family walking alongside. But Isabel was no Evita her advisor, Jose Lopez Rega, began a reign of terror that saw the death or disappearance of some 30,000 left-wing peronistas and pro-democracy supporters. Isabel was forced into exile in Madrid.

On 22 October 1976, exactly thirty-one years after she had become Señora Perón and began her spectacular climb to the top, Eva was buried at last in the Duarte family vault in swank Recoleta cemetery outside the capital. Her monument is still a rubble-filled crater.

The Cult of Evita and Peronismo Then and Now

Fighting the military dictatorship of president Jorge Videla and, since 1989, now under the more benign leadership of president Carlos Menem, peronismo is as strong as ever in Argentina. The flamboyant Menem featured huge portraits of Juan and Eva in his rallies. In a coincidence so bizarre it’s funny, Menem is a divorced womanizer and one of his favorite conquests is Argentina’s leading blonde television actress, Mirtha Legrand. Once again, Argentines look for a magic solution. Menem’s attempts to control the economy have resulted in 11% unemployment, an annual per capita income of just $2,000 and the oligarchs still own all the land. Evita has become the symbol for groups from the extreme left to the far right, and some just cherish her memory, remembering the days when someone was there to listen to them.

There is a tragedy in the story of Eva Perón that does not concern her premature death or painful illness. The working class in her country still adore her for her good deeds and remain proud of her success in crossing rigid class lines. The poor still revere her as the only one in the country’s history who seemed truly concerned with their plight. The tragedy is that Eva did do many great things for her country, but most of the tangible evidence is gone, eradicated by subsequent governments who believed that destruction of her monuments, statues, hospitals, homes and institutions could erase her memory from the hearts of the people.

Eva Perón’s gift that will never be destroyed is the self respect she gave to those who had been vassals of the land. The lower class has tasted power and their day may come again, but it cannot as long as they look only to the past. But democracy—long delayed—seems to have come at last to Argentina. People form political action groups and band together to protest corruption. Perhaps at last, the people of Argentina are finding their voices.

Eva set herself up for impermanence, because there was no way the structure of social aid she built could survive without her. If the myth of "Santa Evita" persists in some quarters of Argentina, the picture of an evil, self-serving opportunist is more prevalent in North America and Europe. Someday, it may be possible to place her in perspective within her time and her country. She compressed a lifetime of work into six years, all the while shackled by her lack of official position and fighting a privileged aristocracy who were trying to regain control of the government while maintaining their control of the land. She was also working against the middle class (mostly the military) which resented the rising laboring class as well as the destruction of the traditional social values they respected.

Today, Eva’s family has taken some steps to see that her memory is better preserved, and a more human image of her is presented to the public. They seem to be trying to distance the woman from the icon. Her niece (Erminda’s daughter) Christina Alvarez Rodriguez has spearheaded a drive to regain Eva’s personal possessions and some have been restored to the family. A few of Eva’s Dior dresses graced a recent retrospective at the New York Metropolitan Museum. The family plans a museum of its own, and in the meantime, runs a respectful and fascinating website.

No one except an Argentine can say whether the tyranny of the last decades is better or worse than the tyranny of the Peróns. Those who ask about the long-term effects peronismo has had on Argentina need only to turn their eyes to the south to see the durability of Eva’s memory and then try to measure the imprint she left on the land. Good or evil? You must judge her yourself.

party still evoking the magic images of Juan and Eva in their youthful glory.

Go to: EPILOGUE--EVITA LIVES!



Bibliography


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Text ©1980, 1999 by Sylvia Stoddard