Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Today we get up at 10:30 because we need to check out of our hotel room by 11. The hotel shower is a small square and you can’t turn around in it. We are so hot and when we finally open our door, the cool air from the hall rushes in… We’ve missed the 8:30am group breakfast and by the time we check out, we run into Catherine and Scott but everyone else has gone. We decide to explore this part of the city a bit more before changing hotels as its on Avenida Florida which is the major shopping area.
We go to the Gallerias mall and get some coffee for breakfast and I bought a souvenier coffee mug with a llama in a wooly hat on it. The company is from Salta, Argentina and although we didn’t go there, it’s an image that will remind me of South America with all the llamas and all of the wooly hats!
We walk around a bit more and even pass a Staples store so we have to go in and check it out. The employees are wearing ‘Back to School’ shirts. We find a street full of great natural food cafes and delis.
Then we take a taxi to Recoleta and check into the Howard Johnson Boutique Spa Hotel (recommended by Leo!). They are doing a bit of renovation so we get a $355 room for $100 and it’s fantastic and there’s no noise from the renovation. We get a welcome drink and a nice, big room.
We check out our new neighbourhood and take the metro to Barrio Norte (past another Staples) and get off at Plaza Italia and walk to the Museo Evita.
It’s a little museum in a house that the Eva Peron Foundation owns and it has videos, historic photos, books, old posters and newspaper headlines and even some of her wardrobe (dresses, shoes, hats and handbags) on display. I found the videos really interesting as it shows footage from her rallies, Rainbow Tour, opening of Cuidad Infantil, orphanages, nursing school, homes for the elderly and even her funeral. I also didn’t realize how significant October 17th was.
Evita's Life
There’s a short overview of her life which is expanded on at the museum: http://museoevita.org/en/
The fifth child of Juana Ibarguren and Juan Duarte, Eva Duarte was born on May 7, 1919 in Los Toldos, province of Buenos Aires, where she spent her first childhood years. When in 1930 her father passed away the family moved to Junín. It was at this early age when her calling for declamation and theater started to surface. In October 1934, Evita traveled to Buenos Aires in the company of her mother to present herself for an audition at Radio Cultura.
This same year she settled permanently in Buenos Aires, to fully dedicate herself to her artistic career. She succeeded in working with theater companies run by the most important theater directors of the time. Her talent in front of microphones of the largest audience radios was consolidated during a period of ten years (1934-1944). In 1944 she was elected President of the Argentine Radio Association.
After four minor roles in different motion pictures, she was assigned a supporting role in the movie " La Cabalgata del circo" (1944). A year later (1945), she was given a leading role in the movie " La Pródiga".
On January 15, 1944 a violent earthquake destroyed the city of San Juan, and Juan Domingo Perón, in charge of the Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare requested the cooperation of the citizenry to provide assistance to the victims. Artists in general, among which Eva Duarte was included, actively participated in national fund raising activities and organized an artistic festival in the Luna Park Stadium. Such was the setting in which Domingo Perón - a colonel at the time - and Eva Duarte - a young artist- started a relationship that was soon to end up in marriage.
Coincidentally, and hand in hand with Perón, Eva was catapulted into the world of politics. The historic events of October 17, 1945 marked the end of her artistic career. On the 22nd of that same month and year, Juan Domingo Perón and María Eva Duarte were legally wedded in the town of Junin. Their union was blessed on December 10, 1945, in the San Francisco church in La Plata, Buenos Aires.
On February 24, 1946, the party ticket headed by general Peron won the elections with 52% of the votes, taking office on June 4 as the President of the Nation, while Eva - wife of the President and leader of the people - defined herself as Eva Perón in her role of the Argentine First Lady and as Evita in her daily work with the poor, the workers and the women.
On June 6, 1947, Eva Perón went on an official tour that lasted practically three months, visiting Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Monaco, Brazil and Uruguay. Throughout the tour, her program of ceremonies and receptions was permanently combined with visits to workers' neighborhoods and the execution of social work. While offering donations to the victims of a continent devastated by war, she strived to assimilate the European approach to social work. On August 23, 1947 she returned to Buenos Aires, resuming her busy agenda right away.
She immediately undertook the campaign in furtherance of women's voting rights through the radio and press, working jointly with congressmen, delegations and the women enrolled in civic centers. On September 23, 1947, the Law No. 13,010 was enacted, granting political rights to Argentine women.
On June 19, 1948 María Eva Duarte de Perón's Foundation came into being, providing an organizational structure to the work that Eva had been developing since 1946. Conceived to "satisfy the essential needs that would guarantee a dignified life for the less affluent social classes", her actions materialized into the creation of Orphanages, Homes for Senior Citizens, Temporary Homes, the General San Martín Home for Women Employees, the Children's City and Students' City, the School of Nurses, the Hospital Train, the Cooperatives and the Agrarian Reform Plan, as well as the organization of Children and Student Competitions.
Furthermore, the Foundation embarked on a huge construction plan: workers' dwellings, school buildings by means of the Schools 1000 Plan, vacation facilities for children as well as health centers and polyclinic institutions. Direct social aid, through which Evita personally provided solutions to problems associated with housing, health or employment, and the solidarity shown to foreign countries undergoing an emergency situation or catastrophe such as France, Italy, Spain, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Egypt, Japan, United States, Israel, among others.
On August 28, 1948, Eva Perón read in the Ministry of Labor the Declaration of Rights of Senior Citizens, enacted two days before and subsequently included in the 1949 Constitution. On July 26, 1949, the First National Assembly of the women's Peronist movement took place in the Nacional Cervantes Theater, giving rise to the Female Peronist Party.
On April 4, 1951 Eva read for the first time the original version of "The Reason for my Life". The book was launched on October 15 of the same year.
On August 22, 1951, in the midst of a massive concentration of people at the 9 de Julio Avenue in the city of Buenos Aires, the Justicialist party's preferred meeting place, the C.G.T. (labor union) and the Female Peronist Party proclaimed their adhesion to the Perón-Eva Perón ticket for the coming elections. A few days after, on August 31, Evita announced through the National Broadcast Network her "irrevocable and definite decision of resigning the privilege with which workers and the people" had honored her. On November 11, 1951 the Perón-Quijano presidential ticket won the elections with 62.49% of the votes, percentage that was attained largely influenced by the recently granted female voting rights.
Eva, seriously ill, was hospitalized and underwent surgery a few days before the elections in the hospital Policlínico Presidente Perón de Avellaneda, where she voted for the first and last time. On November 14, 1951 she left the hospital. Despite her efforts for restarting her activity, the progressive deterioration of her health put a brake to her tasks.
On June 4, 1952, Eva Perón accompanied the President in the ceremony to take the oath for his new term. It was her last appearance in public. On Julie 26, 1952, after suffering an excruciating agony, María Duarte de Perón died at the age of 33 in the Presidential Residence in Buenos Aires.
The crying reached the streets, showed it self in endless rows and accompanied the wake which lasted until August 11. For fourteen days, Argentina and its neighboring nations run out of flowers. More than two million people were present to bid her farewell. The carriage with the coffin was pulled by workers from the General Workers Confederation, in a procession whose black and white images continue to strike us with the pain, the number of people, and the history they convey.
That woman, who at the time of her death weighed 34 kilos, and who ceased being real to become a myth, was a controversial woman: loved by some –who saw her as a saint– and hated furiously by others –who believed her to be greedy and without scruples. Never ignored. Strong, intelligent, full of passion.
Her final journey remained, the calvary traveled by her embalmed body, which was first given the funeral honors reserved for heads of State, even when Evita never held any official position, and was later housed at the seat of the Central Workers Confederation until 1955, when Perón was ousted and Evita's body was sequestered by the military dictators of the time. From there, the coffin toured the city in a truck for over one year. However, mysteriously enough, flowers and candles were always found at those places where the truck was parked.
Her body was mutilated and desecrated. For fear of the people's reaction if she was made to disappear, the body was shipped to Italy. She was buried under a false name, María Maggi de Magistris, for fourteen years, at Maggiore cemetery, in Milano. In 1971, her body was returned to Perón in Madrid, who kept it at his residency. It arrived in Argentina in 1974 and for two years stayed at the Presidential Residency. Finally, since 1976, it rests in peace at the family grave, in Recoleta cemetery.
