After watching the musical ‘Evita’ at the Playhouse in Edinburgh, I was left intrigued… Having no previous knowledge on Evita (except that Madonna played her in the tv musical!) I was very interested to find out more about the life and times of Eva Peron.
Here are some basic facts about Evita. She was born María Eva Duarte de Perón (May 7, 1919 – July 26, 1952) and was the second wife of Argentine President Juan Perón (1895–1974) and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952.
Evita came from a very impoverished background. She was born in the village of Los Toldos in rural Argentina and was the youngest of five children. In 1934, at the age of 15, she moved to the nation’s capital of Buenos Aires. Eva Peron went on to become a successful radio and television actress. It was in Buenos Aires that she met and later married Colonel Juan Peron (who was elected President in 1946).
Being the First Lady of Argentina allowed Eva Peron to accomplish many things. Eva Perón created the Female Peronist Party, the first large female political party in the nation. By 1951, the party had 500,000 members and 3,600 headquarters across the country. Eva Peron also unofficially ran both the ministries of Labour and Health. It can be argued that Eva Peron never forgot her upbringing and always campaigned for working class interests. She was also vocal in giving ‘illegitimate’ children the same rights as children born into married families, something that was a very personal issue to Eva Peron. Eva Peron was also known for her charitable work, the Eva Perón Foundation was established in 1948, its first 10,000 peso donation coming from Evita personally. More so than anything else she did, the Foundation would be responsible for the great Evita legend and myth. The Foundation provided an unprecedented amount of relief for Argentina’s poor: by 1950 it was giving away annually hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes, cooking pots and sewing machines. It provided pensions for the elderly, homes for the poor, any number of schools and libraries and even an entire neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Evita City.
Eva Peron went on to be a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. Unfortunately Eva Peron was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. After a very quick decline Eva Peron died on the 26th July 1952 at the age of 1933.
It can be argued that Eva Peron’s actions did leave a long lasting effect on women in Argentina. Cristina Kirchner, the first elected female president in Argentinian history says that women of her generation, who came of age in the 1970s during the military dictatorships in Argentina, owe a debt to Evita for offering an example of passion and combativeness.
However, there are many mixed attitudes towards Eva Peron, in all honesty the musical portrayed her as a somewhat ruthless women with questionable morals. That aside, it is very commendable how she was able to rise from such an impoverished background to having a strong political influence in Argentina. Therefore that is the reason I believe Eva Peron to be a very empowering woman.
A wee bit of trivia for you…did you know that Eva Peron’s corpse went missing for 17 years? Three years after Eva Peron’s death a military coup overthrew Juan Peron. During the coup Eva Peron’s corpse was taken and buried in Milan (although this was not common knowledge and for 17 years her corpse location was unknown!) Eva Peron’s body, in October 1976 it was finally taken from Los Olivos and placed in her family’s mausoleum in Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. The operation was overseen by the dictatorship. It is clear that the fascination with Eva Peron did not cease when she died.
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