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Eva Perón: Eva Perón, Argentine political figure who was a powerful leader during the first presidential term of her husband, Juan Perón.

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Eva Perón, Actress: La cabalgata del circo. Eva María Duarte was born into a small poor village, Los Toldos. When she was still a child she always knew she wanted to break out and get more than the others from her life. She wanted to become an actress.

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Eva Peron Biography/Documentary and Life Story

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Spiritual Leader Of The Nation: Eva 'Evita' Perón Of Argentina

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Eva 'Evita' Perón is a pivotal Argentinian figure. With the revival of musical Evita, discover the life of the 'spiritual leader of Argentina'.

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Tonight the revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera Evita opens on Broadway, starring Ricky Martin and Elena Roger. Based on the life of Eva Peron, first lady of Argentina, the musical originated in London's West End in 1978, and is the first major New York production since 1979.

Evita has enjoyed worldwide success, partly due to the 1996 film version starring Madonna and directed by Alan Parker. However, the musical isn't without its critics, which is inevitable considering the polarizing nature of its subject. Like many of history's most fascinating women, such as Margaret Thatcher or Hillary Clinton, people either immensely loved or strongly disliked Eva Peron. Some saw her as a saint-like figure who understood the needs of the poor; others accused her of being a fascist. Born into poverty as the illegitimate child of a wealthy man, Eva was eager to become a star and strove at all costs to earn her place in history. Perhaps this is why the juicy role of Evita has brought so many actresses success and fame.

Eva Peron's "Star Quality" Born Maria Eva Duarte in 1919, Eva was the youngest daughter of Juan Duarte and Juana Ibarguren. Though her father was a wealthy man, he already had another family and abandoned Eva's family when she was one year old. Raised in extreme poverty, she left for Buenos Aires at the age of 15, hoping to become an actress. At the time Buenos Aires was considered the Paris of South America, and she quickly began auditioning for radio and acting jobs all over the city. She worked as an actress in touring companies and in radio shows, including a radio drama called Great Women of History, in which she voiced roles such as Elizabeth I.

In 1944, after starting a political radio station, Eva met Secretary of Labor Juan Peron at a fundraiser. She took to the airwaves to build support for Peron's political career. Government officials feared Peron's power and influence with the working class and had him arrested. Soon afterward 300,000 people gathered outside Casa Rosada, the executive mansion, to demand Peron's release. After he was set free, Eva addressed the crowd in a landmark speech that relied upon both her appeal as an actress as well as her potential as a dynamic political figure. Despite negative reactions from Peron's social circle, Eva and Juan married in 1945. A year later in 1946, Peron was elected president of Argentina.

Eva was popular with the working class as first lady, garnering the nickname "Evita," which means " Little Eva." Because of this, many thought she resented the middle class and the aristocracy. Despite her emphasis on her humble beginnings while campaigning, she developed a lavish public image. She traveled to Europe on a goodwill trip that would be nicknamed the "Rainbow Tour." After running for vice president in 1951, Eva was diagnosed with cancer and withdrew from the race. She died on July 26, 1952, at the age of 33. The nation of Argentina mourned her, with the Peron government enforcing daily periods for remembrance.

Making the Actress Sing Twenty years after Eva Peron's death, lyricist Tim Rice listened to a radio biography about her. Immediately fascinated by her quick rise to fame and her controversial legacy, he enlisted Andrew Lloyd Webber to set his libretto to music and released a concept album in 1976. Two years later, the show premiered in the West End with Elaine Paige in the starring role. Webber's score for Evita is notoriously difficult for any actor to sing.

Though the musical doesn't cite source material, many believe it is based on the book Evita: The Women With the Whip by Mary Main, which portrays Eva in a harshly negative light. Both Rice and Lloyd Webber assert that they tried to present the story in a neutral yet compelling way, but the emphasis on Eva's promiscuity and hunger for power has angered many Argentine officials as well as historians.

The play's major framing device is a narrator named "Che," who tells the story of Evita's rise and comments on the action of the drama. The original London production directed by Hal Prince presented Che as Argentine Che Guevara, in an attempt to place Evita in the context of Che's Marxist principles. Most other productions, including the current Broadway revival starring Ricky Martin as Che, present this character as merely an everyman who reflects the sentiment of the working classes.

The Story of Evita The plot of Evita begins at a cinema in Buenos Aires on the day of Eva's passing. When the announcer shares the news of her death, the music turns ominous and Che sings "Oh What a Circus," commenting on the pandemonium that takes place. This number captures the Argentine people's loss of hope over Eva's death as well as the unfulfilled promises during her time as first lady.

The complications surrounding Eva Peron in both life and death are why Rice and Webber open the show with "Oh What a Circus." After Eva's death in 1952, her body was embalmed and displayed for two years. Three years later, Juan Peron was overthrown and fled Argentina. The new government made it illegal to display any photos of the Perons, and during the 16-year military reign, Eva's body disappeared. Eventually, after a brief time in Europe in Juan Peron's possession, her body was sent back to Argentina and finally buried in the 1970s.

Two numbers in Evita's first act demonstrate Eva's desire for attention and power: "Buenos Aires" emphasizes her natural star quality, and "I'd Be Surprisingly Good for You" is about how she can help Juan Peron politically. Many critics of the musical dislike this portrayal of Eva as manipulative. However, other scenes where Eva is criticized by the aristocracy, such as in "Peron's Latest Flame," demonstrate the huge obstacles that someone with her impoverished background had to overcome in order to succeed.

The most iconic moment of the musical is when Eva Peron appears on the balcony at Casa Rosada and sings "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" to a crowd of Peron supporters. In reality, Eva's speech was made on the night of Juan Peron's release from prison, while the musical places this scene on the night Peron is elected as president. Other songs in the second act like "The Actress Hasn't Learned the Lines" highlight how political figures must perform for their base, even if they're sometimes less than genuine.

"Don't Cry for Me Argentina" has become the biggest hit from the Evita score and is synonymous with the legacy of Eva Peron. Evita, much like Eva Peron, has a mixed reputation among critics. But after 30 years of success, the musical continues to endure, with the Broadway revival breaking box offices records only a month into its run. Fifty years after the death of Eva Peron, her life, legacy and contributions to women's suffrage still remain an intriguing story and a source of fascination for people all over the world.

Pictured below, left to right: Elaine Paige in the 1978 original London production; Patti LuPone in the 1979 original Broadway production; Madonna in the 1996 film; and Elena Roger in the 2012 Broadway revival.

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Tonight the revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera Evita opens on Broadway, starring Ricky Martin and Elena Roger. Based on the life of Eva Peron, first lady of Argentina, the musical originated in London's West End in 1978, and is...

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Juan Perón

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On Biography.com, learn more about Juan Perón, the controversial three-time president of Argentina and founder of the Peronist movement.

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A collection of websites.

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Did Juan Peron force Eva to have a lobotomy?

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A few weeks before she died, Eva Peron rode next to her husband for his second inauguration as President of Argentina. Her cervical cancer, it is said, had rendered her so weak, that she was standing inside a kind of cage made of plaster and wire to support her frail limbs. She weighed little more than 5.6 stone (36 kg).

At least, that was the official story. But now a neurosurgeon at Yale University Medical School, Daniel Nijensohn, has uncovered new evidence that suggests quite a different tale - a sordid political scandal that never made it into Andrew Lloyd Webber's best-selling musical. As he puts it in his new paper for Neurosurgical Focus: "In addition to pain and sorrow, the story is full of lies, deceit, secrets, and misinformation." According to Nijensohn's theory, the man beside Evita on the parade had been responsible for her rapid decline - by forcing her to have a lobotomy.

The procedure is meant to numb emotional responses to events

The operation involves cutting the neural connections between the prefrontal lobes and the rest of the brain - a procedure that is meant to numb emotional responses. It had been a secret until 2011, when Nijensohn obtained scans of her skeleton after death, which included, among other things, X-ray images of her skull showing signs it had been drilled into.

One possibility is that the lobotomy had been a radical measure to manage the pain of her cancer. Even though the procedure wouldn't have necessarily eradicated the pain itself, the reduced emotional response may have helped her endure the misery. Based on new sources close the event, however, Nijensohn now thinks that it may have been her husband's last-ditch attempt to curb some increasingly dangerous behaviour. "It offered the perfect approach to 'calm' Evita and prevent a civil war, while also attempting to dull her response to cancer pain," he says.

Her rhetoric had become increasingly incendiary towards any of those who dared to disagree with her

Evita had been behaving increasingly rashly in the year before her death. As the First Lady, she was in charge of many of the country's social policies, but by the early 1950s fractures were appearing in the government. Perhaps fired by the anxiety and pain of cancer, her rhetoric had become increasingly incendiary towards those who dared to disagree with her. As Nijensohn writes:

"Her last public speech, delivered on May 1, 1952, Labour Day in Argentina, was a call against her enemies. She also dictated a 79-page document, 'My Message', showing evidence of her belligerence and violent state of mind. She spoke about the 'enemies of the people' who were 'insensitive and repugnant,' and 'as cold as toads and snakes'. She exalted the 'holy fire of fanaticism'. She was 'against those imbeciles' who called for prudence. She ordered the people of Argentina to 'fight the oligarchy'."

These weren't just hollow threats. From her sick bed - and without her husband's knowledge - she allegedly ordered 5,000 automatic pistols and 1,500 machine guns, with the aim of arming workers of the trade unions to form workers' militias. The news would have been enough to tear apart the factions in Juan Peron's allies, who already objected to Evita's power and popularity. The country could have soon descended into civil war.

The operation had already gained notoriety, to treat uncontrollable aggression, and impulsive violence

Was a lobotomy the president's answer? The operation had already gained notoriety in the US, as a measure to treat uncontrollable aggression, and impulsive violence.

Since Nijensohn first looked at Evita's medical records, he has contacted acquaintances of her surgeon, James Poppen, who he believes confirm his suspicions. His correspondents included one of Poppen's nurses and close confidantes, Manena Riquelme, who admits that the operation took place without Evita's consent.

Doctors had to create a make-shift operating theatre in a back room of the palace, she says; the security for the secret operation was so tight that an armed guard over-looked the proceedings. Perhaps the most disturbing detail of her account is fact that Poppen had first practiced the lobotomy on prisoners from Buenos Aires, at Juan Peron's request. Clearly, he wanted his wife to survive the operation.

In the end, the operation did succeed in silencing Evita - if only by accelerating her decline. After the lobotomy, she simply stopped eating. She died on 26 July 1952. Poppen, his acquaintances claim, later regretted his involvement and the pain it brought.

We can never know for certain the exact motives for the operation. So long after the event, we can only rely on testimonies from a handful of people. But the possibility of a conspiracy adds another, tragic chapter to the life of a colourful and controversial figure who continues to fascinate more than six decades after her death.

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The gruesome, untold story of Eva Peron's lobotomy

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A few weeks before she died, Eva Peron rode next to her husband for his second inauguration as President of Argentina. Her cervical cancer, it is said, had rendered her so weak, that she was standing inside a kind of cage made of plaster and wire to support her frail limbs.

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July 27, 1952
OBITUARY
Saga Of Eva Peron: 12 Years To Power

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ambitious, ruthless, untiring, clever and strikingly beautiful, Maria Eva Duarte de Peron had in large measure many of the qualities needed to lift her in a dozen short years from obscurity to fame, wealth and power on the unpredictable currents of Argentine political life.

The child of a poor village landowner who had been separated from his first wife, she rose meteorically through a brief radio and motion picture career to become the first lady of her land and one of the most influential women in the Western hemisphere.

Senora Peron's ascent and her important role in governmental affairs and propaganda were all the more remarkable for the contrast that they presented to the conservative social traditions of Latin America, where women previously were seldom seen, and never heard, in public life.

No less than her husband, Senora Peron was a controversial figure. To her supporters, among whom were the many recipients of her highly publicized charities, she approached the stature of a dazzling goddess. She was "la dama de la esperanza," the lady of hope.

For her opponents, political and social, however, there were not words strong enough to express their dislike and envy of this blonde upstart, who seemed to have virtually taken over the country.

The controversial aspect of the role of Senora Peron was by no means limited to Argentina. She became a truly international figure, a world-wide topic of conversation and invariably a subject of conjecture.

Countless anecdotes--factual as well as apocryphal--pointed this up. The inevitably humorless way in which she lent herself to the promulgation of absolute peronismo was never better illustrated than on the day she had to undergo minor surgery.
'Viva Peron!'
One of the Buenos Aires newspapers owned outright by the Government ran a front-page box, allegedly describing the moment that she was being wheeled into the operating room.

"Before they put me to sleep," she was quoted as having said, "if I do not awake--Viva Peron!"

She was born May 7, 1919, in Los Toldos, a village of Buenos Aires province, youngest of five children of Juan Duarte and Juana Ibarguren. Her father died while she was still a child, and her mother moved to the near-by town of Junin and opened a boarding house.

After two years of high school, still in her mid-teens, the slim blonde girl went to Buenos Aires on her own to seek an acting career. Through characteristic persistence, she was able to land a permanent job with Radio Belgrano, a major station, after several fruitless excursions into both radio and motion pictures.

Finding favor with her employers and several government officials, she rose from a starting salary of $35 a month to about $1,000 a month in 1943, and seven times that figure the next year. In 1944 her monthly income was reportedly $15,000, half of which was paid for her motion-picture performances.

It was in 1943 that she met at a studio party Col. Juan D. Peron, a 49-year-old widower who was Under-Secretary of the War Ministry and a rising figure on the political scene. Both evidently were impressed, for a close association resulted, and they were married secretly in October, 1945.
Aided Radio Employees Union
Even before her marriage, Evita, as she preferred to be known, began to broaden her interests to suit those of her future husband. While he was becoming the champion of the "decamisados," originally the shirtless, and later the shirtsleeved ones, as Minister of Labor, she helped organize a radio employee's union and undertook her first campaigns for the underprivileged.

When Colonel Peron was forced to resign from the Government in October, 1945, Senorita Duarte was dismissed from her radio post. Within a week, however, he had returned to power, and four months later he was elected President and took Senora Peron, then 26, to the executive mansion as his wife.

From then on her activities, wealth and influence expanded rapidly. She set up offices in the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, there holding daily audiences and distributing food, medicine and money to petitioners. In 1947 she incorporated the Maria Eva Duarte de Peron Welfare Foundation, which carried on much of this work.

Spreading with her welfare work was her personal propaganda machinery. Large pictures of the handsome "presidenta" appeared throughout Argentina. Many of her gifts were accompanied by highly colored speeches emphasizing her warm heart, generosity and affection for the people. These sentiments were echoed by a large part of the Argentine press, which was coming under Peronista control financially as well as politically.
Growth of Political Influence
Although Senora Peron insisted repeatedly that she was only interested in social work, political observers began to credit her with influence in Government affairs that was second only to her husband's--if indeed that.

In 1947 Senora Peron made a tour of Europe that was considered highly significant politically. She was feted with great enthusiasm in Madrid and decorated by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. In Rome she had a half-hour audience with Pope Pius XII, and was the subject of several leftist demonstrations. She was received by President Vincent Auriol in Paris, but canceled plans to visit England.

One of Senora Peron's several legislative triumphs was won in September, 1947, when a bill giving women the right to vote in Argentina was approved. This brought another round of eulogies from the press.

The first lady's power to control unfavorable press commentary was considerable. Time magazine was banned in Argentina for four months after it published an article on Senora Peron that was not considered flattering. In 1948 her press campaign became avowedly personal with the publication of a weekly signed column, "Eva Peron Says."

Her political influence was credited as being instrumental in forcing the resignation of the entire minority bloc in the Argentine Parliament in August, 1948. She took an active part in the campaign to "reform" the Argentine Constitution four months later.

For nearly a month early in 1949 Army officials exerted pressure on the President to curb his wife's activities, but the movement was unsuccessful, and two months later she played an important role in the resignation of Dr. Juan Bramugha as Foreign Minister.

In the fall of 1950 reports were circulated in Buenos Aires that Senora Peron had ambitions for elective office. The rumors hinted that she would seek the Vice Presidency in the 1952 election on the ticket with her husband.

Early in 1951 the Perons started a high-pressure campaign to have themselves drafted as a husband and wife team to run the country. By late August they had "agreed" to "accept" the nominations for President and Vice President of the Peronista party.

After taking four days to make up her mind, Evita told a demonstration audience of 250,000 in Plaza Moreno that she and her husband would "do what the people want."

Then on the last day of the month, she changed her mind and declined the nomination. In a choked voice on the same broadcast that on which she had announced her decision, Senora Peron said she had hoped history would say: "There was a woman alongside General Peron who took to him the hopes and needs of the people to satisfy them, and her name was Evita."

Senora Peron's book: "The Purpose of My Life," published in 1951, had the widest distribution of any book printed in Spanish in Argentina, and the Chamber of Deputies later made it compulsory reading in the schools.

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July 27, 1952 OBITUARY By THE NEW YORK TIMES Ambitious, ruthless, untiring, clever and strikingly beautiful, Maria Eva Duarte de Peron had in large measure many of the qualities needed to lift her in a dozen short years from obscurity to fame, wealth and power on the unpredictable currents of Argentine political life.

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This teacher supplies some links to other websites that might be helpful in your search for information.

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groups, each of you with a well-defined role within the group. Each person must research his/her role and formulate an opinion on the focus question: was Eva Pertop

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Sources of information available through our library.

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Library / Online Databases & Encyclopedias

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Turned into a Latin American saint, worshipped by thousands of Argentinians, the subject of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and more recently a film starring Madonna, "Evita" has been the subject of much attention over the years.

Part of this cult is due to her working class background, her ability to become a "working girl makes good" which appealed to a Tory like Lloyd Webber tuning into the Thatcherite yuppie boom where some people from a working class upbringing were able to make large sums of money. Also superficially appealing are her apparent championing of the poor and her welfare reforms which appeals to a Labourite like Alan Parker, director of the film and supporter of old Labour.

Hitler
Eva Duarte was born in a village 150 miles to the west of Buenos Aires. The facts of her early life are obscure, not least because of her efforts in later life to make out that she was younger and had come from a poorer background than was true. When her father died at seven, the financial position of her family took a plunge. By 1934, however, Eva's mother had increased her wealth by her running of a boarding-house.

Eva Duarte moved to Buenos Aires, where she became an actress. She was a successful radio performer in 1943 when the Army overthrew the Castillo government. Realising that the Army were the important people to know now, Eva Duarte became the lover of Colonel Imbert, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. But her aims were higher. She deliberately sought out Colonel Juan Peron, seen as the strong man among the colonels. Peron, an ardent admirer of Hitler, had been a driving force in the Group of United Officers that had engineered the coup.

Peron realised the regime could not survive for long without the help of other sectors of Argentinian society outside the military. He looked for the active support of the working class. He was put in charge of the Ministry of Labour as a first step in this manoeuvre. Peron first met Eva Duarte at a concert given for survivors of an earthquake in January 1944. The charity work she did there was to become a large part of her future career. The publicity given from the charity work put her in the spotlight, helping her in her showbusiness career. Peron was also using the earthquake tragedy to put himself forward as a champion of the poor, indeed Eva Duarte sang his praises on the radio before she had met him. At the concert Eva jettisoned Imbert, and became Peron's lover.

Corporatism
As a result Eva Duarte began to get leading roles in radio plays, as well as starting to appear in movies. Now Peron became Minister of War, an important position. At the same time he had been building up his control of the trade unions. The union leaders were coming together in an alliance to force a reformist project on Argentinian society. This coincided with Peron's populist plans, based on the tactics of Mussolini, to bind the unions to him.

He encouraged a rank and file leader, Cipriano Reyes, to set up a meat-packers union in opposition to the one controlled by the Communists. In return for a no-strike pledge Peron engineered a small wage rise and better conditions. This tactic of corporatism, fully integrating the unions into the State apparatus and thus controlling the working class, was met with hostility by sections of the ruling class, the aristocracy, the landowners and big ranchers, who were wedded to the old ideas of outright repression. Peron did this too with the metalworkers, where a union led by a Trotskyist, was set up in opposition to the Communists! Where he could not control, outright repression was used, as with the building workers. Those who objected to Peron's politics were imprisoned and tortured.

Eva became a key player in this strategy. By now Peron had become Vice-President. He increasingly used nationalist rhetoric against British foreign investment and interests in Argentina (British companies owned most of the infrastructure - Argentina was virtually a British colony).

The landowners and industrialists forced Peron to resign in 1945, after a wave of protests and strikes to defend the reforms put through by Peron. When Peron was arrested, Eva threw herself into frenetic activity to build up support among the unions. It is rumoured that the large amounts of cash used during this campaign was from that she had embezzled from the earthquake fund.

In alliance with Cipriano Reyes, she visited many factories, docks and union HQs, singing the praises of Peron as the workers' friend. This culminated in a mass demonstration on October 17th, when 50,000 workers demonstrated in the capital.

Populist
It was Eva who had shown remarkable resolve when Peron was wavering and preparing to go into exile. It was she who was a chief architect in mobilising the masses in a populist show of support for Peron.

The following year Peron swept to power in a landslide election victory. In the next 3 years Eva, now officially married to Peron, would show how valuable she was to Peronism in enchanting the masses, tying them enthusiastically to the regime and thwarting any independent organisation of the working class. She began to deliver dramatic addresses to mass meetings and over the radio waves, bringing up her working class credentials, calling on the working class to back her and Peron.

In the meantime she continued to do what she had been doing before Peron became President. She moved her relatives into positions of power. Her brother became Peron's private secretary. Husbands and lovers of her sister and mother were given influential positions. This nepotism benefited her family - it also allowed her access to provincial government, the Senate, the judiciary, communications, and her husband's daily schedule.

At the same time she spent a fortune on jewellery, hats and clothes and an extravagant lifestyle - a long way from the lives of the people she made her impassioned speeches to.

Then there was the Eva Peron Foundation. She had set this up when she had been refused the Presidency of a national establishment charity sponsored by upper class women, shortly after Peron became President. From a show of egotism, the Foundation developed into a kind of welfare state, which built hospitals, schools, orphanages and old peoples' homes, distributing food, medicine and money. But each act of the Foundation was used as a publicity stunt to show how benevolent Eva Peron was.

At the same time many gimmicks were used as grist for the publicity mill. Very poor children were housed and fed for a few days and then flung back into poverty, peso notes were flung at random into the crowd. At the same time money was raised by the Foundation by a compulsory levy on union members (three days' pay) a national lottery and enforced contributions from the industrialists. The Foundation gained publicity for Peronism for its good deeds, it bolstered popular support through its "good deeds" - and Eva was able to divert up to $700 million into overseas accounts!

Saint of the Poor
The years 1946-9 saw workers' wages go up by a third. But in February 1949 the stock market collapsed and after this Peronism became more openly anti-working class, with austerity measures being introduced. Spending was cut by 20% and real wages fell by 32% between 1949 and 1953. In 1950 Eva Peron attempted to stop a railworkers strike. When the strike action spread the following year, the Peronists declared military rule, sacked 3,000 workers and jailed 300. She began to be associated with the brutal methods of the regime.

Her early death in 1952 meant that the reputation she had built up was not too damaged by the increasing attacks of Peronism on the working class. In death she was transformed into a Virgin Mary style icon, a Saint of the Poor, easily managed in a predominantly Catholic country. In reality she was a corrupt and power-mad manipulator of the masses, helping bring about, in Juan Peron's own words "a fascism that is careful to avoid all the errors of Mussolini".

Taken from Organise!, the theoretical journal of the Anarchist Federation
Edited by libcom.org

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Turned into a Latin American saint, worshipped by thousands of Argentinians, the subject of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and more recently a film starring Madonna, "Evita" has been the subject of much attention over the years.

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Evita Peron Historical Research Foundation

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Organized for the recovery, historical investigation, and diffusion of the life and works of Maria Eva Duarte de Peron and her relevant contemporaries.

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Eva: A Figure Who Refuses to Die
By Eugene Robinson
Washington Post Foreign Service
January 1, 1997
With all its flash and verve and hype, the movie "Evita" aims right past Eva Peron, the woman, and draws a bead on Eva Peron, the myth. Which is just as well. The myth is a fabulous target, the story of a modern-day saint who had the grace to die young. The woman, on the other hand, would be hard to portray with any real sympathy.

As played by Madonna, and as enshrined in legend, Evita was a beautiful young girl who made her way from the dusty Argentine provinces to the metropolis of Buenos Aires, where she worked as a radio actress, carving out a modest career until she caught the eye of the handsome and powerful army officer Juan Peron.

Together they rose to hold a nation in their hands. She hated the rich, who had scorned her, and loved the poor, from whose ranks she had come. She enveloped the poor with her love, giving them hope, giving them power. When she died, it rained for two weeks -- even the Argentine heavens mourned her untimely passing.

Is that the truth? The writer V.S. Naipaul went to Argentina to find out, and in his 1974 essay "The Return of Eva Peron" he expressed his frustration at the trouble he was having separating fact from fiction. Then, in exasperation -- or perhaps, finally understanding the place -- he wrote: "So the truth begins to disappear: it is not relevant to the legend."

The real Eva Peron, according to a newly published biography by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, began as something of a sex symbol but quickly left that phase behind. She probably didn't have to sleep with the tango singer Agustin Magaldi to get him to take her to Buenos Aires, and there probably wasn't quite so much traffic in and out of her bedroom as the new movie would have us believe.

Juan Peron was the hormone actuator of the glamorous presidential couple, the macho heartthrob, the one who caused ladies in the vast Peronist crowds to flash their panties and scream at the top of their lungs that they wanted to bear his children. Eva was beautiful but unattainable, isolated by her great power and her even greater ambition.

She seemed motivated by a genuine desire to help the poor, most accounts agree -- if necessary, to help them one by one. She would even bring street urchins into the presidential palace to bathe them and treat their scabies and give them a meal. But she was also a fascist, or at least a crypto-fascist, who shared her husband's admiration for Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany and especially Franco's Spain.

There is the nagging question of the alleged Nazi millions. Some Peron haters believe that high-ranking Nazis managed to spirit millions in gold, currency and other loot into Argentina after the war, and that the Perons came to control this vast fortune. During her triumphal tour of Europe, which is depicted in the new film, Eva made a curious and unscheduled stop in Switzerland -- to deposit some of that loot in Swiss banks, the anti-Peronists charge. There seemed to be no undisputed facts that would either back up the story or knock it down.

Eva Peron was vain, she was capricious, she was horribly insecure. Throughout her brief career as Argentina's first lady, she kept at her side a succession of ladies-in-waiting, women who had better pedigrees than hers, better table manners, and could warn her if she was about to commit some grave error of etiquette. When one of her attendants said something she didn't want to hear, the offender was balled up and tossed away like a used candy-wrapper.

Her death was slow, ugly, agonizing. She was wasted to skin and bones, weighing barely 80 pounds and badly burned from the radiation treatments doctors gave her to try to halt the spread of her uterine cancer. It took the genius ministrations of her embalmer, a mysterious Spaniard named Dr. Ara, to restore her to beauty so she could lie in state.

She had been born Eva Maria Ibarguren, illegitimate daughter of a minor provincial big man named Juan Duarte. But she later had her birth certificate changed to make it read "Maria Eva Duarte" -- legitimate and with the Maria coming first, as was the custom among upper-class families. To the rich and powerful of Argentina, she was "Maria Eva Duarte de Peron."

Only the poor were allowed to call her Evita.

It is a shame, in a way, that the movie ends with her death. Only then does the myth of Eva Peron get really interesting.

After she lay in state, Dr. Ara went back at the corpse with his formulas and his waxes and his elixirs, producing what is generally agreed to be a masterpiece of the embalmer's art. Her corpse became an icon, the ultimate relic in a nation that has always had a strange attraction for bits and pieces of the dead.

Then, three years later, Peron was overthrown. For the next 16 years, Eva's body was "lost" -- the country's military rulers were afraid to destroy it, and afraid to bury it, lest the tomb become the focal point of a Peronist revival. So it was shuttled around, at one point residing in a heavy and anonymous-looking piece of furniture in an army major's office.

In 1971, as a peace gesture, the military "found" the body and returned it to Peron, who was living in Madrid with his new wife, Isabel, and a mystical aide-de-camp named Jose Lopez Rega, who later would come close to ruining the country. At Lopez Rega's urging, Isabel would lie on top of the coffin -- some versions of the story have her lying inside, next to Evita -- in an attempt to absorb some of her power.

Peron did not bring the body home when he returned to take power again in 1973. When he died the following year, Isabel succeeded him -- with the disastrous Lopez Rega at her right hand -- and ordered the corpse flown home.

Juan and Eva Peron were not buried together. He was buried in his family's crypt, and his final rest was undisturbed until 1987, when vandals broke in and cut off his hands. The hands are still missing. The anti-Peronists who believe in the Nazi millions theorize that the desecrators wanted his fingerprints to gain access to those supposed Swiss accounts.

Eva Peron was buried, at last, in a tomb in the Recoleta Cemetery, a citadel of stylish and monied death amid Buenos Aires' toniest districts. The tomb, by no means the grandest in the cemetery, is a shrine, an object of pilgrimage, a place where men and women -- increasingly, old men and old women -- come to lay flowers and pray.

There are always fresh flowers, as if something there refuses to die.

&copy Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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WashingtonPost.com: Eva: A Figure Who Refuses to Die

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By Eugene Robinson Washington Post Foreign Service January 1, 1997 With all its flash and verve and hype, the movie "Evita" aims right past Eva Peron, the woman, and draws a bead on Eva Peron, the myth. Which is just as well.

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Movie based on the musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber

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Directed by Alan Parker. With Madonna, Jonathan Pryce, Antonio Banderas, Jimmy Nail. The hit musical based on the life of Evita Duarte, a B-picture Argentinian actress who eventually became the wife of Argentinian president Juan Perón, and the most beloved and hated woman in Argentina.

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Eva Perón was the second wife of Argentine President Juan Perón and the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952.

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Eva Perón used her position as the first lady of Argentina to fight for women's suffrage and improving the lives of the poor. Learn more at Biography.com.

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Eva Peron's biography is available in our library.