The Official State Portrait of Eva “Evita” Peron

The death of Eva Peron 60 years ago today sparked one of the world’s largest outpouring of grief and mourning ever seen. Even though Mrs. Eva Peron died on July 26, 1952, more than 30,000 biographies of her life have been sold in the past 3 weeks alone in Buenos Aires. But some may ask, who is this Eva Peron person?

María Eva Duarte was born on May 7th 1919 in a town called Los Toldos, Argentina. During her childhood, her father abandoned her, putting her family in a state of poverty. At the age of 15, Eva left Los Toldos for Buenos Aries, the capital city of Argentina, with ambitions to become an actor By late 1935, she had a job with a theater company. Through 1936-1942, she toured with the theater company and became known throughout the South American theatrics world until she received a proposal from a radio company in 1942 to abandon her theatrical occupation and become a radio hostess. She accepted, and became one of the most famous radio hostesses in South America. She continued her career in radio until 1944-1945. In early 1944, an earthquake occurred in San Juan, Argentina, killing approximately 6000 people. The then Secretary of Labour Juan Domingo Peron decided to hold an “Artistic Festival” to raise money for disaster funds. It was at a Gala during the festivities that Eva and Juan met. They both fell into a relationship, despite her being 24 and he 48.

After they had a somewhat permanent relationship, Eva began to attend dozens of government meetings and conferences with Juan later in the year. They got married in 1945 and became a well known couple in 1946. In early 1946 Juan ran for President on Argentina. He won, and Eva became First Lady. The following year, Eva and Juan took a tour of Europe, for an unknown reason. Many criticized the Peron’s of using the tour as a mask to deposit millions of dollars into various bank accounts, especially during their time in Switzerland. Among the locations the Peron’s visited was Vatican City. They had a warm audience there, but the Pope (Pius XII) did not give them Papal decoration s they usually would have received. Post European Tour saw the founding of the worldwide celebrated Eva Peron Foundation.

As one of the many great accomplishment she is well known for, the Eva Peron Foundation was founded in July 1948 to help with on-going poverty in Argentina. Even though it started out as a small organization, it soon grew in 1950, to have more than $200M in assets, 14,000 workers, 6,000 construction workers and 26 priests. The organization produced  400,000 pairs of shoes, 500,000 sewing machines, 200,000 cooking pots annually for the poverty stricken in Argentina. The foundation also gave scholarships, built homes, hospitals, and other charitable institutions. Every aspect of the foundation was under Evita’s supervision. The foundation also built entire communities, such as Evita City, which still exists today. This job was extremely hard for Eva, as she overwatched all projects, programs, distributions etc. She (on average) spent 22 hour work hours a day, including weekends, in her Foundation Office. As a matter-of-fact, she was often told by other government officials and even Juan Peron himself to take time off; but every time she denied.  This Foundation continued after her death until 1955 by Juan Peron.

In 1951, Eva’s heath was in rapid decline. She started to loose weight drastically due to various ailments, amongst constant fainting problems. As a fact, she weighed 76 pounds by the end of 1951. No surgery could help her, only to so much to prolong her inevitable early death. But during the 1951 political year, she had aims to hold a nomination to the seat of Vice-President of Argentina.  On 22 August 1951, a mass union rally was held outside the famous  Avenida 9 de Julio where about 2 million people showed support for Eva’s decision to run for Vice-President. During the rally, Eva pleaded the crowd to give her more time, but despite that, they requested that she announce her decision now. Two days later, she declined her decision to run. Post that, her heath continued to decline, especially after doctors diagnosed her with a rare form of Cervical Cancer. Her heath worsened to such an extent, that she could not stand by herself without the assistance of her husband. This became more noticeable during 1951-1952.

In one of her last public appearances before her death, on June 4th, she wore a heavy fur coat. Under that coat she wore a plaster/wire gear to assist her ability to stand. Later that month, she was proclaimed Spiritual Leader of the Nation of
Argentina by National Congress. Sadly, despite all health efforts, Eva died at the age of 33, at 8:25 p.m., on 26 July 1952 in Buenos Aires. The news was immediately broadcast throughout the country, and Argentina went into mourning. All activity in Argentina ceased; movies stopped playing; restaurants were closed and patrons were shown to the door, to mourn the loss of their “Greatest Leader”. As a matter-of-fact, all the flower shops in Buenos Aires sold out in 16 hours. Mourning lasted 10 days, and 8 people died by being crushed to death by hundreds of thousands of mourners.

In recent days, the current Government of Argentina released a 100 Pesos Banknote with her official portrait. Some think that this is a great honor for such a great national leader to be recognized. Personally, I admire her work greatly, and strongly recommend looking at more of her work that was not mentioned in this post. Within the past 24 hours, more than 45,000 mourners layed flowers at her final resting place in Buenos Aires.