Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Embalming Evita


All the talk on the radio about embalming the remains of Hugo Chavez has brought to mind the amazing story I learned in researching Blood Tango,* about the aftermath of Evita’s demise.


As with the death of Chavez (and Chairman Mao and Lenin), something had to be done to keep Evita alive in the minds of the public.  The popularity of Argentina’s First Lady was the lynchpin of Juan Perón’s regime.  Even before she died at the age of only 33 in June of 1952, Perón was planning to preserve her remains.  As soon as her death looked imminent, Perón engaged Dr.  Pedro Ara to embalm her corpse.

Work began only a few hours after she died.   The plan, as with the other political icons, was to keep her body on permanent display in a grand monument---in this case,  a statue of a poor worker, larger than the Statue of Liberty.

The funeral (sans burial) turned into an astonishing outpouring of love and grief.  You can see a film of it here:  





While the monument was under construction, Evita was displayed in her former office—where she had received the poor and worked to grant their wishes.  Her corpse stayed there for two years.

But then the plans began to crumble.  In 1955, a military coup overthrew Perón, who hastily fled to Spain.  The new rulers took great pains to erase the memory of Perón and especially Evita—who was still beloved by millions of the working class.  The new rulers banned all pictures of her.  It was against the law to speak her name, even in the privacy of one’s home.  Her body was stored in a garage for a while (I guess as much as the generals detested Evita, they did not have the nerve to desecrate her remains.)  And then the corpse disappeared.  For sixteen years.

In 1971, it was found in a crypt in Milan interred under the name María Maggi.  Evita was then brought to Spain and remained there with Juan and his third wife, Isabel, on their dining room table!  (No novelist would get away with making this stuff up!)

Then, in 1973, Perón returned from exile and became President again.  When he died in office a year later, Isabel took his place.  She finally put Evita to rest in the Duarte family tomb in La Recoleta Cemetery.  (Duarte was Evita’s maiden name, sort of.  But that’s a story for a different post.)

I have visited Evita’s mausoleum two times, fifteen years apart.  On both occasions, while no one much was looking at the nearby tombs of some of Argentina’s most illustrious dead, there was a crowd in front of Evita’s resting place.  In history and myth, the once and future Evita lives on.

Memorial wreath at the door if Evita's tomb.
Annamaria Alfieri

*Blood Tango, a mystery set in Buenos Aires in October of 1945 launches this coming June 25!

11 comments:

  1. I am looking forward to reading this!!! What great fun you must have had with this research!!!

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    1. Thank you, Margaret. There will be more about Evita here as the pub date nears. there are a tone of fascinating facts that could never have gone into the story or it would have been two books long!

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  2. Wow! In Milan! Who would have imagined! Sooooo close!
    Nicoletta

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    1. Thanks Nicoletta. Peron was in Italy in the Thirties. He was a big fan of Mussolini! He learned a lot about public pageantry from Il Duce, as did Hitler. Those fascists knew how to stick together

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  3. Hay caramba! No lo credo!!
    jbl

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  4. My goodness, you have expanded my narrow horizons! I never thought about having a corpse on my dining room table! But, hey, this might be a good fit for the White House. Thelma Straw in Manhattan

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    1. T, I can't see how that would help, but Obama seems to have tries everything else to get cooperation from the Republicans. Hey, maybe you are right. There is a connection. The GOP is a dead body trying to look as if it is still vital!

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  5. thanks for the wonderfully creepy video of Evita's
    >> funeral. Have I told you my story of the hairdresser and E's corpse? This was told to me by Aline, Countess of Romanones, a very beautiful American who, during WWII, was recruited into the OSS and posted in Madrid, mingling with the fancy folks to the degree that she married Romanones, heir to one of the best titles in title-conscious Spain. Many years later, (I forget exactly, but it must have been early 70's) Aline was in her palace in Madrid, dressing for a ball. Enter her private hairdresser, hysterical, weeping and raving. Aline, naturally, asked why. The hairdresser had been dragooned by Juan Peron's entourage for a very special assignment: fixing up the hair of the long-dead Evita, in her coffin. More than enough to freak out anyone, I imagine. Wow. Aline is not the sort of person who invents stories, so I believed her absolutely.
    Tom Murphy

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    1. Tom, what an amazing story! I think I would have been creeped out myself by having my hair done by a person who had so lately been coifing a twenty-year-old corpse!

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