Evita Peron Essay -- essays research papers

Evita Peron     In 1949 the almost old(prenominal) scene in Argentina was the one played out intimately daily at the Ministry of Labor in Buenos Aires. There, under the glare oftv camera lights, a former wireless star and movie actress, now the most powerfulwoman in South America, would enter her office past a crush of adoring,impoverished women and children. Evita Peron, the wife of President Juan Peron,would sit at her desk and begin one of the great rituals of Peronism, thepolitical movement she and her husband created. It was a pageant that sustainedthem in power. She would patiently listen to the stories of the poor, then stretchinginto her desk to pull out some money. Or she would turn to a minister of religion and askthat a house be built. She would caress filthy children. She would coddle lepers,just as the saints had done. To many Argentines, Evita Peron was a flesh-and-blood saint after, 40,000 of them would spare to the pope attesting to hermi racles.     She was born on May 7, 1919, in Los Toldos, and baptized maria Eva, buteveryone called her Evita. Her father abandoned the family shortly after herbirth. Fifteen eld of poverty followed and, in early 1935, the young Evitafled her stifling existence to go to Buenos Aires. Perhaps, as some have said,she fell in love with a tango singer who was passing through.     She wanted to be an actress, and in the neighboring few years supported herselfwith bit parts, photo sessions for titillating magazines and stints as anattractive judge of tango competitions. She began frequenting the offices of amovie magazine, talking herself up for mention in its pages. When, in 1939, shewas hired as an actress in a radio company, she discovered a talent for playingheroines in the illusion world of radio soap opera.     This was a period of political doubt in Argentina, yet few peoplewere prepared for the military putsch that took emplacement in June 1943. Among the manymeasures instituted by the new government was the censorship of radio soapoperas. Quickly adapting to the new environment, Evita approached the officer in flush of allocating airtime, Colonel Anibal Imbert. She seduced him, and Imbertapproved a new project Evita had in mind, a radio series called Heroines ofHistory. Years later, people would say that Evita had been... ...cancer had spread. InJune 1952, Perons congress named Evita the uncanny Leader of the Nation. Herown final contribution to that deification came in her will, in which she wrotethat she wanted "the poor, the old, the children, and the workers to continuewriting to me as they did in my lifetime." She died on July 26, 1952, at the ageof 33.     A specialist was brought in to embalm the body and commence it "definitivelyincorruptible." Evitas body lay in state for 13 days-and even then the crowdsshowed no sign of diminishing.      In the decades that followed, Peronism continued to occupy a place inArgentine political life, taking the form mainly of anti-government terrorism.In 1971, after a number of demands by terrorists, the Argentine government concord to return Evitas body. It was shipped to Peron in Spain.     That year, Peron was allowed to return to Argentina two years later hewas president again. He died in office, and it was his wife and successor,Isabel, who brought Evitas body congest to Argentina, in the hope that the aura ofa saint would again blind the public.