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In a miraculous exertion of will, she joined Per�n in the inaugural ceremony in early June for his second presidential term. She died the following month. The overwhelming display of mourning took the world by surprise. For two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people filed past her coffin. Death, however, did not bring her the rest or peace that she denied herself in life. A respected Spanish specialist worked for an entire year embalming her body, and plans were made to erect a monument to house it. Construction was delayed, and Per�n was overthrown three years later in the Liberating Revolution. By this time publicly despised and lacking the popular that Evita had always garnered, Per�n was forced to flee in exile to Spain; Eva�s body remained in custody of the CGT, a national labor federation. It was stolen from CGT headquarters and for sixteen years its location was unknown. In a covert operation, it had been taken to a military installation in the center of Buenos Aires, and from there to Italy in the late 1950s. With the cooperation of the Vatican, Eva�s body was buried in a Milan cemetery under an assumed name. In 1971, her mutilated body was returned to Juan Per�n at his residence in Madrid, where it remained until 1974 when, following his death, it was brought back to Argentina. Since 1976 it has lain in the Duarte family crypt in the Recoleta Cemetery, under security.
Over the years the popular cult to Evita has persisted, reached immense proportions, and remained intact despite attacks and efforts to demythologize her. In the wake of the Liberating Revolution of 1955, the leaders systematically destroyed documents and photographs of Eva and Juan Per�n, and those who secretly retained them risked arrest. But no myth is more resistant than the one that is also a fact. Her achievements remained in the memories of her people and in the streets of her nation, even though her name was officially erased for two decades. More adored by the people, more than a heroine whose tragic death came too soon, Evita was a political and historical reality that forever changed Argentina. |
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