The Macabre Journey Of Eva Perón’s Corpse
Eva Perón, affectionately known as Evita, remains one of Argentina’s most iconic and controversial figures. As the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her untimely death in 1952, she captivated the nation with her passionate advocacy for labor rights and women's suffrage. However, the story of Eva Perón extends far beyond her life and political legacy. The bizarre and grisly saga of her corpse is a tale filled with intrigue, political maneuvering, and macabre twists that rival any gothic fiction.
After the death of Eva Perón in July 1952, there was a massive display of public sorrow, leading to crowds dangerously pushing towards her body during its transfer to the Ministry of Labour building. Over 20,000 individuals received medical treatment for injuries caused by the crush, and eight lost their lives. However, this was just the start of the strange, aggressive, and sensational events involving the body of this controversial figure.
She had an exceptional journey from her illegitimate birth to rise as the First Lady of Argentina. In Buenos Aires, she transformed herself into an actress before assuming the crucial role of her country's President's wife, serving as a significant tool for his regime's propaganda. Traveling across Europe, she praised the qualities of Perón, who in return bestowed upon her the title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation." While many hailed her as a progressive advocate for women and the underprivileged, others viewed her as a calculated celebrity façade for a harsh fascist government.
Eva received medical care for cervical cancer, which involved a radical hysterectomy and chemotherapy. She was the first Argentine to undergo chemotherapy. She died at 8:25 pm on July 26, 1952, at the age of 33, with her passing announced on radio broadcasts across Argentina. This, without a doubt, is a confirmed fact.
The events that followed sparked intense speculation. In certain aspects, her influence continued to expand even after her passing. As described by Tomás Eloy Martinez in his 1995 publication, Santa Evita.
“No other corpse has meant so much to a nation than Eva Perón’s to Argentina.”
He was provided with crucial information by several informants, including intelligence service members, which served as the foundation for his book. Years later, they sought to reveal the truth.
However, the reality is nearly unbelievable. It all started when Juan Perón paid a staggering $100,000 to physician Pedro Ara to embalm his wife's body, substituting her blood with glycerine to keep her organs and tissue intact – a meticulous procedure that extended over several years. The goal was to achieve a state of "artistically rendered sleep". There is no evidence that Eva herself requested this embalming.
Perón envisioned showcasing his beloved wife's body as part of his ambitious plans to enhance the revered image of this saintly figure and foster ongoing adoration, all while securing his own leadership. His vision included erecting a monumental structure surpassing the Statue of Liberty, with a prominent portrayal of a descamisado (meaning "shirtless" - a term for working-class individuals and fervent supporters of the Peróns). Eva's remains were intended to be preserved in a glass coffin at the monument's foundation, akin to Lenin's entombment in Moscow.
However, before he could finish the project, Perón was overthrown in a coup and fled the country, leaving Eva's body behind. Referred to as "That woman" by the anti-Perón group, she became their concern and remained a potent symbol for potential revolutionary movements. According to Martinez's account, the new government was concerned that insurgents might attempt to seize the body, place it on a boat filled with flowers, float it down the river, and incite a rebellion.
The vice-president gave the order for the body to be disposed of discreetly. He insisted that she be treated like any other deceased person. However, the body was not to be cremated; instead, it should be buried in a consecrated Christian burial ground, as she had confessed before passing away and was believed to have died in a state of grace. Colonel Carlos Eugenio de Moori Koenig was assigned the grim responsibility of carrying out this task.
After reviewing the embalmer's report, he pondered the most suitable approach. In this passage, Martinez highlights the strange fixation on Eva's body. The Colonel noted that Evita's skin appeared as youthful as that of a 20-year-old, and despite being preserved with formaldehyde, paraffin, and zinc chloride, it emitted a fragrance reminiscent of almonds and lavender. Her otherworldly beauty prompted her husband to even attempt to kiss her lips, almost as if trying to awaken her like in the tale of Sleeping Beauty.
The Colonel located the embalmer, Ara, and insisted on the release of the body. "The person who possesses the woman holds the country's fate," the Colonel declared. Indeed, there were already multiple potent symbols. Eva's mother, Doña Juana, remembered the horrifying instance when Ara presented her with the uncanny double of her daughter's body on a table, another one resting on black velvet cushions, and a third seated in an armchair apparently reading a postcard.
Ara boasted to the shocked woman about how he and an Italian sculptor had created replicas using wax, vinyl, and fibreglass, with permanent dye for the veins. Ara intended to present the military with a replica when they came to take the body, keeping the original for himself. He suggested to the mourning mother that she could bury a copy. Her brief response was: “Go to hell.”
Meanwhile, the Colonel started to receive threats, such as ominous phone calls and unknown individuals visiting his house, cautioning him to stay away from the "señora." Despite this, he persisted by placing the three copies in matching coffins at various locations in Buenos Aires and securing the genuine Eva in a truck parked beside the Intelligence building under protection. However, her admirers quickly located her and began leaving floral tributes and candles.
According to Martinez, the body was moved around several military locations: storerooms, battalion cellars, mess kitchens. She also spent time at the city waterworks and behind the screen at the Rialto cinema: a peculiar return to the cinema for the former actress.
Her next resting place - though not exactly restful – was with Major Arancibia, who became obsessed with Eva. Horrific reports suggest that he sexually defiled it, and that when he was discovered by his pregnant wife, Elena, he shot her in the throat. His defence was that he’d mistaken her for a burglar. Elena’s sister Margot testified to a military judge that there were “horrible stains, heaven only knows what filth” on the body: “Eduardo has been with the cadaver for all those weeks.” The case was hushed up.
Eva’s corpse resumed its nomadic wandering, with the firm stipulation that it be kept away from the Intelligence building, but the Colonel – by now, per Martinez’s account, driven mad by his task and in the grip of a necrophiliac passion – took back possession of the body. In a rage, after berating Eva for not returning his love, he ordered his officers to urinate on her. He also chopped off one of her fingers, to prove it was the real corpse. The Colonel was imprisoned.
And what of Eva’s body? The government finally succeeded in smuggling her out of the country – supposedly with covert help from the Vatican – and, in 1971, she was discovered in Milan, buried standing up under the false name of Maria Maggi de Magistris. The body was exhumed and taken to Juan Perón’s home in Spain, where he kept it on the dining room table. His new wife Isabel diligently combed Eva’s hair daily, and Juan even encouraged her to lie beside Eva, in the hope that she might absorb some of the charismatic goddess’s magic.
In an extraordinary comeback, Perón returned to Argentina in 1973 and was elected President once again. When he died in 1974, Isabel succeeded him, and it was she who ordered that Eva’s body be repatriated and displayed with her husband’s – although she did so mainly to appease the terrorist group Montoneros, who had stolen the corpse of former dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu and held it hostage until she complied with their demands.
Even then, the strange occurrences continued. The two civil guards who transported Eva’s body from her grave in Madrid got into an argument about a gambling debt, shot at each other and crashed. The van caught on fire and both died – although the coffin was unscathed.
Then, in 1976, Eva’s body was taken from the presidential residence in Olivos to her family’s mausoleum in Recoleta Cemetary. Two soldiers were in the ambulance transporting it, carrying rifles with fixed bayonets. The ambulance driver suffered a heart attack, and during the sudden stop, the soldiers accidentally severed each other’s jugular veins with their bayonets. They were found in a pool of blood.
Finally, though, Eva’s long journey was over. She was placed in a fortified crypt, five metres underground, in a marble tomb with a trapdoor in the floor leading to a room with two coffins – and then a second trapdoor leading to Eva’s actual coffin.
But the legend lives on. Although Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice refrained from telling the story of this travelling corpse in their musical Evita, it was told with relish in Pablo Aguero’s 2015 exceedingly creepy film Eva Doesn’t Sleep, starring Gael Garcia Bernal.
In all of Latin America, only one other woman has aroused an emotion, devotion, and faith comparable to those awakened by the Virgin of Guadalupe. In many homes, the image of Evita is on the wall next to the Virgin.
— Fabienne Rousso-Lenoir
In his essay titled "Latin America" published in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, John McManners claims that the appeal and success of Eva Perón are related to Latin American mythology and concepts of divinity. McManners claims that Eva Perón consciously incorporated aspects of the theology of the Virgin and of Mary Magdalene into her public persona. Historian Hubert Herring has described Eva Perón as "perhaps the shrewdest woman yet to appear in public life in Latin America".
In a 1996 interview, Tomás Eloy Martínez referred to Eva Perón as "the Cinderella of the tango and the Sleeping Beauty of Latin America". Martínez suggested she has remained an important cultural icon for the same reasons as fellow Argentine Che Guevara:
"Latin American myths are more resistant than they seem to be. Not even the mass exodus of the Cuban raft people or the rapid decomposition and isolation of Fidel Castro's regime have eroded the triumphal myth of Che Guevara, which remains alive in the dreams of thousands of young people in Latin America, Africa and Europe. Che as well as Evita symbolize certain naive, but effective, beliefs: the hope for a better world; a life sacrificed on the altar of the disinherited, the humiliated, the poor of the earth. They are myths which somehow reproduce the image of Christ".
Although not a government holiday, the anniversary of Eva Perón's death is marked by many Argentines each year. Additionally, Eva Perón has been featured on Argentine coins, and a form of Argentine currency called "Evitas" was named in her honour. Ciudad Evita (Evita City), which was established by the Eva Perón Foundation in 1947, is located just outside Buenos Aires.
Eva Perón’s story continues to captivate the world, not just for her role in life as a champion of the poor and disenfranchised but also for the strange and grisly saga that followed her death. Her life and posthumous journey remain a haunting reminder of the complexities of political legacy and the sometimes eerie ways in which history unfolds.
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