Wikipedia Deep Dive

Eva Perón

13 min read

She died at thirty-three, and her body became more controversial than her life. Eva Perón—Evita to millions—rose from absolute poverty in rural Argentina to become one of the most powerful women in the world, only to be struck down by cancer at the height of her influence. When she passed in 1952, Argentina gave her a state funeral normally reserved for presidents and kings. Her embalmed body would later be kidnapped, hidden in Europe for sixteen years, and eventually returned to lie beside the husband who had made her, and whom she had remade.

This is not a story about a first lady who stood gracefully beside her husband. This is about raw political power, wielded by a woman who had no formal education, no family connections, and no right—by the standards of her time—to have any of it.

The Illegitimate Daughter

María Eva Duarte was born on May 7, 1919, in the dusty Pampas village of Los Toldos. Her birth certificate wouldn't tell you the full story. Her baptismal certificate listed her as Eva María Ibarguren—her mother's surname, not her father's. That's because her father, Juan Duarte, was a wealthy rancher who already had a legal wife and family in the nearby town of Chivilcoy.

In rural Argentina of the 1920s, this arrangement wasn't uncommon. Wealthy men often kept second families. What was uncommon was what happened when Eva was just one year old: her father abandoned them completely and returned to his legitimate family.

Juana Ibarguren—Eva's mother—was left to raise five children in abject poverty. They moved to the poorest section of Junín, where Juana sewed clothes for neighbors to keep them fed. The family wasn't just poor. They were stigmatized. In Argentine law at the time, the children were illegitimate, which carried genuine social consequences. They were isolated, whispered about, looked down upon.

The defining moment of Eva's childhood came at her father's funeral. When Juan Duarte died suddenly, Juana took her children to pay their respects. They were allowed into the church—briefly. Duarte's widow, the legitimate wife, had them ejected. Her orders were respected. After all, she was the real wife.

Imagine being a young girl, standing in that church, being told you don't belong at your own father's funeral. That you're not quite legitimate enough to mourn. That humiliation would shape everything that came after.

Escape to Buenos Aires

Before he abandoned them, Juan Duarte had done one thing: he left a document declaring the children were his, allowing them to use the Duarte surname. It was the only inheritance they received.

Young Eva found escape in performance. She participated in school plays and concerts. She loved the cinema. In October 1933, at fourteen, she played a small role in a school play called Arriba Estudiantes—Students Arise—which one biographer describes as "an emotional, patriotic, flag-waving melodrama." It was enough to convince Eva that acting was her way out.

In 1934, at just fifteen years old, Eva left Los Toldos for Buenos Aires. The exact circumstances are disputed. The popular story says she ran off with a tango singer named Agustín Magaldi. But there's no record of the married Magaldi performing in her town that year, and he typically traveled with his wife. Eva's sisters insist she went with their mother, who helped arrange for Eva to stay with family friends.

However she got there, Eva Duarte arrived in Buenos Aires with no formal education, no connections, and no money. The city in the 1930s was called "the Paris of South America"—bustling cafés, theaters, restaurants, crowds. But it was also a city of desperate poverty, swollen with migrants fleeing the Great Depression. New arrivals lived in tenements and shanties that became known as villas miserias—misery villages.

Eva began at the bottom. On March 28, 1935, she made her professional debut in a play called Mrs. Perez at the Comedias Theater. She toured with theater companies, worked as a model, and got cast in B-grade melodramas. She bleached her naturally black hair blonde—a look she would keep for life.

The Radio Star

The turning point came in 1942, when a company called Candilejas hired her for a daily role in a radio drama called Muy Bien, broadcast on Radio El Mundo—the most important station in Argentina. Radio was everything in the 1940s, before television, and Eva proved to be thoroughly dependable, if not universally liked.

That same year, she signed a five-year contract with Radio Belgrano, landing a role in a popular historical drama called Great Women of History. She played Elizabeth the First of England, Sarah Bernhardt, and Alexandra Feodorovna, the last Tsarina of Russia. Eventually, Eva would come to co-own the radio company.

By 1943, she was earning five or six thousand pesos a month—one of the highest-paid radio actresses in the nation. She moved into an apartment in Recoleta, the exclusive neighborhood of Buenos Aires. The girl from the misery village had made it.

But she had no interest in politics. She had no knowledge of government, no opinions about policy. She was an actress who had clawed her way to financial stability. That was enough.

Until January 22, 1944.

The Marvelous Day

On January 15, 1944, an earthquake struck the town of San Juan, killing ten thousand people. Colonel Juan Perón, then serving as Secretary of Labor, organized a fundraising gala to aid the victims. The event was held at Luna Park Stadium in Buenos Aires, and radio and film actors were invited to participate.

Eva Duarte attended. So did Colonel Perón. He was forty-eight. She was twenty-four. His first wife had died of cancer in 1938. He was available, powerful, and—crucially—late to politics. He had no preconceived ideas about how a political career should be conducted, which meant he was open to unconventional help.

They left the gala together at two in the morning. Eva later called it her "marvelous day."

What happened next is remarkable not because it was a romance, but because of what Juan Perón did with his young actress girlfriend. He later claimed in his memoir that he deliberately chose Eva as his pupil, setting out to create a "second I." She had no political knowledge, which meant she never argued with him or his inner circle. She simply absorbed everything she heard.

Think about what this means. Juan Perón was training Eva not to be a decorative companion, but to be an extension of his political will. He was creating a weapon.

Building the Base

In May 1944, the government announced that broadcast performers must organize into a union—and that this union would be the only one permitted to operate in Argentina. The performers elected Eva Duarte as president. It's not hard to see why: she was the mistress of Colonel Juan Perón, the most powerful man in the government. It was good politics to elect her.

Shortly after, Eva began hosting a daily program called Toward a Better Future, which dramatized, in soap opera form, the accomplishments of Juan Perón. Often, Perón's own speeches were played during the broadcast. When Eva spoke, she used ordinary language, as a regular woman, not as a political operative. This was deliberate. She wanted listeners to believe what she believed about Juan Perón: that he was their champion.

By 1945, Juan Perón's power had grown so vast that his opponents within the military arrested him on October 9, fearing he would attempt a coup. He had built a base among unskilled unionized workers—people who had recently migrated from rural areas to industrialized cities, just as Eva had. They were called the descamisados, the shirtless ones, in echo of the sans-culottes of the French Revolution.

Six days after Perón's arrest, between 250,000 and 350,000 people gathered in front of the Casa Rosada, Argentina's government house, demanding his release. At eleven at night, Juan Perón stepped onto the balcony and addressed the crowd. It was a moment that recalled the great Argentine leaders of the past—the caudillos who spoke directly to the people. One biographer described it as having "mystic overtones" of a "quasi-religious" nature.

After Perón won the presidency in 1946, his administration circulated a highly fictionalized version of this rally, claiming that Eva had knocked on every door in Buenos Aires to bring people into the streets. This version appears in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Historians agree it's false. At the time of Perón's imprisonment, Eva was just an actress with no political influence over the unions. The rally was organized by the unions themselves, particularly the General Confederation of Labor, which was Perón's main base.

But the myth tells you something important: by 1946, the Perón administration understood that Eva was a powerful symbol. They were already building her legend.

On October 18, 1945, one day after his release, Juan Perón married Eva discreetly in a civil ceremony in Junín. A church wedding followed on December 9 in La Plata. He won the presidential election in June 1946.

Eva Perón was now First Lady of Argentina. And she had no intention of being ceremonial.

The Foundation and the Descamisados

For the next six years, Eva Perón became the most powerful woman in Argentina—and arguably in the Western Hemisphere. She didn't hold official elected office, but she effectively ran the Ministries of Labor and Health. She spoke on behalf of labor rights, becoming the voice of the unions that formed Perón's political base.

But her most visible achievement was the Eva Perón Foundation, a charitable organization that became legendary in Argentina. To supporters, it was a miraculous source of aid—building hospitals, schools, and orphanages; distributing food, clothing, and money to the poor. To critics, it was a tool of political patronage, using state resources to buy loyalty.

Both things were true. The Foundation did build real infrastructure and provide real aid. It also bound recipients to the Perón regime through gratitude and dependence. This is how political machines work.

Eva also championed women's suffrage, which was granted in Argentina in 1947. She founded and ran the Female Peronist Party, the nation's first large-scale female political party. She understood that women—especially poor women—were an untapped political force.

She spoke to them in language they understood. Not the formal rhetoric of politicians, but the plain speech of someone who had been where they were. She had been poor. She had been illegitimate. She had been disrespected. And now she had power.

The Vice Presidency and the Renunciation

In 1951, Eva Perón announced her candidacy for the Peronist nomination for Vice President of Argentina. The descamisados erupted in support. She was their champion, and they wanted her formally recognized.

But two forces opposed her. First, the military—still uncomfortable with Juan Perón's power, and even more uncomfortable with the idea of a former actress and illegitimate daughter wielding constitutional authority. Second, the bourgeoisie, who saw Eva as vulgar, uneducated, and dangerous.

There was a third reason she withdrew: she was dying. By 1951, Eva Perón was suffering from advanced cervical cancer. She was in extraordinary pain, losing weight rapidly, and weakening. On August 22, 1951, she withdrew her candidacy in an event known as the Renunciation. She stood before a massive crowd and stepped back from power.

It's impossible to know if she would have withdrawn without the cancer. Perhaps the military and the elite would have forced her out regardless. But the disease made the decision inevitable.

Spiritual Leader of the Nation

Eva Perón died on July 26, 1952, at the age of thirty-three. Shortly before her death, the Argentine Congress gave her the title "Spiritual Leader of the Nation of Argentina"—an honor with no precedent. She was given a state funeral, a privilege normally reserved for heads of state.

Her body was embalmed by Dr. Pedro Ara, who preserved it with such skill that it remained lifelike for decades. But the story didn't end there. After Juan Perón was overthrown in 1955, the new military government kidnapped Eva's body, fearing it would become a rallying symbol for Peronists. The body was hidden in Italy under a false name for sixteen years. It was eventually returned to Juan Perón in 1971, who was living in exile in Spain. When Perón returned to Argentina and died in 1974, Eva's body was finally laid to rest in Buenos Aires.

Her tomb in La Recoleta Cemetery—the same exclusive neighborhood where she once rented an apartment as a rising actress—is now one of the most visited sites in Argentina.

The Legend

Eva Perón never left the collective consciousness of Argentina. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the country's second female president (after Juan Perón's third wife, Isabel Perón), said that women of her generation owe a debt to Eva for "her example of passion and combativeness."

In 1976, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice turned her life into the musical Evita, which became a global phenomenon. The musical's most famous song, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," imagines Eva addressing her people from the balcony of the Casa Rosada—the same balcony where Juan Perón spoke on the night of his release from prison.

But the real Eva Perón is more interesting than the musical. She was not a saint. She was not a revolutionary in the sense of dismantling systems—she and Juan Perón built their own system, one that concentrated power in their hands. She used state resources for political ends. She was ruthless with enemies.

But she was also a woman who understood poverty and humiliation from the inside. She knew what it was like to be turned away from her father's funeral. To be illegitimate in a society that punished illegitimacy. To arrive in a great city with nothing.

And when she gained power, she used it for the people who had been where she had been. She built hospitals. She secured labor rights. She gave women the vote. She spoke to the shirtless ones in their own language, and they loved her for it.

She died young, and her body became a strange symbol—fought over, hidden, moved across continents. But the real power of Eva Perón was never in her embalmed corpse. It was in the fact that a poor, illegitimate girl from the Pampas could seize hold of a nation and remake it in her image, if only for six short years.

That's the story they couldn't bury, no matter where they hid the body.