"These photographs--many of which have never before been published--were discovered in archives & private collections throughout the world, & include images by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gisele Freund, & Cornell Capa, as well as reproductions of magazine covers & publicity stills from Evita's acting career, sketches of her jewelry designs by Van Cleef & Arpels, & images of her stunning Dior gowns & wardrobe. For the first time, Eva Peron's sisters have allowed exclusive access to private family photographs."
"Extensive captions include anecdotes & excerpts from Evita's impassioned speeches & letters, & with the photographs they offer much more than simply a visual record of Eva Peron's life: This book is a fascinating portrait of a legendary figure of the twentieth century."
Like everything about Evita,"My Message" is shrouded in mystery & myth. Leading Peron scholars disagree about whether Evita wrote every word herself & about whether it is an accurate reflection of Evita's thinking at the time of her death. Her estate, however, insists that the work is not by Evita.
In "In My Own Words," "My Message" appears in English for the first time, puclished with an extensive introduction by Peron scholar Joseph A. Page, who weighs all the claims & counterclaims about the document's authenticity & concludes that "My Message" is "a vital document...probably based in part on dictation by the wife of Argentine President Juan Peron."
The New Press is proud to offer English readers a first-hand glimpse of the woman who left an indelible if controversial mark on Argentina. Eva Peron was the founder of the Aregentine women's rights movement & a formidable force for social justice, but a friend to dictators & a fanatic on behalf of her husban's much-debated brand of politics. At the time of her death from uterine cancer in 1952 at the age of thirty-three, Evita was also considered the most powerful woman in the world."
In between she became first the actress Eva Duarte, the the mistress of Colonel Peron, then, in October 1945 after the "shirtless ones" had swept Peron into office, the president's wife. In the colorful, tumultuous setting of postwar Argentina, she wielded a spiritual & practical power that has few parallels outside of hereditary monarchy. She was literally idolized by millions but was hated & feared by many as well. She became Evita the legend."
Now, in this best-selling biography, French & Argentine journalist Alicia Dujovne Ortiz examines the mythology that surrounds Eva Peron as she penetrates the complexities behiind Peron's ever-lasting allure.
Born in 1919, the illegitimate daughter of destitute Argentine farmers, Eva Duarte spent her adolescence aspiring to the grand & glorious fame of the theater. At the first opportunity, she fled the depreivation of her origins & the backwaters of her poor village for the glittering lights of Buenos Aires. However, because she lacked both formal training & talent to an actress, Eva qucikly realized that it would take many years of hardship for even a small chance at becoming the star of her generation. It was during this time of disillusion that Evita met Juan Peron.
Abandoning her pursuit of stardom, Eva concentrated all of her efforts on helping the future dictator of Argentina ascend politically. Her theatrical ambition was substiuted with the desire not only to launch her husband's career, but to remake herself as a figure of providence for the millions of impoverished workers of her country.
Despite the international fame Eva Peron achieved in her lifetime, much of her real life story remains shrouded in a mystery that has been distorted through the legends that have grown up around her. Here, in "Eva Peron," Ortiz is finally able to present a factual portrait & to examine the rumors that have surrounded Peron.
With access to declassified archives of the Peron government, Ortiz has uncovered new information, including connections between Juan Peron & the German Nazi party. Taking into account every source of information--many never available to any other previous biographer--Ortiz has tapped into dozens of personal testimonies, including that of Father Hernan Benitez, Eva's personal confessor, as well as Eva's own private memoirs.
Never abandoning the Eva Peron legend, Ortiz draws the perfect balance between Eva Peron's myth & reality, sainthood & despotism. "Eva Peron" is borth provocative & impressive in its depth & discovery of one of the most enigmatic, captivating figures of the twentieth century."
In life, Eva Peron was already bigger than fiction--the B-movie starlet from a poor-trash family who reinvented herself as a great beauty, snared Argentina's great dictator Juan Peron, married him, & became the uncrowned queen of the masses.
But that was a mere prelude to what happened next. Suddenly struck down my cancer, she was given no hope to live. As thousands of the poor filled the park around her palace, chanting & praying for their "Saint Evita," she died. Some days before the end, she begged her husband that she not be forgotten. Grief-crazed (but politically crazy like a fox), he seized upon this idea quite literally. Sending for Europe's finest embalmer, he had the man waiting at her deathbed, & within minutes of her last breath, this Michelangelo of the mortuary was has hard at work making her body physically immortal. Put on display on a pure glass slab suspended in a single beam of light from the ceiling of a darkened chamber, Evita entered everlasting life as the sacred object of national pilgrimage. Peron did less well: hated, rebelled against, & deposed, he had to flee. But his mere mortial--& equally ugly--successors realized to their acute discomfort that Evita's body was much more powerful that they were. Whoever controlled it controlled Argentina.
And here begins Evita's fantastical true-life (if post-mortem) odyssey. Hidden away, stolen, replicated (three perfect copies of her body were made & used in a mad shell game by various factions), smuggled abroad, buried, dug up, & hijacked again, she traveled two continents exerting strange, unshakable power over everyone in her path. Colonel Moori Koenig of the Argentine INtelligence Service, who was put in charge of the corpse, became so obsessed with her that he spent the rest of his life trying to keep her for himself; his great rival, Major Arancibia, murdered his wife when she discovered he was spending hours alone in his attic with the dead Evita; soldiers moving her from here to there kept ending up dead in the most outlandish accidents. How Evita was finally resurrected & repatriated in triumph when Peron came home to rule again is the climax of this dazzling, orginal, page-turning novel."
