Robert J. Alexander
0-89158-364-5
1979; Westview Press Inc.
This book dedicated a chapter to Evita in which its author mentions more than once that there would have been no Evita had there not been a Juan Peron. I can’t help but feel the exact opposite. There would have been no President Juan Peron had there not been an Evita. The two are responsible for each other. There literally wouldn’t have been one without the other. Who would doubt that it was Evita’s determination and well-known ruthlessness that not only ensured Juan Peron’s acession to the Argentine Presidency but also kept him there? And after all what language is better understood in whirling political circles than vindictiveness and determination? I find it no coincidence that three years after Evita died Juan Peron was overthrown in a military coup.
Although in the final paragraph in the chapter dedicated to Evita the author does admit:
“In historical terms, Evita was lucky to die at the height of the power of the Peron
regime before its final fatal crisis had fully begun. There is little doubt that during
this crisis Peron sadly missed the helping hand of his wife. He might have been
spared much foolishness had she still been alive; she might have strengthened
his backbone in the crisis’ final phases and perhaps the outcome might even
have been different.”
The final sentence of that paragraph adding in what I feel is a rather sexist comment:
“However, then too her role would have been one of helping, advising, reinforcing
her husband. It would not have been one of independent action.”
The book is propagating the notion that on one hand Evita was a ruthless, vindictive tyrant and yet on the other hand just the good wife of the President. Such are the contradictions with Evita and innumerable author’s interpretation of her.
The books does also admit to a link between the death of Evita and the fall of Peron:
“In at least some ways, the beginning of the end of the First Peronista regime can be
dated July 26, 1952, the day Evita died. Although Peron was to remain in power for
more than three years afterwards, he seemed to have suffered a kind of moral and
emotional breakdown after Evita’s death, undoubtedly interfering to a greater or lesser
degree with his ability to handle his job as political leader and president. Furthermore,
with Evita’s death he was forced to undertake supervision of at least some of the things
she had handled on his behalf before her fatal illness. Finally, Peron certainly sorely
missed her advice and intelligence gathering in dealing with the growing economic and
political crisis he had to face between 1952 and 1955.”
One second grade reading text, for instance, had a lesson entitled “Eva Peron,” which read:
Creator and first president of the Foundation that bears your name.
Author of the “Rights of the Aged.”
Helper of those in need.
For your great works you were declared “Spiritual Chief of the Nation.”
Tireless worker on behalf of the needy and the humble.
For your great sacrifices, the people call you “Martyr of Labor.”
You died July 26, 1952, the day of national mourning.
Another first grade reader had a lesson showing a child holding a rose up to a picture of Evita, surrounded by black border, and the following text (in verse):
Evita!
Friend of the poor,
Of the aged and children,
Who helps them all,
And brings them your comfort,
What a loving mother,
Receive this rose:
That of my love!
Also by Robert J. Alexander:
The Peron Era
September, 1951?
“One of the earliest studies in English of the Peron phenomenon.”
________________________________________________________
Peron & the Enigmas of Argentina
Robert Crassweller
W. W. Norton & Company
1987; 0-393-023818
Two perceptible evolution’s within Evita began apparent:
The fist of these changes, which was perhaps merely a new emphasis, concerned an upsurge or harshness and intolerance. She had always found it easy to identify the enemy and she had always felt strongly about almost everything. Hate had therefore always come as easily as devotion. She was proud, she declared in her May Day address of 1950, to have the two greatest distinctions any woman can aspire to:
“the love of the humble and the hate of the oligarchs.”
The second change in Evita as the 1940’s ended was the transmutation of her love for Peron into a passion that became a kind of religion. To understand that evolution, one must first comprehend the nature of her feeling for Peron from the early days of their marriage, and then understand how that union created, defined, and limited her power.
Her feelings for Peron were from the first those of total devotion, enhanced by the intensity of her nature. There are few proofs that have survived, since Evita was not given to letter writing and the recollections of others are partisan and fragile. However, one authentic source does remain, written under circumstances that strongly suggest its sincerity. On the night of June 6, 1947, a short time before her plane took off for Europe, an apprehensive Evita was sitting in her section in the specially equipped plane, fighting her fears. She had never flown; she was frightened of the very thought; she had never been farther from Buenos Aires than across the estuary in Montevideo; she had never been away from Peron since they had met, except for his days on Martin Garcia; she had little experience of the world and none at all of European statecraft; she was about to represent her nation before the world, under conditions that would daunt any young woman of twenty-eight; and she had just received a hurtful blow in the form of some accusation out of her past, which cannot be reconstructed. It was not the moment for playing games. She reached for pen and paper and with little regard for syntax and punctuation poured out her heart to Peron in a rush of desperation and love:
Dear Juan,
I am very sad to be leaving because I am unable to live away from you, I love you
so much that what I feel for you is a kind of idolatry, perhaps I don’t know how to show
what I feel for you, but I assure you that I fought very hard in my life with the ambition
to be someone and suffered a great deal, but then you came and made me so happy
that I thought it was a dream and since I had nothing else to offer you but my heart
and my soul I gave it to you wholly but in all these three years of happiness, greater
each day, I never ceased to adore you for a single hour or thank heaven for the
goodness of God in giving me this reward of your love, and I tried at times to deserve
it by making you happy, I don’t know if I achieved that, but I can assure you that nobody
ever loved you or respected you more than I have. I am so faithful to you that if God
wished me not to have you in the happiness and took me away I would still be faithful to
you in my death and adore you from the skies; Juancito, darling, forgive me for these
confessions but you have to know this now I am leaving and I am in the hands of God
and do not know if something may happen to me…you have purified me, your wife with
all her faults, because I live in you, feel for you and think through you….