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Buenos Aires, Argentina Evita and the Mothers of the Disappeared

SPRAWLING BEFORE THE CASA ROSADA, OR PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, in downtown Buenos Aires is a massive square that has been the hub of women-led activism for the past century: the Plaza de Mayo. In the 1940s, María Eva Duarte de Perón (known to her supporters as Evita) gave eloquent orations on social welfare here; thirty years later, the mothers of Argentina’s “disappeared” launched a potent protest that continues to this day. Come stand in this historic public space—also known as the Plaza de Protestas—to soak in their spirits or to witness their current struggles.

Nothing in Evita’s early biography hints that she would someday become the most powerful woman in South America. An illegitimate daughter in a status-conscious society, she had neither a formal education nor any connections of note, and for several years scraped out a living as an actress in B-grade melodramas and radio soap operas. Struck by her beauty and verve, Colonel Juan Domingo Perón fell in love with her at a charity function, and, after a brief political imprisonment, married her right as he began to campaign for president. Evita rallied hard for her man, appealing especially to Argentina’s descamisados, or impoverished, “shirtless” population, for their votes. After she became the nation’s First Lady in 1946, she made good on her promises, creating the Eva Perón Foundation to offer services like food, clothes, hospitals, schools, and orphanages for the poor. She also helped secure the vote for women and created a women’s branch to the Peronist party. But Evita is remembered most for her riveting speeches from the Casa Rosada balcony overlooking Plaza de Mayo. During one famed oration in 1951, she even conducted a spontaneous dialogue with a crowd of two million about whether or not to run for Vice President. (Her husband ultimately prevented her candicacy, but later gave her the title “Spiritual Leader of the Nation.”) Cancer took Evita’s life at the age of thirty-three, and Perón had her embalmed Lenin-style. Her corpse continued having adventures of its own—read Tomas Eloy Martinez’s Santa Evita for a novelist’s interpretation. Fans can visit her tomb in the posh Cementerio de la Recoleta, where one of the many epitaphs reads: “Don’t cry for me, Argentina, I remain quite near to you.”

After an extended period of exile, Perón ruled Argentina once more from 1973 until his death in 1974, a time of great social unrest. His new wife and Vice President Isabel Perón attempted to govern after him but was quickly overthrown by the right-wing military, led by a general who vowed, “As many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure.” In the so-called “Dirty War” that followed, some 30,000 political opponents, many of them left-wing students and workers, were forcibly “disappearred.” (Most, presumably, were tortured and murdered by the military’s death squads.) In an astonishing act of courage, a group of fourteen mothers entered the Plaza de Mayo one afternoon to demand the whereabouts of their children. Forbidden by dictatorial law from any kind of public assembly—including simply standing there—they walked around the plaza’s main circle. They returned the following week and every week after, with more mothers joining in. Some wore white scarves to symbolize the diapers of their lost; others hung laminated photographs of their missing children around their neck. Although three of those original mothers soon disappeared as well, the others became renowned human rights activists who continue their protest today (although they’ve since added other issues to their reportoire, such as fighting globalization and the International Monetary Fund). Join them every Thursday afternoon for their weekly marches around the plaza.

‟I have one thing that counts, and that is my heart; it burns in my soul, it aches in my flesh, and it ignites my nerves: that is my love for the people and Perón.”

—Eva Perón

RECOMMENDED READING

Evita: The Real Life of Eva Perón by Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro