Evita’s enemies — she called them her super-critics — said she was a resentida, meaning she had a chip on her shoulder, that everything she did was motivated by jealousy and hatred for the class who had treated her like dirt as a child. She felt sufficiently sensitive about the charge to dispute it in her autobiography. ‘I fight against all the privileges of power and wealth. That is to say, against all the oligarchy, not because the oligarchy has ill-treated me at any time. On the contrary. Until I arrived in the position I now occupy in the Perónista movement I owed them nothing but attentions, including one group representing the ladies of oligarchy who offered to introduce me to their highest circles. My special resentment does not come from hatred at all.’ Understandably, those who remembered her bitter battles with the ladies of the Sociedad de Beneficiencia, could only smile. They believed she not only hated those women but was determined to make them aware every second of the day that she was going to be wealthier, more powerful than they ever had been or could ever hope to be. Evita’s European Tour made that point.
The yearly trips to Europe formed part of the lifestyle of most well-bred Argentine families. Although Spain was the ancestral home of many of them, they usually left out Madrid and headed straight for Paris, where they soaked up the culture and spent lavishly on the latest fashions. Evita’s chance to follow in their footsteps came in April 1947 when Spanish dictator Francisco Franco awarded her a high decoration. He announced that ‘wishing to give a proof of my esteem to Dona Maria Eva Duarte de Perón, I hereby grant her the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabel the Catholic.’ Some cynics promptly attributed General Franco’s sudden show of affection for Señora Perón to his country’s urgent need for Argentine wheat. True or not, he soon found out that both the gesture and the wheat were going to prove a little more expensive than he had anticipated. He received word from his ambassador in Argentina that the President’s wife intended to pick up the honour herself.
Perón’s Foreign Minister, Juan Atilio Bramuglia, had advised against the trip on the grounds that Argentina was currently trying to mend fences with the United States and a visit at that time by the wife of Argentina’s President to fascist Spain would not be looked upon with favour in Washington. But Evita ignored the advice, and Bramuglia was later to pay dearly for having given it. The only other voice raised openly in protest was a mysterious phantom who somehow managed to cut into President Perón’s ceremonial farewell broadcast which was being carried live on a nation-wide radio hook-up. Using a clandestine transmitter which zeroed in to the state radio frequency, the broadcaster interrupted Perón to denounce ‘those who proclaim themselves supporters of a false justice’ before signing off with the words, ‘Death to Perón.’
But her descamisados made up for that indignity. One hundred and fifty thousand of them turned up at Moron Airport the next moring to bid her a noisy, emotional farewell. ‘I go to the Old World with a message of peace and hope,’ she told them tearfully. ‘I go as a representative of the working people, of my beloved descamisados, with whom, in going, I leave my heart.’ Then, with one final embrace for her husband, she climbed aboard a Dakota of Spanish Iberian Airways, luxuriously refitted for the journey with a special bedroom and dining room.
Like the oligarchs she used to watch those summers of her childhood getting off the train at the dusty Los Toldos railway station surrounded by a small army of family retainers, Evita took along maids, her hairdresser, dressmaker, doctor, secretaries, and her Jesuit confessor, Father Benitez. Her brother Juan went, too. She also took along 64 complete outfits, several fur coats, and a magnificent selection of jewellery.
For a girl who had never been further from Argentina than the occasional weekend trip across the river to the Uruguayan beach resort of Punte del Este with lovers during her early actress days, Evita was certainly travelling in style. An escort of 41 Spanish fighter planes accompanied the Dakota across the coast on the last stage of the journey into Madrid Airport. Guns boomed out a salute as the plane taxied along the runway to the red carpet where General Franco, his wife Carmen, and the entire Spanish Government stood waiting to greet their guest from Argentina.
There were another 200,000 ordinary Spaniards out there on the airport tarmac who had stood for hours in the blazing sun in the hope of catching a glimpse of the woman whose fame was already legendary. To poor Spaniards, who were among the poorest people in Europe, she was, as she was to poor Argentines, the Dama de la Esperanza, the Lady of Hope from the land of opportunity where so many of them still dreamed of living one day. They caught only a glimpse of her that evening at the airport — a flash of her blonde hair piled high in pompadour style and the shimmer and sparkle of her silk dress and jewels —- before she was whisked off to General Franco’s residence.
The next day, shops and offices were closed so that Madrilenians could gather in the plaza in front of the Palacio Real to listen to the loudspeakers broadcasting the ceremony in the Throne Room as Franco, in his uniform of Captain General of the Army and wearing the collar of the Order of San Martin that Peron had sent him, presented Evita with the highest decoration Spain can bestow, the diamond-encrusted Cross of Isabel the Catholic. Then, with the Generalissimo and his wife on either side, she moved out on to the balcony to greet the vast throng below. Her hosts were startled by the size and enthusiasm of the crowed. As Evita moved towards the microphones on the edge of the balcony, she turned to Franco with a smile: ‘Any time you want to attract a crowd of this size, just give me a call.’ Then she blew a kiss to the people below and spoke. ‘I come as a rainbow between our two countries,’ she told them. The crowd roared its appreciation and thousands of arms stretched out towards her in the falangist fascist salute. Evita, her shoulders draped in a mink coat despite the sweltering heat of a Madrid summer’s day, responded by returning the salute. It was probably no more than a spontaneous gesture, done without thinking. But, as it turned out, that salute was to cost her nothing but trouble on the rest of her European tour.
Not in Franco’s Spain, of course. There the people loved her. At a folk dance in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor which went on until three o’clock in the morning, each of the fifty provinces of Spain presented her with a complete outfit of a traditional costume. She was taken to see the bullfights in the Plaza de Toros where the arena was spread with coloured sand in the red and yellow national colours of Spain and the blue and white of Argentina, the coats of arms of the two countries etched out in the sand in the centre before disappearing under the lashing hooves of muira bulls especially selected for their ferociousness. There were gala banquets at Franco’s palace of El Prado, and a tour of the provinces — Sevilla, Coruna, Galicia, Grenada, Catalonia. Wherever she went vast crowds of peasant women strained to touch the blonde goddess from Argentina. It was as though she was back home, bestowing her love, her dazzling smile, on her people, fondling babies, giving speeches and, most important of all, handing out her inexhaustible bounty — 100 peseta notes from a handbag that never emptied, and even Argentine land grants to would-be immigrants.
The New York Times special correspondent in Madrid reported that ‘Senora Perón’s wardrobe continues to be a rich source of conversation. In her many public appearance she has not worn the same outfit twice, and often she changes three or four times in a day. . . Some surprise was aroused by her appearance on the hottest day of the year so far in a magnificent mink cape, but there was also much admiration for her appearance. She dresses smartly, though with a certain tendency to overdress, and the women in Spain are taking a keen interest in observing what she wears. Beyond the superficial questions of what she looks like and how she dresses, her speeches have made a good impression. Whether she actually wrote her own speeches or not, they were cleverly written. They laid heavy emphasis on “social justice”, a line that Franco has also been stressing more than usually of late. She speaks well, if somewhat theatrically — but that again is a style that goes over well with the Spaniards. There is a certain monotony in the constant stress on her love for the descamisados, but times are hard enough for most people in Spain so that they are interested in listening to anybody who wants to help the poor, and that is her constant theme.’
There was much talk among Spanish aristocrats about their unwillingness to meet Evita. However, they were never given an opportunity to live up to their talk as none of them were invited. In fact, when the wife of the ex-king of Rumania sent a message to Señora Perón that she would like to meet her, the response was brutal: ‘Let her stand out in the street like everybody else.’
Even Franco felt the rough edge of her tongue on one occasion. When she told him that Argentina would be sending him two shiploads of wheat as a thank-you gift, the Generalissimo foolishly demurred. ‘We don’t need wheat,’ he told her. ‘We have so much flour we don’t know what to do with it.’ That was such a palpable lie that Evita looked at him quizzically for a second and then snapped: Why not try putting it in the bread?’ If that retort disturbed Franco’s dictatorial equilibrium, he quickly recovered. He had, after all, spent nearly a million dollars on his guest’s visit. So he smiled that weary, tight-lipped smile of his and tried to ignore the fact that no one had talked like that to him for years.
As for Evita, her rainbow shimmered undimmed across Spain. At the end of her two weeks and four days, she spoke to the women of Spain in a nation-wide broadcast. ‘I feel drunk with love and happiness,’ she told them, ‘because my simple woman’s heart has begun to vibrate with the eternal chords of immortal Spain.’ With that, she flew off to Rome.
Perhaps it was the era — the shabby, depressing period of post-war austerity and poverty — that made Evita’s progress across Europe so fascinating. Popular tabloid newspapers followed her every move in breathless detail while even such heavyweights as The Times pondered over the significance of it all. Time magazine even put Evita on its cover, an honour not particularly appreciated by the Argentine Government which banned the magazine probably because of one or two snide phrases. But the cover story started off in mild enough manner with a carpenter in faded blue denim hammering together a temporary grandstand on Avenida Alvear. He was not sure what it was for. ‘Perhaps for the return of the Señora from her voyage. Ah, Señor, you have read of this voyage. A miracle, is it not so? Surely, all the world must know about it.’
Meanwhile, there was Italy. The Italians had arranged the most lavish reception their country had accorded anyone since the war. Of course there was a close bond between the two countries. Over the years, Italy had sent many hundreds of thousands of unemployed, impoverished peasants across the sea to start new lives in Argentina, and probably a majority of Argentine families looked upon Italy as their ancestral home. In fact, the Italian Government was hoping that its welcome for its illustrious guest, while not on the opulent scale of General Franco’s, would help pave the way for a new wave of emigrants to lighten the burden of post-war recovery. So, as Evita’s plane crossed over the Italian island of Sardinia, two bombers of the Italian Air Force joined it to act as escorts for the final 200 miles to the mainland.
As Evita stepped from the plane, Italy’s 75-year-old Foreign Minister, Count Carlo Sforza, bent low over her hand. Two thousand children waved paper Argentine and Italian flags. A band played, drowning out the wolf-whistles of American airmen gazing admiringly at the blonde in the flower-printed skin-tight dress. At the airport gate, eight elaborately uniformed carabinieri on white horses saluted with swords as Evita set off in a 50-car procession down the Appian Way into Rome. Posters on house walls hailed her as the ‘gentle ambassadress’ of a nation which chose during the ‘recent painful war’ not to join in the ‘bloc of powers which stood against Italy.’
The cavalcade passed the Trevi and Essedra fountains, dry since the war but splashing again for the duration of the distinguished visitor’s stay. The street for the last mile to the Argentine Embassy, where Evita was staying, had been repaved and, as part of a hurried beautification project, a landmark pavement urinal in front of the embassy had been removed.
Inside the embassy, almost £75,000 had been spent in a frenzied rush to smarten up. The driveway had been repaved in polished green marble (no car had been allowed on it before she arrived). The courtyard was rebuilt as a sunken garden with fountain, flagged walks and flower-beds. Two new marble staircases were constructed inside. The furniture was re-upholstered and the walls repainted, and pictures of President Perón hung in every room, including the bathrooms, of the five-storey building. There were two in Eva’s bedroom — an oil painting over the bed and a small photo in a gaudy gilt frame on her dresser. The room had been refurbished in her favourite Louis XV style. But, sadly for all the money spent, the impression was ruined within seconds of Evita’s arrival.
Several thousand Italians had gathered outside the embassy, and cries of ‘Perón, Perón’ brought Evita out on to her balcony. She waved, and arms in the crowd responded with the straight-armed fascist salute which had not been seen in Italy since the overthrow of the Mussolini dictatorship. Immediately, fierce fighting broke out as the fascists were charged by screaming communists. A horrified Evita fled back into her room, covering her ears to drown out the boos and catcalls of the mob outside. It took Italian riot police an hour to clear the street, by which time the beautiful flower-beds outside the embassy had been trampled out of existence.
The chief of protocol in the Foreign Ministry hurried around early the next morning to offer his apologies. But it was a pale and strained-looking young woman who drove with a strong police escort to the Vatican to see Pope Pius XII. She was dressed in a long-sleeved dress of heavy black silk, reaching from her throat to the floor. Her elaborate coils of blonde hair were covered with a delicate black lace mantilla. She wore lace gloves and just one piece of jewellery —- the blue and silver star of Isabel which Franco had given her. She was a bewitchingly beautiful sight as she walked past the Swiss Guards on the arm of the one-eyed Prince Allessandro Ruspoli who was dressed in elegant court knee breeches.
For Evita, this was the big moment of her Italian visit. She had told friends that she expected to receive a papal marquisate for her work with the poor of Argentina. It would certainly have elevated her to the very highest social standing in Argentina. The good ladies of the Sociedad de Beneficiencia would have found it embarrassingly difficult to ignore her after that. But it was not to be.
The Pope received her in his study with all the pomp that Vatican ceremonial prescribes for the wives of heads of state. He thanked her for her work among the poor and he told her that he was presenting her husband with the Cross of the Order of Pope Pius IX, a magnificent eight-pointed star laden with diamonds but not quite the highest decoration in the papal hierarchy. At the end of the audience, the Pope gave Evita a rosary, the usual gift on such occasions.
But there were compensations — luncheon with the Foreign Minister, a Grand Hotel reception glittering with papal titles, and a dazzling performance of Aida under the stars in the ancient Baths of Caracalla. Eva, in black flowered silk with a white fox cape, her hair, ear lobes, and shapely neck glittering with diamonds, arrived on the arm of Prime Minister de Gasperi, just in time to delay the second act a full half hour. Some of the paying guests were furious. But the Latin American diplomats who had been given the best seats, gave her a rousing welcome. It must have been quite a moment for Evita Perón. She had come a long way from that one room shack in Los Toldos. But no matter how high she stood, the sneers, the put-downs always pursued her.
Time magazine, in a style so uniquely its own in those days, quoted an interview that Evita had apparently given to a reporter (though it neither mentioned the name of the reporter nor the location of the interview, giving rise to suspicions that the story was the product of Time’s fertile imagination). ‘“I like all music, concerts, and operas — especially Chopin,” said Eva … admitting that her Italian reception, despite the communists, had been “enchanting”. “I don’t understand politics,” she continued, her alabaster hands fluttering expressively, but “I am profoundly religious.” The Pope had been “marvellous”. “What saintliness,” said Eva Perón, her brown eyes rolling heavenward. The reporter asked if she enjoyed reading as much as music. “Oh yes,” said Eva. And did she have any favourites? “Why do people ask me questions like that? I like everything I read.” But surely she must have some favourites. “Well,” said Eva, her brow furrowed in agonized thought, “Plutarch,” “He’s an ancient writer”, she added hastily.”’ Time got itself banned in Argentina for a while for that little bit of maliciousness.
Evita’s first public remarks in Rome, to an audience of 600 women, sounded more like her. ‘I have a name that has become a battle-cry throughout the world,’ she told them. ‘In this first speech I make in this immortal city, I want to say that women have the same duties as men and therefore should have the same rights … In Argentina, social justice is evidently a fact and the purpose of General Perón’s programme is to bring about a moral and material evolution of the masses, especially women. Viva Italia.’ The women loved her, swept up by her fierce, passionate rhetoric.
It was a different story in the industrial cities of the north, strongholds of the country’s communists and socialists. She was booed and hissed in Milan and visibly frightened by screaming mobs that tried to attack her limousine (one of the million spiteful stories about Evita had her angrily turning to her escort, a retired senior naval officer, and complaining: ‘Did you hear they called me a whore?’ ‘Think nothing of it. Señora,’ said the officer soothingly. ‘I haven’t been to sea for 15 years, and they still call me admiral.’) Her next stop was supposed to be Venice, where gondoliers were to serenade her in a lantern-lit evening parade through the canals. But when she heard that Premier de Gasperi had been shouted down by a left-wing mob the day before in Venice, Evita abandoned the north and hurried back to Rome.
An embarrassed Italian government official attributed the change in their guest’s plans to the heat (Europe sweltered in a scorching heat-wave that summer) and to a stiff schedule which had finally become too exhausting. But he admitted there could have been ‘other considerations’. A spokesman for the Government’s ruling Christian Democratic Party indignantly supplied those: ‘It was,’ he said, the first time in our 2,000-year history that a woman guest had been insulted in our country. Fortunately, he was talking about a woman who had been toughened to a lifetime of insults. After a few days relaxing on the shores of Lake Como, she bounced back, ready for the next stage of her European odyssey — Paris the home of wealthy Argentines, the Mecca of their oligarch culture.
The weather was still cruel. At Orly Airfield the temperature stood at 90 degrees when Evita stepped down from her Dakota to be greeted by Foreign Minister Georges Bidault bending low to kiss her hand. She had kept her finest clothes for Paris and looked a dazzling sight, white suit, white shoes, white handbag, and a big white straw hat. A large ruby clip was her only jewel, apart from the three rings she always wore on the fourth finger of her left hand — a broad gold wedding ring, an enormous solitaire diamond (reputed to be second only in size to that of the wife of the Aga Khan), and a sapphire, ruby, and emerald eternity ring.
This is a massacre,’ she laughed as Bidault led her through a throng of pushing, struggling cameramen and a cheering contingent of Argentine diplomats to the motorcade that whisked her off to the Ritz. Outside the hotel, eighteen French war orphans piped ‘Vive l’Argentine’. She hugged and kissed two of them, leaving smears of scarlet lipstick on their cheeks.
In succeeding days there was a luncheon with President Vincent Auriol at the Chateau de Rambouillet, where she appeared in a glamorous draped dress of white printed with large blue-green flowers, then dinner with Foreign Minister Bidault, a visit to Versailles, and a reception at the Cercle d’Amerique-Latine in the Avenue d’Iena, where the whole Latin American diplomatic corps filed before her — the women curtseying and walking backward three paces. She wore for this occasion the most sumptuous costume of them all —- an off-the-shoulder, cloth-of-gold evening gown which clung to her body like a mermaid’s skin. With it she wore an enormous jewelled necklace, long earings to match, three jewelled bracelets, and a gold lamé veil falling from her blonde pompadour hair to the end of the fish-train on her gown. High-heeled golden sandals with stone-studded heels flashed and caught everybody’s eye as she took the marble staircase, clasping her train. In the early hours of the following morning she supped in the fashionable Pre-Catelan restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne, where her fellow diners stood on the tables under the trees to catch a glimpse of the visiting Presidenta.
A reporter for Newsweek magazine’s Paris bureau, assigned to get a ‘woman’s eye view,’ described Evita thus: ‘She is 5 feet 5 but appears taller, with dark brown eyes (which are described as black), honey coloured hair with reddish glints (she can sit on her hair), and a very white skin which she accentuates by a pale foundation lotion, no rouge, and very dark lipstick. She has perfect teeth and her lips are parted in a permanent, if wearying, smile. This is because she speaks neither French nor English and must contrive to appear interested. She neither smokes nor drinks and has a tendency to put on weight alarmingly, so she has a daily massage and a daily checkup by her doctor. She eats sparingly, and a member of her suite disappears into the kitchens, wherever she happens to be eating. She found that summer in Paris was hotter than in Argentina, and made a remark several times in the Cercle d’Amerique-Latine to the effect that it is always cooler if the doors remain closed and the hot air is kept out.’
She was wilting visibly as the temperatures stayed up in the high nineties day after day. People close to her said she was very tired and had been sleeping badly. Used to a straight-forward diet of bife and papas fritas (steak and chips), she found the rich French food and champagne intolerably indigestible as she did the tasteless cornbread she was served at every meal, which was no doubt a polite way of emphasising French need for Argentine wheat. So rich was Argentina, so poor the great old nations of Europe, that Evita could play the benefactress wherever she went — Spain, Italy, even France — with pesetas, pesos, francs from her handbag for the poor and giant loans for their governments. Indeed, one of the high points of her stay in Paris came at the Quai d’Orsay, where she presided in grande dame manner over the signing of a French-Argentine commercial treaty granting France a loan of 600 million pesos (about 120 million dollars). It would buy a lot of Argentine wheat, and beef as well, although that didn’t prevent a less than gallant French newspaper from commenting rather churlishly that ‘Madame Perón will be made palatable to the French workers and peasants by being dressed as a piece of Argentine frozen beef.’
Understandably, remarks like that dimmed Evita’s enthusiasm for France. Her savoir faire began to slip a little. After asking four leading couturiers to give her an unprecedented private showing of their collections at the Ritz, Evita appeared an hour late, kept the models waiting in tiny dressing rooms with the temperature nearly a hundred degrees, then told them she did not have time to look at the gowns. Then there was another embarrassment at the super-elegant Restaurant des Ambassadeurs, where a pair of clowns dressed as a camel offered her a bouquet of flowers — through the rear-end of the camel. She was not amused and stalked out with her party to the sniggers of the other diners.
About one o’clock that morning, Evita phoned Buenos Aires and spoke to her husband. It had become a nightly routine for her to share the joys and griefs of the day with him. Evita sent off a package every night to Buenos Aires of all the pictures taken of her that day, and, wherever she stayed, her hosts always made sure there were photos of the General prominently displayed. They had never been apart so long, and they both must have felt the loneliness that goes hand-in-hand with power, surrounded by aides prepared to do their instant bidding, yet isolated, rather in the way of that old Irving Berlin melody — ‘What’ll I do with just a photograph to tell my troubles to?’ The kind of troubles that neither aides nor photographs could solve, and which they most certainly must have discussed during those long nightly phone calls, included the question of whether she should or should not go to Great Britain.
The British Prime Minister Clement Attlee had invited her to his country after word had reached the Foreign Office via the British Embassy in Buenos Aires that an invitation would be appreciated. At first the British were delighted to get what they saw as an opportunity to put their rather strained relations with Argentina on a warmer footing. Perón had swept them economically from a country that they had long regarded as a sixth dominion. Their investments in Argentina had been reduced practically overnight from 250 million pounds to four million as a result of sales forced on them under the threat of expropriation. So they no longer possessed the kind of economic power over Argentina that fourteen years earlier had forced it to sign a trade pact that had included an agreement eliminating privately-owned Argentine bus lines in Buenos Aires for no other reason than that they threatened the profitability of the British-owned transport system in the city. But now all the British were concerned about was to safeguard their supplies of desperately needed beef. If that meant giving the wife of the Argentine President a few pleasant days in England then the British Government was happy to extend a warm welcome. Unfortunately, it did not work out in quite that way.
Basically the problem was that the British were finding it much more difficult to divest themselves of their colonial mentality than they were their empire, and Attlee’s Labour Government handled the arrangements for the visit with all the tact and sensitivity of a nineteenth-century Tory gun-boat diplomatist. Responsibility for putting together a schedule was handed over to the Anglo-Hispanic Council whose secretary, it was announced, was well fitted to handle the matter because ‘he has a close knowledge of Latin America. He was a Methodist missionary there, and has explored up the Amazon.’ If that was not bad enough, the next word out of the Foreign Office was that arrangements were in hand ‘to show Señora Perón things in which she is interested, such as the Royal Agricultural Show and the London Docks.’ As an added attraction, Mrs Attlee had kindly offered to have tea with her.
If the Government thought it had everything under control, it was in for a big shock. That was not what the Señora wanted at all. First and foremost, she wanted to stay at Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen. That was all that mattered as far as she was concerned. It was to be the pinnacle, the supreme moment of her European Tour. Never again would her neighbours, those society ladies on Avenida Alvear, be able to look down on her.
So, suddenly, British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, whose beginnings in life were almost as humble as Evita’s found himself with a diplomatic crisis on his hands. For not even a solid working-class socialist like Ernie Bevin could allow a woman with Evita’s shady reputation to stay even one night under the roof of his Sovereign’s palace. Word was passed to Evita that, unfortunately Their Majesties would not be in town during her visit. When her displeasure at that turn of events was leaked to the British press, a Foreign Office spokesman loftily commented on suggestions that there was some occasion for surprise that Señora Perón would not be staying at Buckingham Palace. ‘It is not a State visit,’ he said. ‘such visits are extremely rare and to draw a comparison between them and a private visit is only proof of ignorance.’
Hastily, the Foreign Office made it clear that its spokesman was not referring to Señora Perón’s ignorance. It was the newspapers, the ministry suggested, who had got it all wrong. The primary target of the FO’s wrath was the tabloid Sunday Pictorial which had carried a front page streamer headline that ‘The President’s wife is not welcome’. The article said that the planned visit was ‘causing increased embarrassment’ to the Government. British members of Parliament were concerned because Señora Perón is ‘the wife of a fascist dictator’, because Argentina has ‘consistently demanded pistol-point prices for meat that often proved to be of appalling quality’, because she would come to Britain fresh from a ‘triumphant reception in Franco’s Spain, a country of oppression’, and because ‘the Señora’s favourite party trick is to produce the fascist salute on the slightest pretext‘.
That story was immediately picked up by the Associated Press wire service and transmitted to Argentina where it was gleefully carried by anti-Perónist newspapers. General Perón read it the next morning, and the AP promptly felt his wrath. The Ministry of Information put out a radio bulletin on the State network accusing the American wire service of being ‘an instrument of certain interests engaged in disturbing good relations between Argentina and friendly countries’. Just who those certain interests were the Argentines did not say. But that same day, the British Ambassador was called to the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires and told that Señora Perón would not now be visiting Britain after all. There was no explanation. In London, British Ministers quietly heaved a sigh of relief, although naturally their Foreign Office spokesman voiced ‘the liveliest regrets‘.
So instead of Buckingham Palace, Evita had to make do with Switzerland, and just to add to her tale of woe, the Swiss gave her the most unpleasant reception of her whole trip. When the President drove with her from Berne station to the Town Hall, a young man who had pushed his way to the front of the curious crowd hurled two stones at the car, smashing the windscreen. Evita threw her hands up to protect her face. She was unhurt, and the stone-thrower was arrested after a struggle. The Swiss Government offered profuse apologies. But the next day, a group of young communists hurled tomatoes. They missed their target, striking the Foreign Minister who was sitting next to her and splattering her dress.
After two months on the road, Evita had finally had enough of Europe. She cut short her Swiss stay, flew to Dakar in West Africa, and there boarded an Argentine freighter, the SS Buenos Aires.
After voyaging across the Atlantic, she still had one final stop to make, disembarking in Rio de Janeiro just in time to upstage the continent’s first post-war Inter-American Defence Conference. The night before she arrived, the Argentine Embassy papered the city with thousands of huge ochre-tinted posters of Evita. But by dawn the Brazilian police had taken them all down, and the Argentines were gently chided by the evening newspaper, Diario da Noite, with the comment that ‘Brazilians don’t need advice on how to treat beautiful charmers’. The Brazilian Foreign Minister decorated her with the Orden Nacional do Cruziero do Sul and then drove her the 40 miles to the fog-bound mountain valley where the conference was being held in the Quitandinha Hotel.
Now that she was back on Latin American soil that old magnetism of hers was beginning to work again. Special squads of police had to be rushed in from Rio to cope with the thousands of local people who swarmed into the hotel, eager to catch a glimpse of the Argentine goddess they had heard so much about. Escorted by the Foreign Mirfisters of both Brazil and Argentina, Evita made a dramatic entrance into the Quitandinha’s salmon-pink conference salon just five minutes before US Secretary of State George Marshall began his keynote speech. Delegates from every country in the hemisphere rose to applaud her as she took her seat in a specially roped-off section in the front of the hall by the speaker’s rostrum.
Later she drank champagne with Marshall who told her that her country’s representative at the conference, Foreign Minister Juan Bramuglia, had become everybody’s hero. From his hotel room, sipping maté from a silver gourd, Bramuglia had set aside years of Argentine animosity and distrust of American intentions in the continent, managing to orchestrate the necessary compromises whenever delegates appeared bogged down in disputes as they worked their way towards a treaty that would bind all the nations in the Americas to mutual defence. Evita smiled a watery smile at this fulsome praise for Juan Bramuglia. Indeed, Secretary Marshall unknowingly could not have done his Argentine colleague a greater disservice. As Evita set off on her last lap home, she gave much thought to her husband’s foreign minister and the reputation he was making for himself.