Wonder Woman


It’s official!  On October 21, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will declare Wonder Woman as the honorary ambassador for the United Nations, launching a campaign to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment over the next 15 years.  When I read this I thought at first it was a piece from The Onion but it turned out to be a perfectly legit article in the New York Times.  I guess this will really serve as a wake up call to Boko Haram.   

The article indicated that Wonder Woman got the nod over 6 other candidates that were not identified.  As mystified as I was by this inexplicable affair I immediately wanted to know who had been passed over.  With millions of people around the globe being starved, mutilated and vaporized, if the United Nations truly felt this was a worthwhile way to spend time and money, couldn’t they have gone about things in a more sensible manner?

Image from aryanunity.com
Without downplaying the contributions made to mankind by Marvel Comics, it wouldn’t have seemed to be quite such an unconscionable and senseless waste of effort If the U.N. had gone with maybe Eva Peron.  Born Maria Eva Duarte in a small village outside Buenos Aires to an unwed mother in 1922, Eva grew up poor and uneducated.  At the age of 15 she moved in with friends of her family living in Buenos Aires where she eventually found work as an actress and model.  She was able to support herself once she was cast as a regular on a daily national radio program.  She was one of many celebrities attending a gala for earthquake victims when she met Juan Peron who at the time was Argentina’s Minister of Labor.  They were together from that night forward. 

Image from pj.org.ar
Eva became a co-owner of the radio station and when a union was formed by radio performers she was chosen as president perhaps at least partly because of her relationship with Juan Peron.  Eva introduced and performed in a daily radio soap opera that dwelt on Juan Peron’s accomplishments and included recordings of his speeches.  Her humble beginnings helped her to gain favor with listeners made up of the poor, the working class and union members.

Image from wikipedia
Juan aged 48 and Eva aged 24 were married in 1945 and he was elected President of Argentina the following year.  Leading up to the election, Eva had been the first spouse ever to travel and campaign with a candidate and began encouraging people to call her Evita.  She was also the first wife ever to be included in a seated President’s portrait. 

Eva and her populist rhetoric was a major factor in her husband’s election.  As much as she was adored by the poor she was hated every bit as much by the establishment.  This was never more obvious than when she was snubbed by the 87 women members that made up the Sociedad de Beneficencia.  Traditionally the first lady had always been asked to preside over the group’s programs aimed at assisting orphans and homeless women.  Eva was rejected by the group as unsuitable given her lack of education, poor upbringing and work as an actress.


Image from allposters.com
Undeterred by this, Eva established her own separate charitable foundation into which she diverted every peso of government funding that had been originally earmarked for the Sociedad de Beneficencia.  It was her work with the foundation over the next 6 years that raised her from a celebrity to nearly a saint in the eyes of the public.  She devoted all of her energies to helping the poor and working class which she referred to as descamisados (shirtless ones).  Her foundation built 25,000 houses, established schools and clinics, and provided scholarships and household necessities for the underprivileged.  Even more than the social welfare achievements, her weekly meetings with all comers was most responsible for her becoming idolized by the general public.  The public saw her interaction with the destitute, the infirm and the infected more as doing God’s work than the work of a first lady. 


Image from gramscimania.com
When her husband began to campaign for re-election in 1951, Eva gave consideration to running for Vice President.  Two million people (the largest crowd in history to demonstrate support for a female public figure) attended a rally in support of Eva and her husband.  The massive audience demanded Eva seek the Vice Presidency.  She deferred by saying she would consider it but days later announced her decision on the radio not to run.  It was simply not possible given her medical issues and pressure from her husband’s opposition.  When her husband was re-elected to a second term as President she was given the official title of Spiritual Leader of the Nation.   

Image from wikiwand.com
Eva continued to work tirelessly with the foundation and it began to seem that the long hours were taking a toll on her health.  She in fact was suffering from cancer but her husband kept this from her initially.  His first wife had died of cancer at the age of 29 and perhaps something about this experience led him to want to keep Eva in the dark.  In 1951 her condition worsened, she fainted periodically and under went a series of surgical procedures.  She required heavy doses of pain medication and a body brace under her clothing to remain standing in public.  Eventually she needed her husband to help hold her upright when she spoke in front of a crowd.  Recently a Yale neurosurgeon with evidently a great deal of spare time, studied her skull x-rays and photographs and concluded that it appeared she may have had a frontal lobotomy in the last months prior to her death to relieve her pain and mental anguish. 

Image from wikipedia.com
Surgery and chemotherapy (she was the first Argentine ever to receive what was then a new treatment) failed to reverse her declining health.  On July 26, 1952 radio reports of Eva Peron’s death brought the country to a standstill and set in motion a mind-boggling series of events covering the next 20 years.  Within 24 hours, Eva’s 79-pound corpse was embalmed and moved to the Ministry of Labor Building for 
public viewing.  

Image from pinterest.com
The crush of mourners attempting to get close to the body in transit resulted in 8 deaths and over 2,000 others being treated for injuries at local hospitals.  The following day the contents of every floral shop in Buenos Aires formed huge mounds surrounding her resting place and a crowd stretched 10 blocks deep in every direction.  Her final arrangements included a complete Roman Catholic requiem mass and despite never holding public office, she was given a funeral intended only for a head of state that drew 3 million people.  

Her body remained on display while plans were drawn up to erect a monument depicting a shirtless worker taller than the Statue of Liberty where Eva was to be displayed for public viewing in the base of the structure.  A military coup in 1955 took place before the monument could be built forcing Juan Peron to flee the country before he could take steps to deal with Eva’s body.  Colonel Carlos Enrique Moori Koenig, Chief of the Army Intelligence Service, and Major Eduardo Antonio Arandia took the body from where it had been on display for the public and hid it initially in a florist’s van, later transferring it to the attic of Arandia’s home. In constant fear that Peronists would discover the body’s whereabouts, Arandia, short on sleep and startled by noises one night, fired his revolver at movement in the darkened house killing his pregnant wife.

Image from taringa.net
Following this tragic episode the new military government took possession of Eva’s body and it’s location remained a mystery for the next 16 years during which time it was illegal to have photos of the Perons in one’s home or to speak their name.  In 1970 a leftist urban guerilla group called the Montoneros kidnapped General Pedro Aramburu, the de facto president following the 1955 coup, intending to pry loose the location of Eva’s body and ended up killing him.  The following year, perhaps to ward off more attempts by the Montoneros, the military dictatorship of Argentina announced that her body had been kept in a crypt in Milan, Italy under the name Maria Maggi.  Juan Peron arranged to have the body exhumed and driven with a police escort to his home in Madrid where he was living in exile with his third wife Isabel.  The body was placed in the Peron’s dining room in an open coffin where Isabel performed a daily ritual of combing out Eva’s hair.  Eventually the body was moved upstairs where a shrine had been created.

Image from pinterest.com
Juan Peron once again became Argentina’s President in October of 1973 with his third wife Isabel as Vice President (don’t ask).  The following year, 3 months after Juan died and Isabel ascended to the Presidency, the Montoneros were at it again.  They stole Pedro Aramburu’s body from its tomb and said they would not return it until Eva’s body came back to Argentina.  Conflicting accounts make it impossible to determine how effective this tactic was.  In any event, Isabel did have the body returned to Argentina where it was placed along side Juan Peron in a tomb that allowed public viewing.  Eva’s body had been damaged by all of the travelling and handling and was in need of repair prior to being displayed.  Domingo Tellechea was chosen to do the work based on his worldwide reputation for the restoration of art, antiquities and human remains.

Isabel was soon thereafter ousted by yet another military coup.  In 1976, the new military government determined it best for the body to be buried in La Recoleto Cemetary in Buenos Aires in the Duarte family tomb which is just a short stroll from Pedro Aramburu’s final resting place.


Image from wordpress.com
The Duarte family tomb is said to be impenetrable with various accounts describing her lying 15 meters below ground in a separate compartment, protected by a marble floor, numerous steel plates, and accessible only by means of 2 trap doors.  These measures may seem elaborate but the military wanted to ensure that she stayed put for a change.  Hopefully this level of security will prevent any incidents such as befell her husband when in 1986 vandals broke into his tomb and sawed off his hands.