First time in Buenos Aires this week and learned a lot about Eva Peron. Despite being avid theater-goers, I have to admit that I never saw Evita on Broadway so only had a loose understanding of this person.
In a nutshell, Eva was born poor, became a singer and actress and met and married an Army Colonel, Juan Peron, who was later elected President of Argentina. Eva became First Lady at the age of 26 and became an outspoken advocate for the poor (the shirtless ones”) and for women’s issues. She was immensely popular and announced her candidacy for Vice President of Argentina. While she had tremendous support, she ultimately withdrew her candidacy when she was stricken with uterine cancer. She died in 1952 at the age of 33 but the Argentines still revere her more that 70 years after her death.
Amazing to have had such an impact in such a relatively short life.
Frosty
According to Wikipedia:
María Eva Duarte (7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952), better known as María Eva Duarte de Perón, Eva Perón and Evita, was the wife of Argentine President Juan Perón (1895–1974) and First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children. At 15 in 1934, she moved to the nation's capital of Buenos Airesto pursue a career as a stage, radio, and film actress.
She met Colonel Juan Perón on 22 January 1944 during a charity event at the Luna Park Stadium to benefit the victims of an earthquake in San Juan, Argentina. The two were married the following year. Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina in 1946; during the next six years, Eva Perón became powerful within the pro-Peronist trade unions, primarily for speaking on behalf of labor rights. She also ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, championed women's suffrage in Argentina, and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Women's Peronist Party.
In 1951, Eva Perón announced her candidacy for the Peronist nomination for the office of Vice President of Argentina, receiving great support from the Peronist political base, low-income and working-class Argentines who were referred to as descamisados or "shirtless ones". Opposition from the nation's military and bourgeoisie, coupled with her declining health, ultimately forced her to withdraw her candidacy.[1] In 1952, shortly before her death from cancer at 33, Eva Perón was given the title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation" by the Argentine Congress.[2][3][4] She was given a state funeral upon her death, a prerogative generally reserved for heads of state.
Eva Perón has become a part of international popular culture,[5] most famously as the subject of the musical Evita (1976).[6] Cristina Álvarez Rodríguez claims that Evita has never left the collective consciousness of Argentines.[3] Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the first woman elected President of Argentina, claims that women of her generation owe a debt to Eva for "her example of passion and combativeness".[7]
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