Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Evita Peron

by Barnes, John

  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 p
oor 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.