A Prayer for Evita: Here's Why Many Argentinians Are Devoted to a First Lady Who Died in 1952

How a First Lady Turned into a Champion of the Poor

The secret behind the fascination that she awakens might be hidden in her name.

Long before becoming first lady, she called herself María Eva, a girl who left the town of Los Toldos to try her luck as an actress in Buenos Aires. As a modest film star she was known as Eva Duarte and afterwards became Eva Perón, the president's wife. Then came Evita.

"Evita is the one who is close to the people," said Santiago Regolo, a researcher at Museum Evita. "People began to call her that, and that construction is linked to the political and social work that distinguished her from the women who preceded her and take her as an example to this day."

Evita was the one who paid visits to elders and single mothers. The one who handed out toys for children and bread for families. The one who promoted paid vacations for workers who had never been able to afford a break and gave a final push to achieve the women's right to vote in 1947.

She has also inspired some feminists – who carry her photo along with their green scarves during protests – as well as a political organization that asks for social transformation using her image as a logo.

"Having Evita on our flag represents being with those in the lower classes and trying to vindicate her name over time," said Iván Tchorek, from the Evita Movement, which has 155,000 members nationwide and was created after an economic crisis in 2001.

She's relevant as ever, Tchorek said, because Peronism is. Thousands of workers like him recently led a general strike against the right-wing Milei, who defeated Peronist candidate Sergio Massa last November. Soon after, Milei issued a decree that would revoke or modify hundreds of existing laws in order to limit the power of unions and deregulate an economy that has traditionally featured heavy state intervention.

Even as a union standard-bearer in polarized times, Evita and her memory have the ability to transcend politics. "Certain issues are linked to matters of a sentimental, sacralized nature," Regolo said. "She is seen as a companion, a sister, a mother for the humble."

At her home in an impoverished neighborhood outside Buenos Aires, 71-year-old Rita Cantero says she almost met Evita. When her mother asked the first lady for help, she was pregnant with her.

"My mother used to say that Evita was very supportive, that people really liked her for the service she provided."

Aware of the challenges of being a single mother, Rafaela Escobar attended a public event held by Evita in a plaza near her home. After being able to approach her and confide in her distress, Evita hugged her and said: "Don't worry, I will help."

Three weeks later, Escobar received a cradle and clothes for her unborn child.

Cantero says her mother never met Evita again, but she sent her letters and the first lady replied with envelopes carrying money.

"For us she is like a saint," Cantero said. "Many judged her because she was a woman, but she was an honest, hard-working girl. She fought for our nation and was the force of Perón."

Evita's Mixed Legacy and the Fight Over her Embalmed Body

Perón died two decades after Evita, in 1974, but his name continues to spark both admiration and hatred, yearning and blame.

His critics – among them legislator Fernando Iglesias, who has published several books contending Peronism ruined the country – claim that Perón was an authoritarian leader and his movement's social assistance disguised corruption and patronage while generating too much dependence on the government.

Critics address Eva too. Her foundation pressed donors for resources, some say. She was careerist and a hypocrite, others assert. On the one hand, she claimed to defend the poor and on the other, she dressed in Dior.

"Would she be the saint of the lazy?" a user tweeted when the union requested her beatification. "Patron of criminals," someone else wrote.

Erasing her from history was once a command. After a coup overthrew Perón in 1955, it was forbidden to say her name, display her image or keep her gifts. The military removed her embalmed body from a union's headquarters, where it was initially kept, and sent it to Europe.

The body came back after 14 years, and when the military took over again in the 1970s, it was given to her family under one condition: She would be buried eight meters underground, sealed in a marble crypt so that no one would ever see her again.

"Evita is the best thing that could have happened to this country," said Carolina Castro, 22, holding back tears next to Evita's grave in Recoleta Cemetery, where Argentinians and foreigners alike honor her with flowers, letters and rosaries.

According to Castro's mother, 56-year-old Andrea Vellesi, Evita is a sensitive topic because their family is going through a difficult time. "I have never been in such anguish," Vellesi said about economic measures that Milei recently decreed and that she claims hurt her business.

Víctor Biscia, 36, says that he doesn't keep photos of Evita at home, but he does have images of the late President Néstor Kirchner and his wife and successor Cristina Fernández, another Peronist couple that prompts devotion and resentment among Argentinians.

"They were key to achieving rights that are being curtailed by the current government," said Biscia, who thinks of Fernández as a sort of 21st-century Evita.

"She reflects a lot of what we are as Argentinians," says Gimena Villagra, 27, standing next to Evita's tomb. "I don't think there's anyone for whom she doesn't mean something."

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