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Flesh and Fantasy: The Many Faces of Evita (and Juan Perón)

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EVITA: THE WOMAN WITH THE WHIP. By MAINMARY. Revised Edition. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980. Pp. 288.)
EVA PERÓN: THE MYTHS OF A WOMAN. By TAYLORJULIE M. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Pp. 176.)
EVA, EVITA: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF EVA PERÓN. By MONTGOMERYPAUL L. (New York: Pocket Books, 1979. Pp. 240.)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Alberto Ciria
Alberto Ciria*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
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Type
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Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , 1983 , pp. 150 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

I want to thank Jane Harris of Simon Fraser University for her careful editing of this article, and Maureen McIlroy for her typing and general advice.

References

Notes

1. See Nancy Caro Hollander, “Si Evita viviera … ,” Latin American Perspectives 1, no. 3 (Fall 1974): 42-57.

2. Tim Rice, Evita's lyricist, stated that he did not have access to Mary Main's biography when he was at work on the musical; however, he calls The Woman with the Whip “the definitive biography of Eva Perón” in Evita: The Legend of Eva Perón (1919-1952), co-authored with the musical's composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber (New York: Avon Books, 1978), p. 9. For a discussion of the “operatic” Evita and its Che Guevara narrator as “alienation effect,” see this composer's views in “Don't Cry for Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Opera News 45, no. 17 (April 4, 1981): 12-14, 27. [Evita's box-office success has been extraordinary; as of mid-1982, there were three North American companies, a London company, and productions in New Zealand, Madrid, Mexico City, Tokyo, Vienna, and Australia.] The credits for the TV movie Evita Perón indicated that it was based on works by John Barnes and Nicholas Fraser and not on the Broadway musical Evita. See Faye Dunaway's discussion of parallels between her personal life and Evita's in Dwight Whitney, “I Always Thought TV Was a Free Concert,” TV Guide 5, no. 8 (February 21, 1981): 2-4. This type of commentary undoubtedly contributes to reinforcing Evita's persona as a (posthumous) show-biz celebrity and transforms similar attempts to portray her in cinema or TV into instant popbiography. A good analysis of the mythical and real Evitas is Joseph A. Page, “The True Life and Strange Cult of the Long-Running Legend,” Washington Post, September 20, 1981, pp. K1-3. On some glaring distortions of historical facts at the anecdotical level, see Argentine reactions in “Evita-manía: Distorsiones de una serie norteamericana,” Salimos 69 (May 1981): 46-49 (Buenos Aires).

3. In the order of the text, the references are: on Evita and Errol Flynn, Charles Higham, Errol Flynn: The Untold Story (New York: Dell, 1981), p. 352; on Evita and Onassis, Irving Wallace and others, The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (New York: Delacorte, 1981), pp. 355-56; on the Washington nickname, Johanne Leach, “Gunning and Gunning Down,” The Vancouver Sun, June 24, 1981, p. C3. Lois Gold's La Presidenta (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981) is a fictional rendering of the story of Perón, Evita, and Isabel Perón. Recollections of brief encounters with Evita, in Fleur Cowles, Friends & Memories (New York: Reynal, 1978), pp. 176-80, 256-58. The filmography is reproduced and annotated by Daniel López, “Evita,” Films in Review, 21, no. 6 (June-July 1980): 349-51. The political power of famous women, including Evita, is summarily dealt with in Margarita Michelena, “Manos blancas sí ofenden,” Siempre! no. 1439 (January 21, 1981): 20-21 (Mexico City). Basile Tesselin has published another standard appraisal of Evita's and Isabel's careers, Evita et Isabelita Perón-Deux femmes pour un dictateur (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1980). The widely circulated weekly Tal Cual (Buenos Aires) started a series of scissors-and-paste articles on the untold story of Evita. See Mercedes Guirado, “Nació un día lluvioso y sin padre,” Tal Cual 4, no. 73 (May 8, 1981): 20-21.

4. “En realidad, él era la mujer y ella el hombre,” Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, ¿Qué es esto?: Catilinaria (Buenos Aires: Lautaro, 1956), p. 245.

5. See Alberto Ciria, Perón y el justicialismo (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1971), pp. 85-98; and Eldon Kenworthy, “The Function of the Little-Known Case in Theory Formation or What Peronism Wasn't,” Comparative Politics 6, no. 1 (October 1973): 17-45.

6. “It was said that they [Perón and Evita] had fortunes accumulating in Switzerland, Uruguay, and the United States and large properties in Brazil.” Main, Evita: The Woman with the Whip, p. 138; my emphasis. This example shows the way most sources

still treat the topic. For a sensible appraisal of the issue of the Peróns' personal wealth, see Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro, Eva Perón, pp. 201-3.

7. For later developments, see Juan José Sebreli, Eva Perón, ¿aventurera o militante? (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veinte, 1966).

8. Spanish physician Pedro Ara's memoirs are useful, too, for first-hand observations on Perón the public speaker: El caso Eva Perón: apuntes para la historia (Madrid: CUS Ediciones, 1974).

9. José María de Areilza's printed recollections of his long diplomatic career under Franco can be found in Así los he visto (Barcelona: Planeta, 1970). La razón de mi vida was Evita's “spiritual autobiography” that was ghostwritten by Spanish journalist Manuel Penella de Silva. It was compulsory reading in Argentine schools up to 1955. For details on how and why it was conceived and published, see Penella de Silva's own words in “La razón de mi vida,” and “El hijo que no tuve,” Primera Plana no. 212 (January 17, 1967): 36-38, and no. 213 (January 24, 1967): 36-38 (Buenos Aires). For an English translation of the work, see Evita by Evita: Eva Duarte Perón Tells Her Own Story (London: Proteus Books, 1978).

10. Beyond my objections to Llamadme Evita, Llorca's handling of the colloquial language spoken in Argentina is inaccurate. See, for instance, an alleged anecdote in which young Evita cries like a character out of a nineteenth-century Spanish drama (p. 20).

11. Too late for inclusion in this review essay, I have come across Navarro's Evita (published by Corregidor in 1981 in Buenos Aires, but printed in Spain). It should be considered this author's definitive contribution to the topic. Navarro's co-authored Eva Perón conforms too much to the popular bio genre. It would be a fascinating commentary on marketing and editorial decisions both in Buenos Aires and New York to do an in-depth comparison of Eva Perón and Evita, as commodities as well as texts. For the moment, the interested reader should look at the following articles by Navarro that represent her best scholarly level: “The Case of Eva Perón,” Signs 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1977): 229-40; “Evita and the Crisis of 17 October 1945: A Case Study of Peronist and Anti-Peronist Mythology,” Journal of Latin American Studies 12, no. 1 (May 1980): 127-38; and “Evita's Charismatic Leadership,” pp. 47- 66 in Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective, ed. by Michael L. Conniff (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982).

12. Fraser and Navarro's Eva Perón offers down-to-earth corrections to the alleged Evita-Onassis affair (p. 98; see also note 3, above). They also set the record straight that José G. Espejo's real occupation before he became a labor boss was as a truck-driver, not as the superintendent where Evita lived (104).

13. The title of an enthusiastic review by Walter Clemons of Naipaul's collection of essays, Newsweek (March 31, 1980): 73. See also Naipaul's Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (New York: Knopf, 1981).

14. See Daniel James, “The Peronist Left, 1955-1975,” Journal of Latin American Studies 8, no. 2 (November 1976): 273-96.

15. See “The Brothels behind the Graveyard,” originally written in May-July 1974, pp. 140-57, where the leitmotif is carried to excess. I am sorry to report that the metaphor Naipaul reiterates is simply incorrect: there are no brothels on Azcuénaga Street by the Recoleta cemetery where Evita's remains have rested since 1976. The “gigantic brothel industry” of the Pan-American Highway is also a misleading reference (154). Reality is less symbolical: Naipaul's “brothels” are merely albergues transitorios, municipally-licensed hotels where couples can go for a few hours, even a night, with no questions asked or identification needed. Houses of prostitution were legally banned in the thirties: the question of clandestine prostitution is a different story and, of course, prostitutes and their customers frequent some of these hotels, too. All knowledgeable porteños could have briefed Naipaul on anecdotes from this sort of establishment, which is by no means typical of Buenos Aires.

16. For complementary references to machismo as a major psychosexual cause for Argentina's fate, see pp. 153-54, 168.

17. The irrational sexual metaphors employed predominantly by Naipaul are carried to new heights when dealing with repression in Argentina. See “The Terror,” originally written in March 1977, The Return of Eva Perón, pp. 157-70. According to Naipaul, torture is simply a way of life, Argentina is similar to Haiti, all excesses are deterministic consequences from the malformed Argentine psyche. It would be impossible to even mention in a footnote some of the structural aspects of Argentine reality that are needed to obtain a correct perspective on the sixties, the seventies, and their violent heritage. (This observation also includes the conflict and war over the Malvinas/Falklands between 2 April and 14 June 1982, which tended to be perceived in some cases à la Naipaul as merely an irrational outburst.) Particularly insightful are the analyses by Guillermo O'Donnell, Alain Rouquié, Juan E. Corradi, and others. A particularly good antidote to Naipaul's vision is found in Juan Carlos Marín, “La guerra civil en Argentina,” Cuadernos Políticos 22 (Oct.-Dec. 1979): 46-76 (Mexico City).

18. In this, as in other aspects, Fraser and Navarro's Eva Perón is the best balanced appraisal of Perón's role in relation to Evita, although I do not fully share all of the authors' interpretations.

19. See his Perón (1895-1942): preparación de una vida para el mando (Buenos Aires: Espiño, 1953), the first in Pavón Pereyra's long list of publications on the subject. These include the general editorship of Perón: el hombre del destino, a sixty-issue weekly collection in the popular “Great Men” category (Buenos Aires: Editorial Abril, 1973-74). An illustrated coffee-table book, full of minutiae but not really illuminating, has been written by another Peronist intellectual, Fermín Chávez, Perón y el peronismo en la historia contemporánea (Vol. I, Buenos Aires: Editorial Oriente, 1975).

20. See also Pavón Pereyra, “¿Fue asesinado Perón?”, Magazine 2, no. 23 (August 1980): 151-92, an abridgement of his book on Los últimos días de Perón (Buenos Aires: La Campana, 1981).

21. See Yo, Juan Domingo Perón: relato autobiográfico (Barcelona: Planeta, 1976). Like most of what Perón said and wrote as a public figure, this work cannot be accepted uncritically as historical truth and must be handled with care.

22. On this point, see Perón's memoir, “Lo que yo ví de la preparación y realización de la revolución del 6 de septiembre de 1930,” appended to José María Sarobe's Memorias sobre la revolución del 6 de septiembre de 1930 (Buenos Aires: Gure, 1957), pp. 281-310. Students of the period have reached a consensus about the general accuracy of this particular text by Perón.

23. For a comprehensive discussion, see Juan E. Corradi, “Between Corporatism and Insurgency: The Sources of Ambivalence in Peronist Ideology,” in Terms of Conflict: Ideology in Latin American Politics, ed. by Morris J. Blachman and Ronald G. Hellman (Philadelphia: ISHI; 1977), pp. 97-127.

24. Otelo Borroni and Roberto Vacca, La vida de Eva Perón (Vol. I, Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna, 1970) is still a useful source of personal recollections and anecdotes on Evita's life.

25. Based on my own synthesis in Perón y el justicialismo, pp. 109-21. The “parallels with differences” that I was suggesting in 1971 with Janet Jagan in Guyana or Madame Nhu in South Vietnam could now include Imelda Marcos in the Philippines.

26. One suitable model could be Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky, The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954, 1959, and 1963).