Eva Perón (1919–52,) fully María Eva Duarte de Perón, known as Evita, was a former actress and Argentinean political leader. The second wife of the Argentine Army general and politician Juan Perón, she advocated social reforms that expanded her great popularity with the poor.
Born into a humble family in Los Toldos, Buenos Aires, Perón was a radio and stage actress before her marriage to Juan Perón in 1945. She played a vital role in his winning presidential campaign the following year. She became the significant political influence and backbone of the Perón government. Meanwhile, she used her status to press for women’s suffrage by establishing the Peronista Feminist Party in 1949 and taking control of newspapers and business companies.
As the de facto Minister of Health and Labour, Perón gained political support for her husband from among the working classes. Revered by the masses herself, she endowed the Eva Perón Foundation to stimulate social welfare. After her death, support for her husband faded. When he was ousted in 1955, her body was stolen and kept concealed until the early 1970s. After Juan Perón died in 1974, his third wife, Isabel Perón, repatriated Eva’s remains and interred them in the Duarte family crypt in Buenos Aires’s Recollect Cemetery.
Evita Perón’s life story is the theme of a popular musical by Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice (1978.) Eva Perón’s autobiography was published in English as My Mission in Life (1953.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Eva Peron
Almsgiving tends to perpetuate poverty; aid does away with it once and for all. Almsgiving leaves a man just where he was before. Aid restores him to society as an individual worthy of all respect and not as a man with a grievance. Almsgiving is the generosity of the rich; social aid levels up social inequalities. Charity separates the rich from the poor; aid raises the needy and sets him on the same level with the rich.
—Eva Peron
Topics: Charity, Respect, Poverty, Assistance, Aid
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Leave a Reply