Eva Perón: From Humble Beginnings to Iconic Figure
Eva Perón, or simply Evita, remains one of the most influential figures in Argentine history. Born María Eva Duarte, her journey from a small town to the heart of Argentine politics is a testament to her ambition, charisma, and dedication to the working class. This article explores her early life, education, and the formative experiences that shaped her into the iconic figure she became.
Early Life and Family
María Eva Duarte de Perón was born on May 7, 1919, in Los Toldos, a small town in the Argentine Pampas. Her mother, Juana Ibarguren, was unmarried to her father, Juan Duarte, who had another family. This illegitimate status cast a shadow over Eva's early life, contributing to the financial struggles the family faced.
The region around Los Toldos was good for livestock and for agriculture, but after Juan Duarte died when Eva was six years old, the family's situation worsened. A few years later, the family moved to Junín, Argentina, seeking better opportunities. However, the opportunities they had hoped for did not materialize, and the family returned to Los Toldos. While the older children may have experienced times of bonanza, the younger ones knew only the times of scarcity.
Education in Los Toldos and Junín
Eva's formal education began in Los Toldos, where she attended first and second grade. Later, the family moved to Junín, where Elisa, Eva's sister, had been transferred for work at the post office. In Junín, Eva attended the Sacred Heart School, while her brother Juan found work in the town's pharmacy.
Even as a young girl, Eva displayed a flair for performance. According to her sister Erminda Duarte in her book, My Sister Evita, Eva was known for her ability to recite poetry. For My Life, she would say, "Even as a little girl I wanted to recite." The Cultural Center of the Colegio Nacional often organized theatricals, providing an early outlet for her artistic inclinations.
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A Budding Actress
While her sister Blanca considered a career as a teacher, Evita had different aspirations. She declared, "I'll be an actress." This ambition set her apart and signaled her determination to break free from the constraints of her small-town life. Eva had a firmly-rooted vocation: the arts, the stage.
Eva's decision to pursue acting was met with resistance from her family. However, she was determined to follow her dream. As she would later write in La Razón de Mi Vida, she always lived free and felt the "thirst of the forest" and the "thirst of freedom" which comes from living with your parents or in your hometown.
At the age of 15, Eva convinced her mother to allow her to travel to Buenos Aires with the tango singer Agustín Magaldi. While some versions of the story claim that Magaldi was romantically involved with Eva, her sisters categorically deny these scandalous versions. Doña Juana eventually gave in, recognizing her daughter's unwavering ambition.
Buenos Aires and the Pursuit of a Dream
In 1935, Eva Duarte arrived in Buenos Aires, a city teeming with opportunities and challenges. She was just one more provincial to arrive in the great city during the '30's. The city was flooded by the crisis to flee the interior and come to Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires had been a city of white skins and European architecture. The world. These times were captured in the lyrics of the tango "Yira". The opportunities they had hoped for, the family returned to Los Toldos. Conservatives. Dr.
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Eva faced the challenges of being a young woman in a competitive industry. She started with bit parts in theater productions such as Cada casa es un mundo and Mme. Curie. She worked with some of the best directors of those times. In 1937, she landed a role in La Señora de Pérez, marking her professional debut.
Despite some good reviews, the play Written by L. Pirandello was a failure at the box office. Eva continued to seek opportunities, eventually finding work in the movies and on the radio. She was capable of producing kinds of entertainment ranging from drama to humor.
Radio Career and Growing Recognition
Eva's career began to flourish in the radio industry. She found work as co-host on the radio show Muy Bien. Later, a five-year contract with a radio show on Radio Belgrano earned her major financial success by voicing over historical characters such as Queen Elizabeth I of England, Henriette Rosine (Sarah) Bernhardt, and Alexandra Feodorovna, the last Tsarina of Russia.
She met Colonel Juan Perón, who organized a gala event to fundraise for the earthquake victims. He was then the secretary of Labour and Social Welfare. They married in October 1945.
The Society of Beneficence
The ladies of the Society of Beneficence ran School Homes, large austere buildings with drafty corridors and opaque windows so that the children inside could neither see out nor be seen. Clothed in identical drab uniforms, heads frequently shaven, called by the number sewed to their clothes instead of by their names, the children received more training than education.
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Emphasis was on school as work, workshop, sweatshop. Girls labored long hours sewing layettes for the wealthy society ladies who ran the asylums. Children often left the asylums only at Christmastime to stand on street corners and beg money for the maintenance of the Society of Beneficence. Nor were the children the only ones exploited.
A Congressional report in 1939 revealed that some employees of the Society of Beneficence worked 12 to 14 hours daily with a day off only every 10 or 15 days. Some had no days off and earned between 45-90 pesos at a time when the minimum wage was 120 pesos ( Diario de Sesiones de la Cámera de Diputados, 1939, p,444). In contrast, 95% of the funds at the disposition of the ladies of the Society went to pay the ladies’ salaries while only 5% went to maintain their works (Felipe Pigna, Página 12, 4/30/2007).
The Fundación Eva Perón
For Evita, the emphasis was on creating a home as a safe haven for children. We say that the eyes are the windows of the soul; the architecture of the twenty Home Schools (Hogares Escuela) established by the Fundación during the seven years before the 1955 military Coup d’Etat which overthrew Perón’s constitutionally elected government showed that the creation of a home was the nucleus or soul of these havens. Children went to public schools and maintained family ties whenever possible. Integration, not segregation, was the core of the Home Schools.
The architecture of the Home Schools reflected their openness to society. The hedge around the buildings was never more than a meter high. The buildings themselves were typical Fundación architecture: constructed in California mission style, wide and airy, full of light, with red tiled roofs, white walls and green lawns. The interior decoration was of the highest quality, with oak beds, mosaics and tiles which still stand after fifty years of abandonment and neglect.
Home Schools sheltered about 16,000 children at a time when the population of Argentina was about 16 million. They were built where the socioeconomic need was the greatest. Parents who wished their children to attend home schools had to write to Evita personally (they had to take the initiative) and while the Home School was being constructed, social workers and home visitors visited the families’ homes to corroborate each family’s situation and evaluate its needs.
The children were admitted from ages four to ten (ages six to ten at Ezeiza). Children with physical or psychological problems were derived to the appropriate institutions and their treatment was paid for by the Fundación. Social workers worked with each family before and during the child’s stay at the Hogar Escuela. Evita did not want any child to be isolated from the world. All children were to have a nuclear family outside of the Hogar where they could spend weekends and holidays.
Upon admittance, a complete medical workup was done for each child and after the first checkup, the children received two checkups a month with the emphasis on preventive medicine. The Hogar accommodated day children (who returned to their homes for dinner and to spend the night) and residents. All children received clothing (no uniforms-except the white smock which all Argentine children wore to public schools), shoes, books and school supplies, medications when necessary. Resident children were those who were poorest or who lived too far away to be transported on a daily basis. Day children were those whose parents were able to provide them with the basic necessities.
When in the Hogar, the children were organized in groups of fifteen, with a preceptor, a kind of “nanny” in charge of each group. The children wore street clothing of their choice. Everything possible was done to avoid the “asylum mentality” so prevalent during the years of the Society of Beneficence. By 1954, the Department of Education had to make plans for first groups of Hogar children who had completed their primary education and were ready for high school. The Foundation only had one Home for( male) High School Students, la Ciudad Estudiantil, in Buenos Aires (these young people lived in the Ciudad Estudiantil but were bused to local high schools during the day). More Ciudades Estudiantiles were planned but had not yet been built.
The Ministry of Education derived the students, according to abilities and vocations, to appropriate high schools. Since High School Homes for young women had not yet been completed, girls were allowed to continue in the Hogar as day students. The Hogar continued to give them clothes, food, medical attention, school supplies and books during their high school years; however, these privileges were lost if the girls received a fail in any school subject. Therefore, their grades were closely monitored and they were carefully supervised and tutored after school “just as any patient and intelligent mother would do for her children.”(Ferioli, La Fundación Eva Perón, vol. I, p.
Supplementary after school classes such as dancing, folk dancing, cooking and sewing, music and art were held three times a week. Students were allowed to freely choose whatever interested them the most. In 1955 (before the September coup d’etat), the director of each Hogar was under strict orders “to encourage the young women to continue their post secondary studies at the Ciudad Universitaria de Córdoba (ibid, p. 78) which would have been inaugurated in 1956 “if Aramburu’s government had not paralyzed the construction” (ibid, p. 79). Of course, after the military coup of 1955, the Society of Beneficence mentality became once again the order of the day.
In a report dated December, 1955, the team who intervened in the Fundación documented their shock at finding that “the attention given to the minors was varied and almost sumptuous. We can even say that it was excessive and not at all in accordance with the norms of the sobriety of a Republic which should form its children in austerity. Poultry and fish were included in the varied daily menus. As for the [children’s] clothing, it was renewed every six months and the old clothing destroyed.” (See Ferioli, La Fundación Eva Perón, vol. I, pg. During his research into the 1945 San Juan earthquake, American historian Mark Healy found a legal file which illustrates how quickly Argentina returned to its past after the 1955 military Coup d’Etat. A woman lawyer, antiperonista, was instructed to intervene in the San Juan Hogar Escuela. She decided to turn it into an employment agency so that the girls, instead of going to college, could go to work as maids in the houses of people like her or her friends. The social workers employed by the school protested, as did the young girls who gathered in the patio to shout, “We want Perón to return!” (See Clarín, August 7, 2006, “Hogar Escuela de San Juan”).
By the time Perón did return in 1973, the Fundación Eva Perón had been plundered, dismantled, its works destroyed and the residents who had benefited most-children, students, seniors, working women, homeless families-scattered to the winds. The military, like the Bourbons, had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Evita, sadly and prophetically, once said, “I leave them the easiest task: that of changing the signs.” If only they had been content to change the signs on the buildings and leave the works intact!
The Children's City
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The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye.
The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye.
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The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye.
The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye.
The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye.
The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye.
The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye. The Children’s City was the apple of Evita’s eye.
La Ciudad Estudiantil
La Ciudad Estudiantil, the Students’ City, was located next to the Children’s City in the Buenos Aires suburb of Belgrano. It took up four city blocks: Echeverría, Ramsay, Dragones, and Blanco Encalada. The Students’ City was organized in the same way as the Hogares Escuelas (“Home Schools”; see article on this site).
Transported each day in Fundación buses, students studied in regular high schools, in specialized business and industrial schools and in the Engineering, Law, and Medicine Colleges (Facultades). When they returned home at the end of the school day, professors were waiting to tutor them. Classes were also taught at the Ciudad Estudiantil and emphasis was placed on the latest technology so that the students would be successful in the modern world. The instruction they received was so advanced that after the military closed the school, students received scholarships to study in other countries anxious to take advantage of their knowledge and talents.
Both the Ciudad Infantil, with its Montessori classes which encouraged individual inactive, and the Ciudad Estudiantil, with its emphasis on “high tech”, were ahead of their time. The purpose of the Ciudad Estudiantil was not only to function as a Hogar Escuela for adolescents in need but also to prepare future leaders from among the working classes by involving them in the decision-making process of governing the Ciudad Estudiantil. All students were male.
Since the Fundacion did not yet have a Ciudad Estudiantil for females, adolescent girls continued to be under the protection of the Hogares Escuelas; they received food, clothes, medical attention, tuition to secondary schools, books, supplies, everything they needed to complete their secondary schooling and continue at the university level (the only condition was that they had to pass all their classes, but tutoring was always available). The City contained replicas of the rooms in the Casa Rosada (where the President works but does not live). Students chose a president, ministers and diplomats who were encouraged to offer suggestions and constructive criticism, forming a co-government of instructors and students. Everyone had a job to do, from welcoming newcomers and helping them to adapt to the City , forming part of the nightly security patrol or holding an elective office.
Based on his personality, an adolescent might have his own room or share a room with one or two other students. Students were responsible for keeping their rooms neat and for looking presentable themselves, obtaining points according to their achievements. To continue in the Ciudad Estudiantil, students had to maintain a certain number of points based on their studies and their conduct, both in and out of the Ciudad. Even though the Fundacion provided for all their needs, they had to shine their own shoes and wait on themselves in the dining room. “They were to work towards the common good of the community but not let themselves become the tool of someone else’s ambition,” Evita told them, repeating an idea often expressed by Perón.
Much importance was given to Physical Education and sports. The City’s “Clubs” took up two blocks and students had the right to belong to one gym and two sports clubs: soccer, sword fighting, basketball, calisthenics, running, swimming,diving, water polo, etc. A doctor and dentist consulting room, a stadium, a barber shop, and locker rooms completed the complex. The other two city blocks contained eight buildings which housed a dining room, a “bar,” (which only served milk), a living room, the bedrooms (for one, two, or a maximum of three students). The students were a diverse group; they ranged from the porteños, sophisticated natives of Buenos Aires, to their country cousins of the far North (Salta, Jujuy) and South (La Patagonia) and every effort was made to integrate them using the common denominator of their Argentine nationality. Extra curricular activities such as bonfires and drama school helped.
Argentines are very fond of mate, the herbal tea much loved by the legendary gauchos, which they drink with a silver straw, la bombilla, from a hollowed-out gourd . At night the students would gather around a bonfire. Hot water was added to the loose tea leaves and the gourd was passed from person to person, the water and tea replenished as needed. Once a year, during the “Ceremonia del Mate,” residents would choose the student they considered to have been the friendliest and most helpful. Evita supervised all the details. For instance, she rejected some imported glasses bearing the words “Sweet Dreams” in English because she wanted to encourage pride in Argentina’s cultural heritage. In 1952, when her cortege was taken to Congress to lie in state, the students from the Ciudad Estudiantil marched alongside the nurses of the Fundacion, next to her coffin. After the military coup d’etat of 1955, the students were evicted and the buildings turned into a det…
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