No body knows the travels Evita's body has seen.
Since her death in 1952, the mortal remains of the immortal Eva Duarte Peron have journeyed across two continents, laid buried under a pseudonym in Milan, shared the dinner table with Peron and his new wife in Spain - and been the subject of an intense hunt by spies the world over, including our own Central Intelligence Agency.The imminent movie release of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, "Evita," has renewed interest in the life of the working girl who became a saint to Argentina's poor.
We've been just as fascinated by the afterlife of Evita's body ever since our associate Dale Van Atta attended a huge Peronista rally - complete with thousands of Eva Peron placards and posters - in Buenos Aires in 1983. After the rally, he spoke with U.S. and Argentine intelligence sources about the mysterious meanderings of Evita's corpse.
Eva Duarte was a sometime-actress and radio personality who eventually bedded and later married Juan Peron, an ambitious military leader and Cabinet member.
The two worked so well together that they created a virtually unshakable cult of personality as the leaders of "los descamisados," the shirtless ones. Evita reached out to the poor, giving away food, clothing and housing - and also brought Argentine women the vote for the first time.
Evita died of uterine cancer at the height of her glory, in 1952, at the age of 33. Her husband soon made plans to build the world's largest mausoleum, three times height of the Statue of Liberty. He also hired an eminent Spanish mortician, Dr. Pedro Ara, to embalm her in a way that would preserve her beauty forever, including keeping the heart, liver and other organs intact.
After a funeral that brought thousands of devotees, Evita's body became a three-year work-in-progress for Dr. Ara. Occasionally, he would roll her down from his workplace, resplendent in a glass coffin, to bolster the sagging popularity of President Peron.
But the well-manicured charm of Evita's corpse could not keep Peron in power forever. A military junta overthrew him in 1955, and the new rulers were beside themselves over how to dispose of this potent symbol of Peronism.
Concealed in a plain box, Evita's body was first taken via an army truck to a marine base, where the truck remained for a day before the commandant discovered its contents and nervously ordered it removed from his jurisdiction. For want of a destination, the truck was simply parked in downtown Buenos Aires. It was moved again after word leaked out and flowers and candles began appearing around the truck.
The chronology becomes murky after that, in part because Peron had ordered the sculpting of at least three "dummies" of vinyl and wax to help conceal the real body's location. The real body was probably stashed for a time in a crate marked "Radio Equipment" in the office of the army's information chief. At one point, it may have been stored behind the screen of a Buenos Aires cinema.
What has been firmly established is that the nervous military leaders finally shipped the body to Italy in 1957, and had it buried in Milan under the name Maria Maggi de Magistris. There it remained, in a plain grave, for 14 years.
In 1971, another Argentine leader acceded to Peron's demands for restoration of his citizenship and for the return of his late wife's remains. The body was dug up and rushed to Madrid, where Peron remained in exile. When the silver coffin was opened, with Dr. Ara present, both he and Peron were pleased to find Evita as lovely as ever, save for a few chips in the plastic, some broken fingers and a bent ear from all the years of rough handling.
But Peron had no place to put the coffin. He chose the dining room, where he and his third wife, Isabel, would sometimes refer to her open casket over the meal. According to one macabre report, Isabel would brush and plait the cadaver's hair each morning and would occasional lay on it to pick up the vibes and aura of Santa Evita.
It must have worked: Peron returned to power in Argentina in 1973, and Isabel succeeded him when he died of a heart attack the following year. In 1974, Isabel brought Evita's coffin back home from the Peron attic in Madrid, using it as an icon to boost her own popularity.