Celebrated in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical “Evita”, Argentina’s first lady Eva Peron died in 1952. Inspired by Lenin’s Tomb in Moscow, Evita’s grief-stricken husband Dictator Juan Peron planned to have her body preserved for display in a glass-encased national monument. He paid renowned Spanish pathologist Dr. Pedro Ara $100,000 to embalm her like Lenin and Stalin.
The embalming process took over a year. It involved draining all of her bodily fluids and replacing it with paraffin wax. From all accounts, this was an almost miraculous restoration job, because the first lady’s body had been ravaged by uterine cancer and radiation treatment. She weighed 80 pounds at her death, but was restored to her movie star good looks.
Unfortunately, Peron’s grandiose plans of the monument to his devoted wife were interrupted by a military coup that drove him out of the country into exile in 1955. The new military regime removed Evita’s body from public view and stashed it at a secret location. For sixteen years, her body was considered “lost.” In reality, members of the military dictatorship were afraid to bury her and afraid to put her on display. They shuffled her corpse to various different hiding places, including inside a piece of furniture at an army major’s office. After a scandal where the major murdered his wife, Evita’s body was then put on a ship to Milan, Italy where she was buried in a crypt under an assumed name.
In 1971, a new regime returned Eva Peron’s body to her husband, who was living in Madrid at the time. Even though he was married to Isabel, his third wife, Peron kept Evita’s body at his Spanish villa, displayed in an open casket on the dining room table.
It has been said that the former dictator had been urged by a mystic to have Isabel lie on top of the coffin to “channel” Evita’s personal power and charisma. Isabel even combed the corpse’s hair every day.
When Peron returned from exile and once again became Argentina’s President in 1973, he left Evita’s body behind in Spain. After his death in 1974, his wife Isabel succeeded him in office. It was Isabel who flew Eva Peron’s still preserved corpse back to Argentina.
Juan and Eva Peron, however, weren’t buried together. She was buried in Recoleta Cemetery in one of Buenos Aires’ most expensive neighborhoods. Juan Peron was buried in a family crypt in another cemetery. A side note: In 1987, vandals opened his coffin and cut off the Dictator’s hands. It was speculated that this was an effort to get his fingerprints in order to get access to secret Swiss bank accounts allegedly filled with Peron’s Nazi gold given to him by the war criminals that he had hidden after World War II.
SOURCES:
“Eva: A Figure Who Refuses to Die”, Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, URL: (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/review96/fevita.htm)
“Don’t cry for Eva Peron”, International Herald Tribune, Barry James, URL: (http://www.iht.com/articles/1996/02/21/edbarry.t_0.php)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Per%C3%B3n#Disappearance_and_return_of_corpse
