The illegitimate girl from the Argentine pampas who became a radio and film actress, married Colonel Juan Perón, and as first lady made herself the passionate voice of the country's poor — championing the descamisados, helping win women the vote in 1947, and running the vast Eva Perón Foundation — adored by millions as a living saint even as critics saw the glamorous mask of an authoritarian regime, dead of cancer at thirty-three and remade ever since into a myth Argentina has never stopped fighting over.
Eva Perón was a poor, illegitimate girl from the Argentine countryside who became, before she turned thirty, the most adored and most hated woman in her nation. She arrived in Buenos Aires a teenage actress, married an army colonel named Juan Perón, and as first lady poured herself into the cause of the poor. She helped win Argentine women the vote, and her foundation built hospitals, schools, and homes and gave out food, medicine, and goods on a staggering scale. To the descamisados, the 'shirtless ones' who worshipped her, she was a living saint. To her enemies she was the seductive face of a strongman's regime, her charity tangled with patronage and propaganda, her cult a tool that silenced dissent. In 1951 the army blocked her bid for the vice-presidency. A year later cancer killed her at thirty-three, and a nation wept as it had for no one before. She has been a myth ever since, claimed and condemned in the same breath, and Argentina is still arguing over which Evita was real.