497. Evita: Death of a Martyr (Part 4)
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Under pressure. I always love the story about Churchill when he became prime minister in 1914. It's all kicking off. The Germans are invading in the east. And he says that that night he went back home and he slept like a baby because the pressure that this was the culmination of everything he'd been planning for. And actually, he was at his best under enormous pressure. This is the moment that he lived for.

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Ava and Maria are joined in the woman my voice celebrates. For more than names, they are one name. As two eyes make up a single gaze, and more than hands, the hand held out in time of troubles. And more than eyes, the eyes of she who gives faith with her look.

so that the lonely man may raise his face towards her feet and see in the moon and the stars above the earth of our fatherland, Eva and Maria, Maria, Eva, transfigured into hope.

So that was Glory by the Peronist writer, José María Castanera de Dios, which he wrote in 1951. And Dominic, that's one of your favourite poems, isn't it? It's a very strange poem, Tom. I think I, as I told you, a bizarre and terrible poem.

And José Mireya Castaneda de Dios was actually quite a serious poet. He lived until his 90s. He was kind of a fated- So what was he thinking? Argentine writer. Well, he was a member as a young man of this official Eva Perón poet circle, and they would meet at the headquarters of her foundation every week, I think, or every month. And they would read poems about Eva Perón. And the fact that somebody who's actually quite a serious literary figure was

was writing this unbelievable nonsense. Dross. Yeah, dross is the word. It reminds me a bit of the ode to Nicola Sturgeon that schoolchildren did on TV a few months into the pandemic. Very similar figures. Where they kind of hailed her. Yes. Well,

Well, yeah, certain similarity. And Maria, presumably, is the Virgin in that. Well, I think the thing is, Maria was one of her names. So it's a sort of play on the fact that Maria is one of her names, but also Maria is obviously the Virgin. And the stuff about looking towards her, she gives faith with her look,

You raise your face towards her feet. She's transfigured into hope. I mean, there's obvious Catholic resonances there, aren't there? Which are there by this point. So this is 1951 that he writes this, as you said. By that point, the cult of Evita. We never talked about Evita. Evita kind of means dear little Ava kind of thing. Kind of affectionate, diminutive. Eva Kins. Eva Kins is a...

It's a bit unlikely, but it's a kind of affectionate diminutive. And I think the cult of Evita by this point in 1951 has become very, very firmly established. So predated her death. In the last episode, we were talking about thanks to her, the efforts of her foundation. People were saying she's the Lady of Hope, the Bridge of Love, which was her favorite nickname, apparently. I mean, that stuff is very Marian, isn't it? Yeah. But also, presumably, she's the mother of the nation.

she is bestowing care and attention on the people who are like her children. And this presumably is why the ovarian cancer with which she's diagnosed, I mean, must be a psychic wound.

as well as being a kind of terrible medical shock. I mean, this is the story of today's podcast, ultimately, the death of Eva Barron. And the fact is that her death becomes much more than a personal event. It's a kind of political and national one. So to go back to where we were at the end of the last episode, that cliffhanger, she had gone to the Abeyaneda neighborhood to open a taxi driver's union office. And she

collapsed or fainted ended up going to hospital and basically vanished from the newspapers for four days so this is the beginning of 1950 and that was very unusual because this is a point when she's in the newspapers every single day and then after four days they said oh she's actually had appendicitis we've taken her appendix out there's all the procession of churchmen and ministers going to her bedside but actually she's probably suffering from the cancer that will kill her

even at this point and later on one of the doctors who had looked at her who was actually the Minister of Education in the government a guy called Oscar Ivanovich. We love to see some multitasking. Multitasking exactly very impressive. He said

Actually, I looked at her in hospital and she was suffering from cancer of the uterus. And we did tests and I suggested to her, you should have a hysterectomy. And she loses it, doesn't she? I mean, she's really, really upset by this idea. The trouble is with this, now we're getting into territory from this point onwards that is quite murky because everybody has very vested interests and they're all telling slightly different stories. But I think it's perfectly possible that he said to her, perhaps not in so many words, he said, there is something seriously wrong with you.

And we would like to do an operation. And she said, no, no way. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. I think there might be a slight element of

perhaps a paranoia, but also some of her biographers say at that point she sees herself as the mother of the nation and all that kind of thing, as you were saying, Tom. And the idea of such an operation is anathema to her. What's odd about it is that not only had Peron's first wife had it, but her mother, Eva's mother had had it. Yeah. And had been operated on and, you know, had been fine. It had. Right. She was still alive. Yeah. So it's not like it's a total mystery to her. And isn't she, when she goes on her tours, she's taking kind of cot

and war with her to deal with the hemorrhaging that she's starting to experience. So, I mean, she must have a sense of both how serious it is, but also an awareness that catching it early is the best thing to do. But she wouldn't be the first person in history, or indeed the last, to have something seriously wrong with them and just deny it to themselves. I'll carry on. Maybe it'll go away. Is cancer a cause of embarrassment at that period? I

I mean, is it, you don't talk about it. I think you don't talk about it. I think there's a combination of not talking about cancer generally, a fear, obviously that it's a death sentence. And so you don't talk about it because at this point in history,

People are aware of it in a way they had not been aware of it centuries previously. You're not yet at a point where people are saying, listen, we can fix this. Even though there's an argument that they could have fixed this. But I think also that particular kind of, you know, anything gynecological is simply not discussed in a very Catholic country like Argentina. These things aren't really aired publicly.

And what about Perron, whose first wife had had this? What's going on there? Well, here's the interesting thing. His biographers, I mean, Joseph Page, one of his biographers, says of Perron, Perron always had a very peculiar attitude towards doctors and medicine. He often said doctors are useless. He came from a family where there were doctors in the family and there'd been talk of him becoming a doctor. And there are suggestions that he rather fancied himself as a kind of amateur doctor

And it is possible that he would have said to her, don't worry about it. It'll be fine. Doctors are allowed to quacks anyway, because he did say such things. So we don't know. We have no evidence for it, but it is possible. All that we know is when she's recovered from this turn at the beginning of 1950, she's

She throws herself back into her work in an incredibly manic way. Yeah, because she says, doesn't she, I don't have time for medical treatment. Treatments are for oligarchs. Yes. She's dramatizing it in a very political way. But also, Tom, her whole life she's lived as a soap opera. I mean, that's soap operas that she made her name in. And her politics and her public life she has conducted as a melodramatic soap opera. And the idea of sacrifice...

has been there from the beginning in her adult persona. Oh, so you think it might be kind of willed that she's offering herself up as a blood sacrifice or to Argentina? It's really hard to say. People do have martyr complexes. We've talked about some very peculiar characters and the rest is history. You know, we've already made the comparison with Catherine of Siena. People who seem to have a kind of

A will to sacrifice themselves? Her biographers, Fraser and Navarro, say at one point, of all the distortions that surround Ava Perron's life, the least outrageous and the closest to the truth is the suggestion that she elected to die for Perronism. Wow. I mean, that is a bizarre thing to say of somebody. Yeah. Even Perron himself said, she worked herself to the bone. I begged her to slow down. She wouldn't.

Is this sense she has that she can't afford to lie around in hospital because that's oligarchical, is it also compounded by the fact that things are starting to go not quite as well for Perón by this point?

I think so. I think there's a sense of pressure generally within the regime. We talked in the previous episodes about how Perón took over at a sort of ideal Goldilocks moment for Argentina. The Second World War has happened. There's a great demand for Argentine exports in Europe, but there's not imports coming the other way. But actually what's happening when you get into the 1950s is prices are starting to go up. The returns they're getting for exports are starting to go down. The unions are restive. There's a railway strike.

which for the first time means the government is against the unions, so his own kind of heartland is restive. Yeah, and he doesn't want that. Now, the thing is, he has changed the constitution, so he has an election coming, and that's been brought forward, so it's scheduled for November 1951.

And I think there's this sense of a kind of ticking clock towards this election. I mean, it is going to be a democratic election, even though it's slightly managed democracy, the press all on his side. And her allies, when you get to 1951, her allies are calling for her

to be on the ticket. Now, this is an extraordinary thing in the context of South American politics generally. No woman has ever been vice president, I think, in any country on earth at this point. I mean, all the more extraordinary bearing in mind that in the previous election, she hadn't even been able to vote. To vote. Yeah. What an amazing thing. So the question is, who wants this to happen? Who is pressing for it? I think most historians say that

Because Peronism was so ambiguous, it's actually a struggle within the regime. To define it. Yeah. And that the CGT, which is the big trade union group, which is one of her power bases, and the other one, the women's movement, so the women's party that we talked about last time, they think it would be brilliant for her to be vice president and then presumably president after that. We don't know.

because that would, of course, be brilliant for them. Now, the issue is, by the time that people are pushing this, she's beginning to look quite obviously ill. You mentioned that she's suffering from hemorrhages. There's no doubt about that, and she's losing a lot of blood, and she's beginning to look extremely...

gaunt and thin. If this is a struggle within Peronism, the wings are basically defined by what the poor, the unions, the people who are getting handouts from Santa Eva. Yeah. And then on the other side, the army. Of course, the army. And if she's looking emaciated and thin, then I suppose in a sense, she's all the more...

credible a spokesperson for those who are suffering. Yeah, she's suffering herself. She's the embodiment of suffering. She looks the part. Yeah. Of course, the army are never keen on this idea. I mean, the army, frankly, have never massively been keen on Perron, even though he's from that number, because a lot of them think he's got above himself.

You know, he should get back in his box. And the idea that a woman, his wife, remember there had been that initial attempt to kind of stop block his career because people in the garrisons outside Buenos Aires said, yeah, that woman will take over. Now, you know, they are very alarmed. And of course, for Peron, that's a big issue because basically the army, the only people that can bring him down.

So they're the one group of people that he can't afford to alienate because, you know, they could shoot him. So the whole thing is a really weird story. I mean, by the way, it's not the weirdest story we'll be talking about in the remainder of this series. Oh no. It gets madder and madder with episode after episode. So Peron thinks, I won't make my mind up. I will just let this play out. This is the classic thing, by the way, about dictatorships or autocracies or authoritarian regimes work. The guy at the top

lets the people below have a little squabble, and then he sides with the winners. And I think that's probably what he's doing about this. I mean, I know it's his wife, but they're hardly seeing each other at this point. Not because they've fallen out, but because they're both so busy with their different projects. But you say that the army are the only institution that can bring him down.

but actually the people if they choose to coordinate themselves and get behind Ava they can't bring him down but they can certainly embarrass him yeah so I'm thinking of all those the

the famous scenes on the balcony at the Casa Rosada. You know, the 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' scene in the musical. There's elements there of the Caesars appearing before the crowds at the Circus Maximus or the Colosseum. Absolutely there is. I mean, they can't bring you down, but they can humiliate you and you have to keep them on board. And I suppose the risk for Perón is that Eva is their favourite.

And that without even meaning to, if she appears on the balcony and they feel that Perron is not giving her what she wants, then they can make things quite awkward for Perron. They can. And this is precisely what happens, Tom, actually. So effectively, what happens is there's no decision about whether she'll be on the ticket or not, whether she'd be vice president. And the unions decide to kind of force the ante. And they decide, they announce that they will have a huge mass meeting, which they'll call

that Cabildo Abierto, which is kind of like the open town hall meeting. And there had been a famous Cabildo Abierto in 1810 when the people of Buenos Aires, which was then very small, had kind of gathered to throw off Spanish rule. And they say, we're going to have another one. And it sounds quite boring, but it's an extremely big deal. They bring in an estimated...

2 million people into the center of Buenos Aires. They basically, if you're a member of the CGT union, they will organize a bus or a train for you from all over this enormous country. They will pay for you to come. They will give you your food. They will put you up in a hotel. They'll even give you cinema tickets. So a great treat. And all these people, many of them who've probably never been to Buenos Aires before,

So it's left-wing to the extent that it's the people, it's the unions, it's a great demonstration, but it's also rooted in deeply patriotic traditions. If it's drawing on the memory of this, you know, the overthrow of the Spanish colonial government and the founding of the Argentine nation. It is, exactly. So it's very Peronist in that sense. It is. It's very Peronist. But it's also very Peronist and nobody really knows what's going on and nobody's quite in charge of it. And it's all a bit... So they move it from the outside of the Casa Rosada to the big

Avenida of the 9th of July. So that's that sort of massive avenue, the Champs-Élysées type thing in the middle of Buenos Aires.

They've got huge portraits 60 feet high of Peron and Evita. They build a bridge of love, sort of a bonkers thing to do. And the afternoon of the 22nd of August, 1951, this place is absolutely full with literally millions of people. And eventually in the evening, Peron and Evita come out with all their kind of cronies onto this platform. And what follows, I mean, we don't need to go massively into all the sort of details of it, but it is a really weird place.

ritualistic occasion where she comes out and by this point, you know, she's obviously dressed in her new style, which is the kind of very... She knew the suit. Yeah, very austere. You know, she looks a bit like a kind of secularized nun, I always think of this kind of style. Don't you, Tom? The kind of dark clothes. She looks, of course...

terrible. She looks really gaunt. Well, she looks ill. Yeah. But she also looks quite, I mean, she doesn't look terrible in the sense that she looks ugly. I mean, she looks very, very striking. Yeah. Yeah. Striking in a kind of wasted way, I guess. Yeah. But also she's nervous. She has tears in her eyes. They're all nervous. Yeah.

Because I think for the first time... And she says, I mean, she's called the woman who never cries, right? I mean, she famously doesn't cry. So for people to see tears on her cheeks, I mean, that must be quite something. I think so. And I think for the first time, she and Peron, they have almost created this monster, which is the appetite of the crowd. This is very The Caesars in Rome, isn't it? Yeah. For melodrama. Yeah. They've created this monster that has a thirst for sensation. Absolutely.

And they are at the mercy of it because she basically gives this very rambling speech where she says, I just want to be a Vita. I would rather be a Vita than anything. You know, I don't need to be vice president or something. Yeah. People are, is she turning it down? Perron then speaks. The crowd are going mad. She then comes out. Because they want a Vita. They want her. They don't want Perron. They want a Vita. Right. She comes out again. So that's not going down well with, with Hubby, is it? And actually at first they wanted to speak again. She won't speak.

The union people basically force her to speak again. And then she gives this incredibly rambling, tear-stained, strange, self-mortifying speech, improvised, where she says at one point, I'm like Alexander the Great. It's a very strange comparison. Remember we said that Peron was a great fan of Plutarch's lives. So maybe he's been...

Maybe there's some garbled discussion about Alexander the Great. I mean, yeah, forcing Plutarch's lives on women. I mean, that's the way that Perron gets his girls, isn't it? Well, it is, as we will discover. Some very bad behaviours to come in Perron's life and indeed in this series. Yeah, and the crowd are going mad because she's not saying I'll do it. And she's given this incredibly...

You know, we've said before, the thing about Peronist rhetoric is it's incredibly melodramatic, but it doesn't actually mean anything. You know, the bridge of love and all that. Well, I mean, as you've said throughout, it's like a soap opera script. And I suppose in a sense, for Evita, looking out and seeing the two million crowd...

and she's having to play the part. It must be like seeing her radio audience for her soap operas physically present in front of her. I mean, it must have been so overwhelming. It's how you feel, isn't it, when you do a Rest Is History live show? That's exactly how I feel. Rambling. My tear-stained cheek. Rambling, tear-stained performance. I am a bridge of love between you and Dominic. That's exactly how I feel. Well, at your side...

The slightly sinister, but ultimately smooth and charming.

Brilliant. We shouldn't push this analogy too far, don't we? Bearing in mind what is to come. No, we shouldn't. Anyway, so it's an absolutely bizarre performance. Perron looks furious. Everybody's really confused. She basically kind of breaks down on the platform in front of two million people who are sort of like a baying mob. They want her to say, yeah, I'll do it. And she just gives this kind of very strange rambling performance. It ends and no one knows what has happened.

And ultimately, she's forced at the end of the month, 31st of August, so a few days later, to go on the radio and to say she's turning it down. Now, some people may be listening to this thinking, this is a weird thing to devote a podcast to, like not accepting the vice presidential nomination. What an amazing story. I said before that I'd been to the

Evita Museum in Buenos Aires. This moment occupies a big section of the museum. There's a darkened room, there's a screen, and there are people in there really moved. It's seen as a seismic moment of self-sacrifice. And why are they moved? Do you know, there's a bit of it on that she doesn't really know because I'm an Anglo-Saxon pragmatist and so I don't get the... What do they feel that she is sacrificing? I think they have all

invested in this sort of melodramatic story and they are dreaming of a triumphant conclusion in which she will be vice president and maybe president alongside her husband and the crowd can lose themselves in delirium. But why do they think she's turning it down? Because she's being so evasive and she is rambling and she's clearly, it's almost like they're investing in the sheer, an emotion hollowed out of meaning. I don't know whether that's the right way to describe it. Yeah. I just wonder whether they felt

I mean, is this an anti-Peron sentiment? They don't think that he's leaning on her? No, I don't think it's anti-Peron. Sinister power brokers are? I think some people in this sort of senior part of the movement think he's giving in to the army on this. You know, they're quite aware of what is happening. In a weird way, you could argue it's quite good for Peron, because by not having her on the ticket, it's like he's saying to the army, listen,

When it comes to it, you'll get what you want. There's no need to overthrow me. It's as though I think people by this point, 1951, have invested so much in this kind of cult of Evita. You made the comparison with Diana, Tom. Yeah. That kind of left me cold as well. I didn't really get it. Yeah. I'm just wondering if there's also political, I mean, left-wing supporters of the Labour Party. Right. Sodden with tears that Keir Starmer won't promote Angela Rayner. Yeah.

To quite the level that they think. Is that the comparison I would go for? That he's kicked Diane Abbott out of the party? I mean, is there any element of that? Well, I mean, Theo, our producer, is better equipped than us to answer these questions. Evita is the cross between Diana and Angela Rayner. But we should also, just for those people who don't find that an enticing enough prospect...

we will also discuss the extraordinary goings on that surround Evita's death and then the fate of her body we'll be getting to eventually tell you what Dominic why don't we take a break at this point and in the break we can ask Theo whether he feels that that's a fair comparison and when we come back we will give the answer Theo's view on whether Evita is basically Angela Rayner so don't go away

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Hello, welcome back to the rest of history. I'm sure everyone has been absolutely desperate to find out whether Theo thinks that Evita can be compared to Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, who perhaps has been slightly put in the shadow by Keir Starmer, the Peron of modern Britain. And Theo's response to this thesis was, and I quote, Mm.

So there you go. Anyway, shall we crack on with the stuff about her death? Because it's amazing. I think we've had enough politics. So the evening after that, Cabildo Abierto, Evita had fainted. Not surprisingly, she seems to have got completely overwrought with all the emotion of this occasion. But also she is quite seriously ill.

And in the next few weeks, she has severe kind of abdomen pains. And some days she can't get out of bed. And there's now a weird thing where Perron and his doctors now are saying, you must have more tests. You must take this seriously. And she is often kind of refusing to be treated. She will actually try to leave the building when she knows the doctors are coming to do tests and things. They finally do them on the Monday, the 24th of September.

The doctors tape her on a side and they say she has got very serious cancer and it has spread and this probably isn't going to end well. There's nothing we can really do? Nothing we can really do. They say the first thing we have to do, we absolutely have to do an operation, do a hysterectomy. I mean, that's the standard thing anyone does on this occasion. And this is less than a month, by the way, after that huge public meeting. And she is against it.

They said to her, you will have to have drugs first. She refuses to take the drugs. They say, we will operate without the drugs or you take the drugs. So she agrees to take the drugs. But then while she's taking the drugs and she's having a blood transfusion, you have the first real rebellion against Peron's rule. So this is a very disorganized coup organized by a guy called Benjamín Menéndez. And Benjamín

They don't tell Evita about it at first until the coup has been defeated. But then they drag her onto the radio. Or does she ask to go on the radio herself? We don't really know. Maybe she asks herself as part of a self-sacrifice thing. And she first time talks publicly about her ill health.

And she says she's praying to God to restore her health so that she can support Peron and the Descamisados, her heartland, her people, the shirtless ones. Her shirtless followers. Yeah. And so from that point onwards, the combination of those two things, the coup and the ill health, we start to embark on this public psychodrama of the death of Evita. Because people from this point onwards, December 1951, you know, they start to

have masses for her. They have candlelit vigils and all this kind of thing. And is there a kind of, maybe a Shakespearean quality in the sense that in Shakespeare, the king's body is often seen as a metaphor for the state of the nation? Yeah, I think so. And that her sickness...

is expressive of a sickness in the government and in Argentina more generally, do you think? And that that's part of what's tied up with it. I do think so, Tom. I think it's not just a king's body. It's also kind of the idea of a woman's body as a kind of place onto which often men project fantasies, desires, all those kinds of things. I mean, you don't have to be a sort of super feminist critic

you know, to see the resonance of that, I guess. Yeah. People do, for example, there's a place called Lujan outside Buenos Aires where there's this sort of mock Gothic basilica where there's a virgin of Lujan, of course, who had

appeared to somebody and did miracles. And it's the most popular pilgrimage site in Argentina. I mean, I find this so unsettling. People who are themselves very sick will make pilgrimages to Lujan for Evita. So the classic thing is people with broken legs will supposedly walk there. Oh,

Oh, wow. And they'll perform a feat. They'll do a sacrifice because they think this will get sort of credit from the Virgin Mary. And they will have kind of inscriptions. They will carry huge Virgin Mary sort of statues with the inscription, Por la salud de Evita, for the health of Evita. And people will start putting, who don't travel, will put up altars in the street with

with candles, with the effigies of the Virgin, again, for Evita. So this is, you know, within weeks of her saying she wouldn't take the vice presidential nomination. And there's a sense that almost she's not going to do it politically, but actually people are pouring that emotional energy into this sort of, you know, overtly religious campaign to try and save her life. So it is all very intense. Intense.

It's very intense. It is very intense. Yeah. It's incredibly intense. She has her last 17th of October loyalty rally, which is the anniversary of the day that they'd had that first big thing with Perron when his bosses had tried to kick him out. Yeah. In which she hadn't actually played a major part.

But by now everyone assumes that she has. And now a million and a half people in the center of Argentina. They've dosed her up on morphine. She is there. She's now shrunk so much. She's in this suit that's kind of hanging off her. Peron makes a tribute to her. From this point on, people are basically talking about her as though she's already dead. So Peron is giving basically her obituary.

While she's standing there. She's standing there. She starts crying. She falls into his arms. Again, you can see this in the museum. It's treated as though this incredibly sort of solemn moment, which in many ways it is, but it's also ghastly. To me, it seems excruciating in the amount of dramatics we're playing this out in public. But I think she wanted it to be in public. There's a sense in which her story, in which her public story, in which she has invested so much,

must now proceed towards its preordained conclusion. And it must be witnessed by her people. Exactly. Now, the thing is, to the people who had never liked her, we talked before about the great writer Borges. Borges despised the Perrons. He despised Evita. And for somebody like him, Anglophile. Understatement. Tweed. Tweed. I was going to say tweed. Thinking about Kipling. Whatever.

whatever he's doing. Horrendous. He finds this unbelievably ghastly, just common, embarrassing. Gauche, mawkish. But I think for most ordinary Argentines, they actually regard it as incredibly moving. This woman, they think, has willingly sacrificed her health and her life for her foundation, for her work. And now she's determined to die in public.

And they must all, there's almost a sort of, I can't remember whether or not I've used this phrase in a previous episode, but I remember writing it down while I was reading up on it. There's a kind of totalitarianism of sentimentality about the Peronist regime, I think. Yeah. So a sense that you must, you absolutely must subscribe to this high emotional drama, which is Diana, 1997, Tom. Absolutely. Yes. And so the conjunction of the film of Evita coming out in 1996 and then Diana dying in 1997 is,

brought that home very forcibly, I think. Yeah. So of course, Perón wins the election in November. There is a scene described by an anti-Peronist writer. She was in hospital at this point. But she votes, doesn't she? And it's the only time that she votes. A special ballot box was made for her and brought to the hospital. She votes in this ballot box. They take it outside. And this radical writer, David Vignes, said afterwards, he said, I saw women outside on their knees,

praying on the sidewalk and they kept touching the ballot box that held Evita's vote and kissing it. A fascinating scene worthy of a book by Tolstoy. Yeah. And it is a really weird scene, isn't it? I mean, people praying to this ballot box. I mean, he's fascinated by the scene.

But he's simultaneously made nauseous by the toadying of her at virus. So there's a kind of conflict there. So over the next few months, her health continues to decline, but she doesn't die. So actually, the terrible thing for her, just on a human level, is that this is quite a protracted scene. And actually, by early 1952, she is still being dragged out or dragging herself out to give speeches on the balcony of the Casa Rosada. But she must be dragging herself out.

Because as we've been saying, all her suffering has no meaning if it's not public. Well, maybe a bit of both. It doesn't hurt the regime to keep dragging her out, by the way, because Argentina is now beginning to get into deeper and deeper economic waters. So it doesn't help for people to be distracted by this great drama. She's now on a lot of drugs and she's in an enormous amount of pain.

And her speech has become sort of darker and darker now. So for the first time, really, she is really talking violently.

If it is necessary, we will execute justice with their own hands. I will leave nothing standing that is not for Peron. And then here's an extraordinary one. May, May 1952. Those who believe in sweetness and love forget that Christ said, I have come to earth to bring fire so that it may burn more. He gave us an example of fanaticism. And for that reason, we must be fanatics for Peron until death. And doesn't she also, from her sickbed...

kind of order thousands and thousands of pistols and machine guns and things with the aim of giving them to the trades unions. Oh, I never heard that, Tom. That is an interesting detail. And behind Perron's back. Behind Perron's back, she's doing this. And then after her death, Perron kind of finds out about this and goes, oh, goes and gets them all back. But she is, I mean, she's not just talking about violence. She's preparing for violence.

If it's, I mean, literally the last thing she does. So this is an interesting thing. There's definitely apocalyptic tone to her rhetoric in the last year or months of her life.

And this will be important later on because later on in the 1960s and 1970s, as Argentina slides into terrorism and virtual civil war, people will, will brandish this and they will, this is this Evita that young people will turn to the radical, the violent, the terrorist. That's what people will get very excited about. So let's move forward towards the close of her story. So we get towards just before that. I mean, before she dies, she,

I said, you know, about 10 minutes back that there are very brutal attempts to keep her alive. And one of these is radiotherapy. Oh yeah. Terrible. Which basically just kind of leaves her horribly singed, doesn't it? They apply it very incompetently. So they basically burn her. Yeah. Yeah. And the other one is a lobotomy. This is a story that came out maybe six or seven years ago, I think. An American surgeon said that he had been brought in and given a lobotomy

to Evita, which must have been licensed by Peron.

And I remember when we were talking about this happened with the Kennedys, didn't it? One of JFK's sisters had a lobotomy. That's right, his sister, yeah. But this was a kind of standard medical procedure to try and release pressure on the brain. Yeah, I didn't know about the lobotomy, Tom. I haven't heard that story. Well, it's debated. Right. There are people who think it didn't happen. Yeah. I think probably the balance of opinion now is that it did. I mean, if it did, then it's a measure of how increasingly desperate the attempts are to try and...

keep her from death. Well, you know what her critics, Perron's critics were saying at this point. So in the Barrio Norte, which is the bit of Buenos Aires, the posh bit where all the kind of Anglophiles live, they were saying the rumor was people said, if you have young children, don't take them to hospital because they are taking children's blood. She needs young, fresh blood and they are literally pumping it into her. The quality of the vampire, someone who is undead.

who, despite being dead, has the bloom of seeming life on her cheeks. I mean, this is a theme that will run and run into our final episode. In a very bizarre and unsettling way in the next episode. Yeah, of course, there is immense displays of love for her, but there are displays of hatred as well. So, you know, there's graffiti going up in the posher areas of Buenos Aires saying, Viva el cancer. Yeah, I mean...

By the summer of 1952, you could argue that Argentina has gone completely bonkers, that there are just constant parades, processions, masses. Congress has a special session, names her the spiritual leader of the nation. Entire cities are changing their name to Eva Perón at this point. Congress approves a massive monument to her, all this kind of stuff.

On the Sunday, the 20th of July, they held a huge public mass, a massive altar is set up by the obelisk in Buenos Aires. And the guy, her confessor, who's a guy called Father Hernan Benitez, comes out and gives a speech about her. And she apparently had been looking forward to this. She was greatly looking forward to it. She's too ill to attend.

She listens from a hospital bed, but because he talks about her basically as though she's dead already, the hospital cut the wires to her radio because they thought it would be too distressing for her. And actually, it turns out she's really distressed that she didn't get to hear the speech. So a pretty horrible scene, all things considered. And then on the Saturday, the 26th of July, 1952,

And supposedly, she says that morning to her maid, she's lying in bed, and she says, I never felt happy. I've never been happy in my life. That's why I left home. My mother would have married me to somebody ordinary, and I couldn't have stood it. A decent woman has to get on in the world. Very Mrs. Thatcher. Very Mrs. Thatcher, actually, isn't it? Anyway, she declined in the course of the day. She was given the last sacraments, and then

8.23 that night, the doctors, everyone's standing around the family and stuff. And the doctor said to Perron, that's it. She has no pulse. Her heart is not beating. And as if her life wasn't melodramatic enough, her brother, Juan Duarte, stood there at the end of the bed and screamed, there is no God. There is no God. And rushed out. Perron apparently just does nothing impassive.

The government announced, but they didn't like the fact that she hadn't died on a roundish number. So they changed the time to 8.25 from 8.23. So also they could then start all the news bulletins five minutes, exactly five minutes early and begin them all with five minutes of silence. But not just that day, every day for weeks, which gives you a sense of what they're about to do. Because from that point onwards, everything stops. Cinemas, theatres, restaurants, restaurants.

Public transport. Well, that's how Evita opens. There's people in the cinema being told. Yeah. It's done. It's all over. All over. Everything must stop. Now, there is one person who is not stopping. And this is a man. And here we go with the weirdness. Who has been waiting outside the bedroom. This is Dr. Pedro Ara, who is a professor of anatomy and is a supreme practitioner of what is called the art of death.

He specializes in embalming people, in replacing their blood with glycerin. I mean, he's a remarkable man because he goes around with the embalmed head of a kind of elderly peasant in his briefcase.

So that, you know, should he come across any potential customer, he'll whip it out as an example of what he can do. And he had embalmed Manuel de Falla, Spain's greatest 20th century composer. Yeah. Who fled to Argentina after the Spanish Civil War. So he's ready. He's ready to serve, to do his duty. And he will play a very large part in what follows. He has been told you must prepare the body for immediate public display at the Ministry of Labour. Peron has planned this before his wife dies.

There will be a funeral. So you only need to do the job for a few days to get you through a few days. And then you must embalm the rest. And this will be on display rather like Lenin at a permanent monument. So as soon as Juan Duarte has had his shouting about God and everybody has cried, Dr. Ara goes in with his assistant and they get to work. They make her body a

and I quote, completely and definitively incorruptible by putting in some glycerin or whatever they do. Then they put it in a coffin, they put an Argentine flag over it, and they put on a glass lid so people can... And the point is this will only... They only need to do this. This needs to get you through in the next few days. Then the body will move to the labour ministry. Now at this point already the crowds are so thick

that in that move eight people are killed in the crush and in the next 24 hours more than 2,000 people have to be taken to hospital with injuries because they're crushed in the crowd moving her body so now we're into the national period of mourning and at this point I think it's fair to say that Argentina has gone completely and utterly bonkers so this is brilliant this is brilliantly done in

There's a two-day shutdown of everything like a general strike. The CGT, the trade union movement, says members have to be in mourning for a month. They have to wear a black tie for a month, Tom. Can I just have a quick sing song? Oh my God, really? Yeah. You feel this is appropriate in such sad moments? But who is this Santa Evita? Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow? What kind of goddess has lived among us? How will we ever know?

get by without her. Well, I mean, beautifully done. It's beautifully done. And very, very germane for someone living in Britain in 1997 as well, as we keep saying. Yeah. As you've, as you've said. So one writer, one other writer said this, what followed was a bacchanal of necrophilia. And I don't think it's entirely wrong to be fair. So they, you see, they had planned for three days a morning. So you would go to the labor ministry, you know, you'd go up the stairs and there would be this coffin at the top of the stairs with the glass lid.

Unfortunately, what actually happens is after three days, there was nowhere, nowhere near got through the number of people who are, who are coming. So it then continues for another 13 days and the crowds are so fast. 13 days. I mean, imagine. So that the crowds queue is 30 blocks. I mean, this is far bigger. You remember their big business with the queue for the queen. So they reckon, I checked this, about a quarter of a million people queued to see them.

Queen. There must have been at least a million people queued to see Eva Peron's body. And all this time, by the way, the restaurants are still not open. The cinemas aren't open. Public transport has been shut down. There are giant photographs of her through the city.

Every morning there is a compulsory 15-minute period of silence during which passages from her ghostwritten autobiography are read out over loudspeakers. Okay, I'm going to just give you another bit of song. Okay. We've all gone crazy, morning all day and morning all night.

falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right. Well, that's what they're trying to do. Beautifully done. Are you complimenting your own singing when you say beautifully done? No, I was complimenting the lyrics of Tim Rice. Tim Rice. A listener to the rest is history, Tom. He must have his head in his hands listening to you massacring his lyrics. Poor Tim Rice. I feel sorry for him. I think I'm paying the fitting tribute. Right. Now, there's one person for whom this is a massive problem.

This is Dr. Ara. Of course, because he wants to get cracking on with his sinister potions and chemicals. He's extremely alarmed because he needs to get on with working on the body. By this point, there is a mist that has formed. So condensation between the body and the glass plate at the top. So the body is starting to decompose. So what they're having to do is they keep having to, at night when the crowds have gone, drill holes in the coffin lid to try to clear the mist.

But Dr. Ara says, every time you do this, that is interfering with my work. It was incorruptible, but it is becoming corrupted. Finally, on the 9th of August, they seal the coffin up again. There is a huge parade through the streets. The next day, there's another parade.

All the descommandosadas, all the shirtless ones, all the Peronist kind of supporters turn out. Two million people on the streets of Buenos Aires, flowers coming down like confetti from the buildings. This is the last farewell. It takes three hours to get through the city. And finally, they come to the headquarters of the trade unions, the CGT, and they take the body out, the coffin out, and they take it into this building.

And on the third floor, Dr. Ara has prepared a secret laboratory. Yeah. And he is waiting, Tom, to receive the body. But what happens next is much more bizarre than anyone could possibly have anticipated. So regular listeners to this podcast will know that I'm a big admirer of El Conde, the Chilean film in which General Pinochet is portrayed as a vampire. And that's a very

weird, odd, striking film. But it's not as weird, odd and striking as what genuinely happens to the body of Evita and which we will be covering in the final episode.

of this series. We haven't recorded it yet, but I would be surprised if it doesn't turn out to be one of the very weirdest episodes that we have ever done. It will be coming out very shortly, so that's fine if you don't want to get it immediately. But if you do want to get it immediately, and I think it will be well worth listening to, you can go to therestishistory.com and sign up there and get it

straight away because Dominic I mean back me up here the story is so spectacularly odd you may think that Evita has gone but the next episode as Tom said first of all it's got vampirism it's got body snatching it has somebody called the warlock who runs his own death squad it has terrorism it has mad cosplaying people returning from beyond the grave people who are supposedly dead

but actually still becoming presidents of countries. It is a very, very peculiar story. I think probably the maddest I've ever read up on. Yeah. All that to look forward to. We will go and have a quick break now and have a cup of tea and then we'll be recording this and you can listen to it. Hopefully it will be ready for you. Bye-bye. Bye. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for girl, four for a boy.

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