Jill Hedges - Evita: The Life of Eva Perón

Jill Hedges is Deputy Director and Senior Analyst for Latin America at Oxford Analytica and was formerly Editorial Manager of business information service Esmerk Argentina. She has a PhD in Latin American Studies from the University of Liverpool and is the author of Argentina: A Modern History (I.B.Tauris, 2015).

The myths surrounding Peronism continue to generate misunderstanding about Argentina in the rest of the world. Perhaps the worst of all misconceptions about that complex political phenomenon is the dont-cry-for-me-Argentina vision of Eva Pern that has been so superficially and unfairly implanted in the publics mind by popular culture. Now comes a carefully researched and elegantly written biography by Jill Hedges to separate myth from reality and to help all of us understand Evita more profoundly, as a product of circumstances as well as a tragic but inspiring force for social justice. Jill Hedges does not only demystify and demythologise the iconic personality of Evita; she lays down the facts and she analyses them with keen observation and the emotional detachment necessary to all rigorous social science enterprises. But she also adds to our comprehension of Evitas triumphs as well as defects with a womans sensibility and empathy. Time has softened the hatred that Evitas enemies in Argentina spewed against her even long after her death. Most Argentines now either love Evitas memory or respect her for her many accomplishments. And yet the caricature of Evita (and that of Peronism) lingers on outside of Argentina. This book will go a long way to dissipate mischaracterisations and lightweight analysis; we can now proceed with our different and reasonable interpretations of history, but we cannot ignore the facts of Evitas life and legacy.

Juan E. Mendez, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence,
Washington College of Law

Eva Perns meteoric rise from provincial actress to the most powerful woman in Latin American politics is a story well worth telling. Loved and hated in equal measure, her image and legacy endures to this day, and credit must be given for her considerable achievements in the areas of social policy and womens rights. Jill Hedges has written a sympathetic, remarkably even-handed, and highly readable biography of Eva Pern that cuts through the many myths that surround her life, and adds much to our understanding both of the person and the political phenomenon that became Evita.

Maxine Molyneux, Professor of Sociology,
UCL Institute of the Americas

This vivid new biography of Evita Pern (arguably the most prominent woman in politics in the mid-twentieth century) is well informed, thoughtful, and perceptive. Jill Hedges portrays both the light and the shade of Evitas spectacular, but brief and in many ways tragic life. This is an exercise that includes judiciously sorting through much of the salacious gossip provoked by the spectacular rise of an impoverished young actress. Along the way the study illuminates many fascinating aspects of Argentine social history. Much more accurate than the musical, the true story is almost as gripping.

Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow,
Nuffield College, Oxford

EVITA

The Life of Eva Pern

JILL HEDGES

For Andrs, with love

CONTENTS

(From a plaque on Evitas tomb)

T HE STORY OF Eva Pern is arguably the story of how an ordinary person is capable of extraordinary things. A smart but uncultured woman of 26 when her husband, Juan Domingo Pern, was elected president in 1946, she had little knowledge of or patience with the niceties of diplomacy and ceremony. However, she transformed the role of first lady from a ceremonial one to an activist, powerful one. The way she wielded that power was often arbitrary and provided genuine arguments for critics who decried the fact that an immature, impetuous, often capricious young woman should have untrammelled authority over vast resources and political structures. As her confessor, the Jesuit Hernn Bentez, would later observe, she was responsible for great successes and great errors, some of which might be forgiven in light of her age and inexperience.

Eva Mara Ibarguren/Duarte, who later metamorphosed into Eva Duarte, Mara Eva Duarte de Pern, Eva Pern and finally Evita the affectionate, familiar diminutive of her name that would be universally used by her supporters did not set out to become what she became when she left Junn for Buenos Aires at the age of 15. However, she not only recognised an opportunity when she saw it, and seized it whenever possible, but she also recognised, or thought she recognised, obligations which she was equally quick to accept. Believing her marriage to Juan Domingo Pern to be not only a personal blessing but a kind of discipleship, she felt it her duty both to transmit to others what she had learned from him, and also to carry out what she believed at least to be his doctrine and his social policy which would eventually be seen above all as her social policy, for good or bad.

Although opponents would claim that Evita merely used the poor or ministered to them because she confused them with herself, there is no doubt that she identified with the poor because she, as she often said, was one of them. However, arguably her great value was that she was never resigned to her fate or that of others, convinced that force of will and political purpose could change it. Despite her observation in her ghostwritten autobiography La razn de mi vida that she was resigned to being a victim, in fact she was never resigned to anything, and she was determined that her