Rest in Peace
Disappearance and return of Eva Perón’s corpse
Shortly after her death, plans were made to construct a monument in Evita's honor. The monument, which was to be a statue of a man representing the "descamisados," was projected to be larger than the Statue of Liberty. Evita's body was to be stored in the base of the monument and, in the tradition of Lenin’s corpse, to be displayed for the public. While waiting for the monument to be constructed, Evita's embalmed body was displayed in her former office at the CGT building for almost two years. Before the monument to Evita was completed, Juan Perón was overthrown in a military coup, the Revolution Libertador, in 1955. Perón hastily fled the country and did not make arrangements to secure Evita's body.
A military dictatorship took power in Argentina. The new authorities removed Evita's body from display and her whereabouts remained a mystery for 16 years. From 1955 until 1971, the military dictatorship of Argentina issued a ban on Peronism. It became illegal not only to possess pictures of Juan and Eva Perón even in one's home, but to even speak their names. After sixteen years, the military finally revealed the location of Evita's body. She had been buried in a crypt in Milan, Italy under the name "María Maggi." Tomas Eloy Martinez published "Santa Evita," which alleges many previously unknown stories about the escapades of Evita's corpse, such as that many wax copies of the corpse were made. Martínez claimed that the corpse was damaged with a hammer and that one officer even committed sexual acts on one of the copies of the corpse.
In 1971, Evita's body was exhumed and flown to Spain, where Juan Perón maintained the corpse in his home. Juan and his third wife, Isabel, decided to keep the corpse on their dining room table. Isabel would comb Evita's hair every day, and, under pressure from Juan, lay down next to her dead body to absorb her charisma. In 1973, Juan Perón came out of exile and returned to Argentina, where he became president for the third time. Perón died in office in 1974. His third wife, Isabel Peron, whom he had married on November 15, 1961, and who had been elected vice-president, succeeded him, thus becoming the first female president in the Western Hemisphere. It was Isabel who had Evita's body returned to Argentina and (briefly) displayed beside Juan Perón's. The body was later buried in the Duarte family tomb in La Recoleta Buenos Aires. Extensive measures were taken by the Argentine government to secure Evita's tomb. There is a trapdoor in the tomb's marble floor, which leads to a compartment that contains two coffins. Under the first compartment is a second trapdoor and a second compartment. That is where Evita's coffin rests. Biographers Marysa Navarro and Nicholas Fraser write that the claim is often made that Evita's tomb is so secure that it could withstand a nuclear attack. "It reflects a fear," they write, "a fear that the body will disappear from the tomb and that the woman, or rather the myth of the woman, will reappear." This cemetery, which is located in the northern part of barrio Recoleta, also holds the remains of many illustrious military Generals, presidents, scientists, poets and other affluent Argentinians. There is a saying in Argentina that it costs much more to die than it does to live.