February 11, 2009 • 15 mins
Eva Peron died on July 26, 1952. After a 13-day wake, Dr. Pedro Ara mummified the body -- but it would take more than twenty years to bury the corpse. Learn more about Eva Peron's decades-long travel to the grave in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kandis gets soon joined by staff writer Jane
McGrath Tyther. Jane Aaron O'Brien, one of our listeners, wrote
(00:20):
to us asking for a podcast about South American history.
She says, we talk a lot about American and European history,
and she wants to know some juicy dictator stories, and
there are a lot. We kind of have some juicy
stuff for you today. It's not necessarily about a dictator
per se, but it is about a body, a very
(00:41):
very famous body that got shuffled around South America and
parts of Europe before it was finally buried. That's right.
And I didn't know about this story until we started
researching for the podcast, and it's really fascinating. It is
um doubtlessly you guys have heard of a prone or
a vida, And if you're like me, you sat were
the musical Avida starring Madonna about fifty times because it's
(01:04):
just so great and and her her real life. There
weren't any um loud musical numbers from the Casa Rosatta
that I know of. I know she addressed people from
the balcony. I don't think she threw up her hands
and sang. But she did take the very famous Rainbow tour,
and yes there was getture clothing and lots of jewels
and furs on it. So I'm very excited to tell
you about that. But first from background, Um, that's right.
(01:27):
I didn't know much about Eva Perona before doing this,
but she was a really fascinating figure. She was born
in rural Argentina, and she really had a struggle because
she was the youngest of five um born out of
wedlock because her father had another family and father left
her mother after Eva was born, and she struggled, and
by the time she was a teenager, she she had
been idolizing American movie stars and she wanted to enter
(01:49):
the show business. So she left for Borenos Aires and
she started a career in show business. Where or is
she met Juan Perone, who was bound for great things
in Argentina. He eyes he wanted presidency in nineteen forty
six and Eva was given control of the Ministry of Labor.
And you know, it's funny, you can say what you
want about ever prom because I think that she is
(02:11):
a very controversial figure. And to um to reference the
movie one more time. When the film and the crew
were filming scenes for Avida in Argentina, they met a
lot of opposition from local people who were worried that
their idea and the image of a Vida would be desecrated,
that she would be portrayed in a very negative light.
And I think that there are ways to honor the
(02:32):
good things she did and still juxtaposed those with the
so are sort of the seed things that were happening
under the surface. So she did want to work for
the Ministry of Labor, and perhaps this was due in
part the fact that the Duarte family had lived in
such poverty. And I think that she did have really
good intentions for the poor people of Argentina, and she
(02:53):
advocated things for like higher wages and voting rights for women,
and also government subsidized housing for the poor. And it's
important to know that at this time Argentina had had
a great influx of wealth because after World War Two,
a lot of the ward to our in European nations,
they couldn't create their own crops, they couldn't grow their
own wheat, things like cattle, and beef, and their livestock
(03:16):
was down, so they had to import a lot of
these things from Argentina. So Argentina hiked up export prices
and taxism is able to generate a lot of money
for its own economy. So finally under the Prone administration
they were in a position to dull it out and
use it properly. That's true. And speaking of World War two,
um the whole political atmosphere at that time was very
(03:39):
much influenced by, um the fascist dictatorships that we're going
that we're had been going on in Europe at that time.
UM One Parne is kind of known for suppressing freedom
of the press and freedom of speech during that time.
But it was also things that especially Ava really lagged onto,
which were these issues of labor unions and stuff that
that made her as pecularly popular with the people at
(04:01):
the time. And you could say like she was even
more than Princess Diana is in in England. That's a
great comparison, and they sort of share the same sort
of mythology, I guess because they both died rather young,
so they did. And Avida, the nickname Avita, comes from
the group of people called Los des commisados, which stands
(04:22):
for the shirtless ones and the shirtless ones. The Spanish
term had been used in a very derogatory manner to
target people who are very poor and who lived in
the slums of Argentina. But the Paronists essentially turned the
term on its head and started using it in a
very affectionate way. And we saw, or not we, because
(04:43):
we weren't there, but history saw at this time Argentina
sort of changed dramatically in a way because people would,
you know, they would, they would move to the cities
and they would build it up, and there was economy
and there was industrial activity and things were flourishing. And
Avida was very happy because she had been the mastermind
behind all of this, and she didn't let people forget
(05:04):
there were pictures of her plastered around the city. She
made sure that wherever she went there was some sort
of PR spokes person with her. There was always someone
taking pictures. She was very much in the public eye,
and I think she enjoyed that, Yeah, I think she did.
She was very slow in terms of her PR tactics because,
as you said, she always had photographers around her and
she was always doing like photo ops basically doing charitable
(05:26):
things and speaking of charities, um, there was a lot
of politics going on here among the traditional elite UH
and their conflicts with Eva. At the time. The official
charity at the time was basically was called Aid Society,
that's the translated translation into English. And she wanted to
take charge of this and the traditional elite did not
(05:46):
want her to. Some say it's because she came from
humble backgrounds and they weren't really receptive to her. We
can imagine that the women in the society were very elite,
they were society women, and they didn't want to associate
with Eva. That's right, and so, not to be outdone,
started the Eva Perne Foundation and this basically, using this
(06:06):
she ran the other official charity under to the ground
because she cut off the government funding for it and
she redirected it to her own charity. And she was
able to fund schools and hospitals, which you know, all
these things, orphanages, houses for the elderly, gave her more
photo ops and it made her like, you know, more
of a public figure that people loved. People were very
and dear to her, and it helps when you're in
(06:27):
the public eye to have a certain um appearance about you,
and she she had this sort of shelacked beauty, you know,
with the the perfectly quoft dyed blonde hair and they
manicured nails, and the flawless makeup and the cature and
the furs and the jewels. She was the whole package.
And we mentioned that because of the taxes and all
(06:48):
the revenue that Argentina was generating, they were able to
uh disseminate a lot of that wells to the poor,
but a lot of it also went to a vida's closet.
And she even went, like I said, on the Rainbow Tour.
This was a meet and greet opportunity for her to
go across Europe and she met everyone from the Pope
to General Franco and she really created a splash. But
in the end it was her own enddoing, because by
(07:10):
nineteen fifty one, when she was just about thirty three
years old, she became sick with uterine cancer and she
was bedridden, that's right. And it was about that same
time that she got um a nomination for Vice President,
which is testament to how popular she was. She was
someone someone who had recently been champion women's suffrage, so
I'm sure this is a huge um step forward for
that country. But the army actually forced her to withdraw it.
(07:32):
I'm not sure the details behind that, but anyway, she
was she was dying of cancer at this time when um,
when that happened, and she knew it, and the people
around her who knew she was dying knew how special
she would be even after death. And so one of
the finest pathologists at the time, Dr Patriara, he was
summoned and he was going to have a very extensive
embalming process of his body, and so he began to
(07:55):
prepare all of his materials and as symbol, all the
supplies that he would need. And her hair was dye
when last time, and her manicurist did her nails one
last time, and then her body lay in state. She
officially died on July nine pm, and her body land
state at the Ministry of Labor, and people lined up
for days and days and days, thirteen days to be
(08:16):
exact to come and pay homage to Avida, until finally
Dr ir got a little bit worried that they were
going to soiler I reprobably damaged her body. So she
was taken away and preparations were begun for the embombing process.
That's right, And although he had done some work before
she was laid out and displayed, he continued the work
after the display for several more months, and um he
(08:38):
was known. He was a famous embalmer at the time,
which is interesting to me. I don't know how famous
you can be as embalmer, but um he as far
as I could tell, he never really divulged his complete
details of the process of his embolming, but I did
hear that he um he replaced her fluids with wax,
And it's interesting. I don't know. Working here, I've learned
a lot more about the embalming process than I ever
(08:59):
wanted to know, which is row But um, but I've
never heard of that before. And I guess it worked
because to this day people say that her body is
still intact. Isn't that wild? And it took about a
year for him to complete the process. And we're not
sure exactly about the cost of it, but estimates are
around a hundred thousand dollars, not a lot. I mean,
(09:19):
you think about the average cost of a funeral today,
and that's just for the embalming process. We're not talking
about her casket or the monument that was built for her.
And this is where the story takes a really really
juicy turn. That's right, we're not over just we've just begun, y'all. Um.
The Prone government was on the verge of collapse because
the food supplies it started to dwindle, and because there
(09:42):
weren't a lot of grain crops left, it was affecting
the cattle crops, and so they didn't really have anything
to trade. They couldn't get colon oil, so everything was
just all going to hack. And um, we had mentioned
earlier that a lot of people had moved into the
cities and things were industrious and they were booming. Well,
now those areas returned n into Slam's unemployment was up
(10:02):
and it was just a mass. And then add that
to the fact that Eva had just died and and
so one was not quite as popular as the headman
and no, so the whole environment in Argentina was right
for a coup and that happened in ve Prone was
overthrown and he was exiled to Spain. But the cool
leaders knew that if the Pronusts had Eva's body, they
(10:25):
could use that as a bargaining chip and show it off,
you know, to her loyal supporters to yeah. Yeah, it's
sort of a real snow white situation. They had this
beautiful woman and in a glass coughin, and you know,
you show it to someone you have a strong emotional
attachment to them, you're not going to forget that you
are still loyal to her husband. So they decided they
were going to hide the body, that's right. And so
(10:48):
they actually made even decoy bodies of even some of
my believe were complete replicas of her body made of
wax to throw people off. And they they sent decoy
bodies to two different races, but they sent the real
body uh to an undisclosed burial location in Italy, and
they used a fake name on the grave site. So
(11:09):
and and even before this, even before she got to Italy,
there were some riom Moral and Argentina where the cool
leaders tried to bury her in an unmarked grave plot
and the guys were responsible for that. He got kind
of creeped out because some somewhat superstitious stuff started happening,
and so he stashed the body in an attic and
then I was discovered, and then she eventually got shipped
off to Italy, and so she was in Italy for
(11:31):
a long time, and uh, one Perona at that time
was living in exile in Madrid. He finally they finally
allowed them to turn over the body to one Peron
in Spain at the time, and so he kept it
there for a little while. And when there was another
military overthrow transition, they actually brought one Perone back to
the presidency again in Argentina. And um, by this time
(11:53):
they actually left his body there first. And um, so
once Peronne is back in the presidency, but he soon dies.
He actually doesn't last very long. Listen to year, I believe,
and um meantime he's married again, his wife Isabella or
Isabella and um, i've actually seen both ways. His wife
at the time takes over, which is um. It's kind
(12:13):
of controversial. She's non incredibly popular, and so in sort
of a last ditch effort to win back the people's
praise and in their favorite she actually has a body
shipped back to Argentina where it belongs and put it
next to her husband Wan Perune's body in the presidential palace.
That's the way to get some clouds. And if you
guys have been keeping track of the timeline. Here we
(12:36):
know that Perune came back to Argentina and seventy one.
I think he died around seventy four or so. So
Ava's body has been unburied for twenty four years at
this point in time. It's a good point. So she's
in state and then finally it is time to bury her.
And we want to do this right, you know. So
they commission a company that manufactures bank vaults too and
(12:57):
to create this incredibly intricate and incredibly like bomb proof,
fireproof whatever proof coffin for Eva. And she's taken to
the dou Arte family tomb and Buenos Aires and she's
buried there at about twenty ft underground, and her sister
was given the only key to the tomb and um
supposedly it was sort of deck to the nines with
(13:18):
security and it's completely burglary proof. It's set around as
far as we know, it's still undisturbed. However, one prim
was not so lucky. Even though his was made with
bulletproof glass, thieves got in and they were able to
cut off his hands. This disgusting, yeah, and it was
a real scandal trying to track down who had what
information about that crime and a lot of people die.
(13:40):
It's a special slay. So I'm not sure that that
is a solved case. Yet that's true, and people are
still pretty preoccupied. Um, very attracted to the to the
allure of Eva's body to this day. In the ninety nineties, Uh,
this author named Thomas l. Roy Martinez actually wrote a
book named Santa Evita, and uh, he he was able
(14:00):
to get a lot of research from military informants who
had contact with one perone when he was living in Spain, etcetera.
And so he actually wrote a novel, not not a
history book, but a novel about it because he said
that the information that he found was so incredible that
it needed to be told. The truth needed to be
told in novel form. So when if you go look
up this book, take everything with a grain of salt.
(14:21):
But he does describe um very detailed accounts of of
one keeping the corpse when he was living in Madrid,
at least keeping the corpse in an open casket in
his dining room. And Isabelle, his his new wife, had
been combing his her hair daily. Yeah, very odd, pretty wild,
but but it just goes to show that people want
to buy this novel, people want to read more about
(14:42):
this This dead Body kind of two extily because I'm
obsessed with with Eva and her dead body. But that's
the great thing about history, is so much of it.
And we've made this comment before, Jane. A lot of
the topics we talked about, they sound like they're made
for the movies, or they're they're made for fiction. And
you know, if it's true that there is nothing new
under the sun, then I'm sure we'll hear another story
like this again another day. But for now, Ms Aaron
(15:06):
or Brian, that is your juicy South American scoop, And
I hope it was juicy enough for you. It certainly
was for me and for Jane as well, and in
the intro. For more South American history and dictators stories,
be sure to check out how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com? Let us know what
(15:27):
you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff
works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kandis gets soon joined by staff writer Jane
McGrath Tyther. Jane Aaron O'Brien, one of our listeners, wrote
(00:20):
to us asking for a podcast about South American history.
She says, we talk a lot about American and European history,
and she wants to know some juicy dictator stories, and
there are a lot. We kind of have some juicy
stuff for you today. It's not necessarily about a dictator
per se, but it is about a body, a very
(00:41):
very famous body that got shuffled around South America and
parts of Europe before it was finally buried. That's right.
And I didn't know about this story until we started
researching for the podcast, and it's really fascinating. It is
um doubtlessly you guys have heard of a prone or
a vida, And if you're like me, you sat were
the musical Avida starring Madonna about fifty times because it's
(01:04):
just so great and and her her real life. There
weren't any um loud musical numbers from the Casa Rosatta
that I know of. I know she addressed people from
the balcony. I don't think she threw up her hands
and sang. But she did take the very famous Rainbow tour,
and yes there was getture clothing and lots of jewels
and furs on it. So I'm very excited to tell
you about that. But first from background, Um, that's right.
(01:27):
I didn't know much about Eva Perona before doing this,
but she was a really fascinating figure. She was born
in rural Argentina, and she really had a struggle because
she was the youngest of five um born out of
wedlock because her father had another family and father left
her mother after Eva was born, and she struggled, and
by the time she was a teenager, she she had
been idolizing American movie stars and she wanted to enter
(01:49):
the show business. So she left for Borenos Aires and
she started a career in show business. Where or is
she met Juan Perone, who was bound for great things
in Argentina. He eyes he wanted presidency in nineteen forty
six and Eva was given control of the Ministry of Labor.
And you know, it's funny, you can say what you
want about ever prom because I think that she is
(02:11):
a very controversial figure. And to um to reference the
movie one more time. When the film and the crew
were filming scenes for Avida in Argentina, they met a
lot of opposition from local people who were worried that
their idea and the image of a Vida would be desecrated,
that she would be portrayed in a very negative light.
And I think that there are ways to honor the
(02:32):
good things she did and still juxtaposed those with the
so are sort of the seed things that were happening
under the surface. So she did want to work for
the Ministry of Labor, and perhaps this was due in
part the fact that the Duarte family had lived in
such poverty. And I think that she did have really
good intentions for the poor people of Argentina, and she
(02:53):
advocated things for like higher wages and voting rights for women,
and also government subsidized housing for the poor. And it's
important to know that at this time Argentina had had
a great influx of wealth because after World War Two,
a lot of the ward to our in European nations,
they couldn't create their own crops, they couldn't grow their
own wheat, things like cattle, and beef, and their livestock
(03:16):
was down, so they had to import a lot of
these things from Argentina. So Argentina hiked up export prices
and taxism is able to generate a lot of money
for its own economy. So finally under the Prone administration
they were in a position to dull it out and
use it properly. That's true. And speaking of World War two,
um the whole political atmosphere at that time was very
(03:39):
much influenced by, um the fascist dictatorships that we're going
that we're had been going on in Europe at that time.
UM One Parne is kind of known for suppressing freedom
of the press and freedom of speech during that time.
But it was also things that especially Ava really lagged onto,
which were these issues of labor unions and stuff that
that made her as pecularly popular with the people at
(04:01):
the time. And you could say like she was even
more than Princess Diana is in in England. That's a
great comparison, and they sort of share the same sort
of mythology, I guess because they both died rather young,
so they did. And Avida, the nickname Avita, comes from
the group of people called Los des commisados, which stands
(04:22):
for the shirtless ones and the shirtless ones. The Spanish
term had been used in a very derogatory manner to
target people who are very poor and who lived in
the slums of Argentina. But the Paronists essentially turned the
term on its head and started using it in a
very affectionate way. And we saw, or not we, because
(04:43):
we weren't there, but history saw at this time Argentina
sort of changed dramatically in a way because people would,
you know, they would, they would move to the cities
and they would build it up, and there was economy
and there was industrial activity and things were flourishing. And
Avida was very happy because she had been the mastermind
behind all of this, and she didn't let people forget
(05:04):
there were pictures of her plastered around the city. She
made sure that wherever she went there was some sort
of PR spokes person with her. There was always someone
taking pictures. She was very much in the public eye,
and I think she enjoyed that, Yeah, I think she did.
She was very slow in terms of her PR tactics because,
as you said, she always had photographers around her and
she was always doing like photo ops basically doing charitable
(05:26):
things and speaking of charities, um, there was a lot
of politics going on here among the traditional elite UH
and their conflicts with Eva. At the time. The official
charity at the time was basically was called Aid Society,
that's the translated translation into English. And she wanted to
take charge of this and the traditional elite did not
(05:46):
want her to. Some say it's because she came from
humble backgrounds and they weren't really receptive to her. We
can imagine that the women in the society were very elite,
they were society women, and they didn't want to associate
with Eva. That's right, and so, not to be outdone,
started the Eva Perne Foundation and this basically, using this
(06:06):
she ran the other official charity under to the ground
because she cut off the government funding for it and
she redirected it to her own charity. And she was
able to fund schools and hospitals, which you know, all
these things, orphanages, houses for the elderly, gave her more
photo ops and it made her like, you know, more
of a public figure that people loved. People were very
and dear to her, and it helps when you're in
(06:27):
the public eye to have a certain um appearance about you,
and she she had this sort of shelacked beauty, you know,
with the the perfectly quoft dyed blonde hair and they
manicured nails, and the flawless makeup and the cature and
the furs and the jewels. She was the whole package.
And we mentioned that because of the taxes and all
(06:48):
the revenue that Argentina was generating, they were able to
uh disseminate a lot of that wells to the poor,
but a lot of it also went to a vida's closet.
And she even went, like I said, on the Rainbow Tour.
This was a meet and greet opportunity for her to
go across Europe and she met everyone from the Pope
to General Franco and she really created a splash. But
in the end it was her own enddoing, because by
(07:10):
nineteen fifty one, when she was just about thirty three
years old, she became sick with uterine cancer and she
was bedridden, that's right. And it was about that same
time that she got um a nomination for Vice President,
which is testament to how popular she was. She was
someone someone who had recently been champion women's suffrage, so
I'm sure this is a huge um step forward for
that country. But the army actually forced her to withdraw it.
(07:32):
I'm not sure the details behind that, but anyway, she
was she was dying of cancer at this time when um,
when that happened, and she knew it, and the people
around her who knew she was dying knew how special
she would be even after death. And so one of
the finest pathologists at the time, Dr Patriara, he was
summoned and he was going to have a very extensive
embalming process of his body, and so he began to
(07:55):
prepare all of his materials and as symbol, all the
supplies that he would need. And her hair was dye
when last time, and her manicurist did her nails one
last time, and then her body lay in state. She
officially died on July nine pm, and her body land
state at the Ministry of Labor, and people lined up
for days and days and days, thirteen days to be
(08:16):
exact to come and pay homage to Avida, until finally
Dr ir got a little bit worried that they were
going to soiler I reprobably damaged her body. So she
was taken away and preparations were begun for the embombing process.
That's right, And although he had done some work before
she was laid out and displayed, he continued the work
after the display for several more months, and um he
(08:38):
was known. He was a famous embalmer at the time,
which is interesting to me. I don't know how famous
you can be as embalmer, but um he as far
as I could tell, he never really divulged his complete
details of the process of his embolming, but I did
hear that he um he replaced her fluids with wax,
And it's interesting. I don't know. Working here, I've learned
a lot more about the embalming process than I ever
(08:59):
wanted to know, which is row But um, but I've
never heard of that before. And I guess it worked
because to this day people say that her body is
still intact. Isn't that wild? And it took about a
year for him to complete the process. And we're not
sure exactly about the cost of it, but estimates are
around a hundred thousand dollars, not a lot. I mean,
(09:19):
you think about the average cost of a funeral today,
and that's just for the embalming process. We're not talking
about her casket or the monument that was built for her.
And this is where the story takes a really really
juicy turn. That's right, we're not over just we've just begun, y'all. Um.
The Prone government was on the verge of collapse because
the food supplies it started to dwindle, and because there
(09:42):
weren't a lot of grain crops left, it was affecting
the cattle crops, and so they didn't really have anything
to trade. They couldn't get colon oil, so everything was
just all going to hack. And um, we had mentioned
earlier that a lot of people had moved into the
cities and things were industrious and they were booming. Well,
now those areas returned n into Slam's unemployment was up
(10:02):
and it was just a mass. And then add that
to the fact that Eva had just died and and
so one was not quite as popular as the headman
and no, so the whole environment in Argentina was right
for a coup and that happened in ve Prone was
overthrown and he was exiled to Spain. But the cool
leaders knew that if the Pronusts had Eva's body, they
(10:25):
could use that as a bargaining chip and show it off,
you know, to her loyal supporters to yeah. Yeah, it's
sort of a real snow white situation. They had this
beautiful woman and in a glass coughin, and you know,
you show it to someone you have a strong emotional
attachment to them, you're not going to forget that you
are still loyal to her husband. So they decided they
were going to hide the body, that's right. And so
(10:48):
they actually made even decoy bodies of even some of
my believe were complete replicas of her body made of
wax to throw people off. And they they sent decoy
bodies to two different races, but they sent the real
body uh to an undisclosed burial location in Italy, and
they used a fake name on the grave site. So
(11:09):
and and even before this, even before she got to Italy,
there were some riom Moral and Argentina where the cool
leaders tried to bury her in an unmarked grave plot
and the guys were responsible for that. He got kind
of creeped out because some somewhat superstitious stuff started happening,
and so he stashed the body in an attic and
then I was discovered, and then she eventually got shipped
off to Italy, and so she was in Italy for
(11:31):
a long time, and uh, one Perona at that time
was living in exile in Madrid. He finally they finally
allowed them to turn over the body to one Peron
in Spain at the time, and so he kept it
there for a little while. And when there was another
military overthrow transition, they actually brought one Perone back to
the presidency again in Argentina. And um, by this time
(11:53):
they actually left his body there first. And um, so
once Peronne is back in the presidency, but he soon dies.
He actually doesn't last very long. Listen to year, I believe,
and um meantime he's married again, his wife Isabella or
Isabella and um, i've actually seen both ways. His wife
at the time takes over, which is um. It's kind
(12:13):
of controversial. She's non incredibly popular, and so in sort
of a last ditch effort to win back the people's
praise and in their favorite she actually has a body
shipped back to Argentina where it belongs and put it
next to her husband Wan Perune's body in the presidential palace.
That's the way to get some clouds. And if you
guys have been keeping track of the timeline. Here we
(12:36):
know that Perune came back to Argentina and seventy one.
I think he died around seventy four or so. So
Ava's body has been unburied for twenty four years at
this point in time. It's a good point. So she's
in state and then finally it is time to bury her.
And we want to do this right, you know. So
they commission a company that manufactures bank vaults too and
(12:57):
to create this incredibly intricate and incredibly like bomb proof,
fireproof whatever proof coffin for Eva. And she's taken to
the dou Arte family tomb and Buenos Aires and she's
buried there at about twenty ft underground, and her sister
was given the only key to the tomb and um
supposedly it was sort of deck to the nines with
(13:18):
security and it's completely burglary proof. It's set around as
far as we know, it's still undisturbed. However, one prim
was not so lucky. Even though his was made with
bulletproof glass, thieves got in and they were able to
cut off his hands. This disgusting, yeah, and it was
a real scandal trying to track down who had what
information about that crime and a lot of people die.
(13:40):
It's a special slay. So I'm not sure that that
is a solved case. Yet that's true, and people are
still pretty preoccupied. Um, very attracted to the to the
allure of Eva's body to this day. In the ninety nineties, Uh,
this author named Thomas l. Roy Martinez actually wrote a
book named Santa Evita, and uh, he he was able
(14:00):
to get a lot of research from military informants who
had contact with one perone when he was living in Spain, etcetera.
And so he actually wrote a novel, not not a
history book, but a novel about it because he said
that the information that he found was so incredible that
it needed to be told. The truth needed to be
told in novel form. So when if you go look
up this book, take everything with a grain of salt.
(14:21):
But he does describe um very detailed accounts of of
one keeping the corpse when he was living in Madrid,
at least keeping the corpse in an open casket in
his dining room. And Isabelle, his his new wife, had
been combing his her hair daily. Yeah, very odd, pretty wild,
but but it just goes to show that people want
to buy this novel, people want to read more about
(14:42):
this This dead Body kind of two extily because I'm
obsessed with with Eva and her dead body. But that's
the great thing about history, is so much of it.
And we've made this comment before, Jane. A lot of
the topics we talked about, they sound like they're made
for the movies, or they're they're made for fiction. And
you know, if it's true that there is nothing new
under the sun, then I'm sure we'll hear another story
like this again another day. But for now, Ms Aaron
(15:06):
or Brian, that is your juicy South American scoop, And
I hope it was juicy enough for you. It certainly
was for me and for Jane as well, and in
the intro. For more South American history and dictators stories,
be sure to check out how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com? Let us know what
(15:27):
you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff
works dot com.
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