Evita: The Life of Eva Perón by Jill Hedges

Author:Jill Hedges [Hedges, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2016-10-20T23:00:00+00:00

She also warned him about the activities of Rudi Freude, the son of Ludwig Freude and suspected of Nazi links, claiming that he had sent someone to Junín to look into her background.

I swear it’s an infamy (my past belongs to me, but at the hour of my death you should know it’s all lies) […] I left Junín when I was only 13. How low to think something so vile of a girl! It’s totally false.11

Like the letter Perón wrote to Eva from Martín García, the content of the text raises many questions but leaves little doubt of the profound love expressed there. What it is that Rudi Freude supposedly tried to find out about her in Junín is unclear. The statement that she left at 13 is inaccurate, but would suggest that he was digging for information on the rumours describing her mother as the madam of a brothel, and possibly on her purported relationship with the anarchist Damián Gómez. Clearly her fears and insecurities were still very much with her, despite her rise to power and the firm backing of her husband. This was a difficult way to begin what was already a difficult assignment for a small-town girl with little education or sophistication: representing her country (and her husband) before heads of state, with the eyes of the world’s media on her.

However, the inherent difficulties were not readily apparent to observers. On arriving in Madrid on 8 June, where she was awaited by a multitude of 300,000, including Franco and his aristocratic wife Carmen Polo, Eva greeted her hosts before kissing the stewardesses on the cheek in thanks for their service, then greeted the remaining delegation of dignitaries and reviewed the troops ‘as if she had done nothing else all her life’.12 Riding in an open car with Franco, Eva’s triumphal entrance into Madrid took four hours, as thousands of people thronged the decorated streets, threw flowers and shouted ‘Viva Spain! Viva Argentina!’ According to Lillian, Franco himself would later say that he was ‘more impressed by her aplomb and personal control than by the reception’, even though ‘we’ve never seen anything like it here before’.13

Despite her extraordinary poise in public, in private Eva’s feelings were another matter. After retiring to her palatial guest suite, she phoned Lillian and asked her to come to her room to talk and to write in their diaries together. Although Lillian tried several times to leave, even when she thought Eva was finally asleep, Eva called her back repeatedly on one pretext or another before finally admitting ‘Lillian, I’m afraid’. Lillian would sleep in a chair in her room for three nights before asking Carmen Polo to arrange another bed for her in the same room, after which two imposing four-poster beds were accommodated and both women were able to get some sleep to recover from the demanding schedule of the visit.14 These sleeping arrangements would be maintained throughout the Rainbow Tour.

The visit to Spain, a personal triumph, must also

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