THE dead tell no tales,
but some leave behind
great stories,

The Pere-Lichaise ceme-
try in. Paris has the wraves of
th Piaf, Osear Wilde and

Jim Morrison. Somewhere
under the chestnut trees of a
Vienna graveyard lies Mozart.
And on a hillside in Halit:

are the remains of passeng:
who perished in the Titani

When I went to Argentina
my assignment was an
anniversary look at the epic of
the German pocket battleship
Graf Spee. That I did, but in
the process | crossed paths
with the legend of Eva Peron,
aname going around the
world again with the opening
of the Madonna movie.

No disrespect to Evita, but
in 1939 when she was 20 she
was an unknown actress who
had just made her first movie.
in the same year the Graf
Spee was one of the most
feared battleships of its time,
having sunk nine merchant
ships with its 11-inch guns.

Then, on December 13,
1939, the Graf Spee was
engaged in the south Atlantic
by a flotilla of British and
New Zealand warships in the
world’s last great sca battle
not involving aircraft. The
Graf Suee was heavily dam-
aged and suffered 37 dead
and 57 wounded so its cap-
tain, Hans Langsdorft, ran for
cover in Montevideo then
scuttled the battleship in the
River Plate and went ashore
with 1,600 crewmen to
Buenos Air

Many settled in Cordoba
-— the wardroom stewards
got jobs as waiters in the
ABC restaurant in Buenos
Aires. Langsdorff laid down
on a naval flag and shot him-
self.

Why did Langsdor‘f give
up the fight? Was he tooled
by British radio propaganda
that a strong force was wait-
ing to finish off his ship and
young, crew? When he tele-
phoned Berlin from Buenos
Aires was he humiliated by
Hitler?

This had all happened
before I was born, but 1 was
intrigued by the story.

And so I went to Buenos
Aires, a beautiful city with
wide streets, spacious parks,
buildings as beautiful as Paris
and nightlife throbbing with
the beat of the tango.

One of my first stops was
the Chacarita cemetery where
I mec the manager, Louis
Donnelly, who had been a
steward with CP Air in the
days when it flew Vancouver
to Buenos Aires via Lima and
Santiago. We had a coffee and
he later showed me where
Langsdorff lay beeweer the
graves of other crewmen.

Then Donnelly asked:
“Want ro see Peron’s gra

Sure, I said, and we
walked a short distance to a
simple headstone marking the
last resting place of Juan
Peron, twice president of
Argentina.

“Where's Evita?” I asked.

“Nor here,” replied
Donnelly with a smile. “She's

Poy

Upper photo: David Wishart. Right photo: submitted

(TOP) The fashionable Recoleta area
of Buenos Aires, a beautiful city with
wide streets, spacious parks, build-
ings as beautiful as Paris and nightlife
throbbing with the beat of the tango.
(Right) Pop icon Madonna plays
Argentina’s biggest-ever pop icon Eva

Peron in the movie Evita.

not here. This is just an ordi-
nary cemetery. Evita’s in the
Recoleta, which is quite
something, for they say it’s
easier to get into heaven than
the Recoleta.”

Back ! went to the centre
of Buenos Aires, to an area
like London’s Mayfair whe
fashionable restaurants and
haute couture shops overlook
a park and a cemetery that
was hke a city in miniature.

The buildings inside the
Recoleta were mausoleums,
mostly marble and some quite
ostentatious. Each had a fami-
ly name, and it did not take
long to find what I was look-
ing for, the one
Duarte. Inside, ina silver
cask, was the body of Eva
Peron, or Evita as she was
known.

Later I went to a restau:

s from the Recole
erved steal
ize of telephone directo-
ries and found a seat at the
corner of the bar.
How come, I wondered,

in a city more European than
Europe and where social posi-
tion was everything to the
point that people even strived
to ensure being in the nght
place in death, could the pres-
ident end up in the unfash-
ionable cemetery while his
wife got the pantheon?

The answer is that neither
qualified from the point of
view of people who consid-
ered themselves aristocracy
here. Evita fought them all
her life, and not being kepr
out of the Recoleta was her
final success.

She was a poor girl from
the pampas who came to
Buenos Aires as a teenager
and with more grit than tal-
ent got into the movies. In
1943 she met Colonel Juan
Peron soon alter he and a
group of army officers top-
pled the government. He was

smart — and she had chari
ma and beauty. They made
formidable team, they

love, and the masses adored
them.

Their supporters were the
descamisados, “the shirtiess
ones,” the poor of Argentina
whose pay and working con-
ditions were quickly improved
by Peron, which alienated
conservatives although the
country could afford it from
vast wartime exports of beef
and wheat.

Evita looked after herself
as well, but when she flaunted
her furs and jewels she would
tell the people that she had
been a poor girl and look at
her now. She gave them hope,
particularly the women. She
also gave them the vate.

When Evita died in 195
her body embalmed and
there ¥ plans te place it in
a crypt like Napoleon's tomb
topped by marble
statue of a descamisado. But

“ithout her, and battered by
a change in the economy,
Peron lost power.

Evita’s enemies took over,

tried to discredit her and

Sunday, January 5, 1997 — North Shore News — 14

nos Aires

smashed her statues, but were
still afraid that her body could
become the centre of a Peron
cult the way that other budies
had become powerful sym-
bols in Argentine history.

So they smuggled her
body to Italy, where it lay in a
grave, incognito, for 16 years.
Peron, meanwhile, had gone
into exile.

The good years had gone
for Argentina. Inflacion and
unemployment soared, busi-
nesses failed, bombs went off
and coup followed coup.

Through it all the faithful
wrote on walls “Where is E
Peron’s body?" and “Bring
back our beloved senora.”

What the government did
do, in 1971, was to bring
back Peron as president. In
the meantime the govern-
ment, alerted that a Peronisi
group knew where the bo
was and would try to steal i
had Evita dug up and driv
to Madrid, where Peron was
living with his new wife
Isabel. Three y later

Lad

Peron died, whereupon Isabel
flew Evira’s body home so
Evita and Peron could lie side
by side in open caskets, while
Isabel planned a crypt with a
160-ft. statue that would be
the final resting place for
Peron, Evita and other nota-
bles, perhaps including her-
self.

But then came ancther
coup, Isabel went to jail,
Peron was put in the
Chacarita cemetery and in the
dead of night soldiers spirited
Evita’s much-travelled body
into the mausoleum Evita had
bought in the Recolera.

The government had tried
everything else: perhaps if she
was at peace the country
would settle down,

20 years ago and
ithful descamisados
are growing old. Now along
comes Madonna and a ne’
generation of Argentines are
going to learn the s
Hollywood-style.

Life in Buenos Aire

going to be i