Evita’s Buenos Aires

Less than five miles into the 30-minute taxi ride from Argentina’s Ezeiza International Airport to vibrant downtown Buenos Aires, there is a turnoff marked Ciudad Evita. Evita City. It’s the community of homes and apartments built, furnished, and given to thousands of poor and working class families by Argentina’s First Lady Eva Peron in the late 1940s.

“Que piensa usted de Evita?,” I ask the driver.

With all the attention being focused on Eva Peron because of “Evita,” Alan Parker’s $60-million movie version of the Broadway musical Buenos Aires may see a boost in tourism. But how much of Evita, person and myth, will visitors actually find?

“Evita?,” the middle-aged cab driver says, looking at me in his rear view mirror. “In Argentina, sen~or, there are many opinions about Evita. Some people think she was very good, others think she was very bad.”

“And you, what do you think?”

“I think she was very good, but some of the things she did maybe were not so good.”

From the view of the poor millions who worshipped her, Evita’s best deeds were her attempts to redistribute wealth and push through social reforms. She led successful campaigns to win women the right to vote, and for public education to become mandatory. When she died of cancer at 33, she left half a nation of Catholics pleading for her sainthood, and many of the other half quietly thanking God for taking her.

Buenos Aires has undergone massive changes, both politically and physically, since Evita’s death and Juan Peron’s ouster by military coup three years later. The country went through a series of cruel military dictatorships, failed economic policies, and the embarrassment of the Falklands War. At the same time, so many of the city’s landmarks have been replaced by skyscrapers that Parker had to take Madonna, Antonio Banderas and the rest of his film company to Budapest to get the right atmosphere. It’s no coincidence that Evita’s Buenos Aires looks European. Argentina was colonized by Spain, and in the late 1800s, after the country had won its independence, it became a hot spot for emigres from Italy, France, Portugal, Ireland and Germany. Today, more than 95% of Argentina’s citizens are of European descent.

With its dominant French and Italian architecture, its wide boulevards, sidewalk cafes, gardens, late hours and high fashion, Buenos Aires has the look and feel of a modern European city, with some Third World fraying around the edges.

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It’s a city in transition and Porten~os (port people), as natives of Buenos Aires call themselves, have a wide variety of haunts. The older districts of La Boca, San Telmo and Centro, where a teenage Evita begged for handouts before getting started as a radio and movie actress, are much as they were when she arrived by train from rural Junin in 1935. But uptown, in the gentrified old section of Recoleta, and along the Rio de la Plata, where a series of two-story brick warehouses have been converted into chic boutiques and sleekly trendy restaurants, yuppie porten~os party the nights away.

Unemployment, always a source of social unrest here, is at a a record high of 17.5%, and the issues separating the privileged from the working classes are as alive as ever. So is the great divide of opinion on Evita.

“There are just two views of Evita,” says Sonia Belosiotzky, the guide for Buenos Aires’ new and only Evita Peron Tour. “People idolize her, and people hate her.”

“And you?”

“I am not supposed to give my opinion . . . but I hate her.”

“Evita,” both the musical and the movie, perpetuates the establishment view of Maria Eva Duarte de Peron as a calculating peasant whore who climbed the social ladder on her back and, once she gained power as the wife of the president, nearly bankrupted the country giving its wealth away. She was loathed by the military because of her unearned power, by the intelligentsia because of her lack of education, and by high society because of her uncouth speech and manners.

The poor saw her as a female Robin Hood, and her ability to unite them made her essential to Peron’s populist cum totalitarian regime. Given her place in Argentina’s history, and her notoriety throughout the world, a visitor might expect to find parks and schools named after her, and among its scores of public monuments, at least a few in her honor. But aside from Evita City, there is paltry physical evidence of her existence. Juan D. Peron boulevard cuts through the heart of the city, but there are no street signs for Evita.

In fact, I spent most of my first day in Buenos Aires in frustrated search for anything with Evita’s name or image on it. Judging by the displays in the numerous T-shirt and souvenir shops along Calle Florida, the city’s blocked-off shopping district, what tourists are taking home, besides leather and silver goods, are images of the city’s tango culture and gaucho kitsch from the Pampas.

At the promisingly named Libreria del Turista (Tourists’ Bookstore), there is a copy of Alan Parker’s book on the making of “Evita” in the window, but nothing on its subject. Inside, I ask two different clerks for books about Eva Peron before one walks me to the farthest corner of the store and digs up two copies of her autobiography, “The Mission of My Life.”

Finally, at La Carta, a boutique gift shop near Plaza San Martin, I find a T-shirt with the name “Evita” on it. It features a multiple blowup of the 10-peso stamp that bore her likeness in the days when 10 pesos weren’t worth a dime.

The Perons made public loyalty to them compulsory. Businesses were ordered to display their images, while children had to wear peronista patches on their school uniforms. Peron’s military successors made all references to the Perons and the party illegal, with a punishment of up to three years in prison, and while attempts to erase the memory of them failed, the country was largely cleansed of the iconography.

Plaza de Mayo, the original town square of Buenos Aires, is the first stop on the Evita Peron Tour, which Sonia Belosiotzky tells me was begun in December, in anticipation of a crush of Evita-seeking tourists. Though the movie hasn’t opened in Buenos Aires yet, the controversy preceding its filming here, and the fuss made over its star Madonna, has everyone thinking about it.

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On this particular Sunday morning in January, in the midst of Argentina’s sweltering summer, there is no crush. The Evita tour includes Sonia, her driver Rafael, and me.

As Sonia, of Russian heritage but Argentine-born, begins speaking of the importance of the Plaza de Mayo as a site of Argentina’s many protests, Rafael presses a button and the van fills with the march of the peronistas. We are, with a bit of imagination, in the plaza with 100,000 people in 1950, cheering as Eva Peron appears on the balcony of Casa de Gobierno, the pink presidential palace, more popularly called Casa Rosada, to urge their support for her husband’s re-election. Rafael pushes another button on the van’s cassette deck and it’s the voice of Evita herself, strong and passionate, yelling over the din of the crowd.

Looking west on Avenida de Mayo, we see in the distance the magnificent Greco-Roman Palace of Congress. It was there in 1952 that hundreds of thousands of mourners lined up to kiss the glass plate separating them from the body of Evita.

The tour heads up Avenida de Mayo, stopping briefly at Cafe Tortoni, the city’s famous hangout for poets and intellectuals, where Sonia says Evita often accompanied Agustin Magaldi, a popular tango singer who some biographers--and the librettist Tim Rice, who exploited the gossip for the Broadway musical--say Evita seduced into taking her to Buenos Aires when she was 15.

Other highlights of the Evita tour are the Colon Theater, one of the world’s most opulent and acoustically perfect opera houses, where the Perons often occupied the official box; Luna Park, the all-purpose indoor stadium where the Perons met during a charity event for earthquake victims in 1944; the union headquarters where Evita’s body was kept for three years while being preserved; and the Romanesque building next door where thousands had lined up every day waiting for an audience with Evita, and an expected solution to their problems.

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The three-hour tour is equally notable for what you don’t see than what you do. Radio Belgrano, where Evita began her career as a radio actress, is now a boarded-up restaurant. The presidential mansion, where she lived for the last six years of her life, was long ago torn down and replaced by the ultra modern National Library. The open area north of Casa Rosada, where Peron was to have built a 400-foot memorial to Evita, twice the height of the city’s landmark Obelisk, is still bare.

Rafael stops the van at the north end of Avenida 9 de Julio, and turns on another speech. It was on this unmarked site in 1951 that Evita, already dying from uterine cancer, faced one of the largest crowds ever assembled on the planet, and was compelled by its persistence to accept the nomination for vice president that her husband had refused to offer her. She was later forced to withdraw.

Looking down Avenue 9 de Julio, billed as the world’s widest street it’s easy to believe reports that more than 1 million people gathered here that night, their screaming of Evita’s name drowning out every voice except hers.

The last stop on the tour, the cemetery of Recoleta, is a must for anyone visiting Buenos Aires, whether curious about Evita or not. On these few acres, you’ll find more wealth in imported marble, statuary, bronze and stained glass than in most countries.

The cemetery is a free visit. But even Sonia has trouble finding Evita.

With its simple black marble facade, Evita’s tomb is among the least imposing in the cemetery. But the words on one of the plaques sounds an ominous note for her detractors: “I’ll be back, and I’ll be millions.”

That Evita is here at all, among the spirits of her sworn enemies, is either a cruel or a comic irony, depending on your view.

Mathews is Newsday’s film critic.

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GUIDEBOOK: Argentina Peron-ified

Getting there: From LAX to Buenos Aires fly direct (one stop, no change) on Aerolineas Argentina and United; two stops on Lan Chile. Connecting service (plane change in Miami) on American and United, and (change in Sa~o Paulo) on VASP Airlines and Varig. Lowest round-trip fare begins at about $1,310 including tax.

Downtown Buenos Aires is a $35 cab ride from Ezeiza International Airport. Major U.S. rental companies operate at the airport, but car travel in the city is not advised because of traffic problems. Black and yellow cabs are readily available and inexpensive. The city also has a well-laid-out and maintained subway system.

Where to stay: Rates for reliably clean, comfortable and conveniently located hotel rooms begin at about $90 a day. There are several large five-star hotels that function as cities unto themselves, among them the very French Alvear Palace (telephone 011-54-1-804-7777; fax 011-54- 1-804-0034), whose suites start at $340 a night, and the Sheraton chain’s Park Tower ([800] 325-3535), the city’s tallest and most modern hotel, with rooms starting at $334 per night.

A best bet among moderately priced hotels is the immaculately kept Gran Hotel Colon (tel. 011-54-1-320-3500; fax 011-54- 1-320-3507), on Avenue 9 de Julio, facing the landmark Obelisk. Rooms start at $141. For bargain-priced elegance, consider the Hotel Continental (tel. 011- 54-1-326-1700; fax 011- 54-1-322-3250), which offers most of the amenities you’d want for about $100 a night. Add 21% tax.

For more information: Argentine Government Tourism Office, 5055 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 210, Los Angeles 90036; tel. (213) 930-0681; fax (213) 934-9076.

If you want to know more about Argentina, try the Web site Lonely Planet: Destination Argentina, https://www.lonelyplanet.com.au/dest/sam/argie.htm.