Transcript of 497. Evita: Death of a Martyr (Part 4)

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory. Com and join the club. That is therestishistory. Com.

Ava and Maria are joined in the woman my voice celebrates. For more than names, they are one name, as two eyes make up a single gaze, and more than hands, the hand held out in time of troubles, and more than eyes, the eyes of she who gives faith with her look, so that the lonely man may raise his face towards her feet, and see in the moon and the stars above the earth of our fatherland, Ava and Maria, Maria Ava transfigured into hope. So that was glory by the Peronist writer, Jose Maria Castañeda, the Dios, which he wrote in 1951. And Dominic, that's one of your favorite poems, isn't it?

It's a very strange poem, Tom. I think, as I told you, a bizarre and terrible poem. And Jose Maria Castañeda de Dios was actually quite a serious poet. He lived until his 90s. He was a fated-So what was he thinking?Argentine writer. Well, he was a member as a young man of this official Ava Peron poet circle, and they would meet at the headquarters of her foundation every week, I think, or every month. And they would read poems about Ava Peron. And the fact that somebody who's actually quite a serious literary figure was writing this unbelievable nonsense. Dross.

Yeah, Dross is the word. It reminds me a bit of the ode to Nicolaus Sturgeon that schoolchildren did on TV a few months into the pandemic.

Very similar figures.

Where they hailed her. Well, yeah, a certain, certain similarity. And Maria, presumably, is the virgin in that.

Well, I think the thing is Maria was one of her names. So it's a play on the fact that Maria is one of her names, but also Maria is obviously the virgin. And the stuff about looking towards her. She gives faith with her look. You raise your face towards her feet. She's transfigured into hope. I mean, there's obvious Catholic resonances there, aren't there? Which are there by this point. So this is 1951 that he writes this, as you said. By that point, the cult of Evita, we never talked about Evita. Evita means dear little Ava thing, affectionate diminutive. Eva Kins. Eva Kins is a bit Yeah, a bit unlikely, but it's a affectionate diminutive. I think the cult of Avita, by this point, 1951, has become very, very firmly established, so predated her death. In the last episode, we were talking about, thanks to her, the efforts of her foundation, people were saying she's the Lady of Hope, the Bridge of Love, which was her favorite nickname, apparently. I mean, that stuff is very Marion, isn't it? Yeah.

But also, presumably, she's the mother of the nation. She is bestowing care and attention on the people who are like her children. Yes. And this, presumably, is why the ovarian cancer with which she's diagnosed, I mean, must be a psychic wound as well as being a terrible medical shock.

I mean, this is the story of today's podcast, ultimately, The Death of Ava Baron. And the fact is that her death becomes much more than a personal event. It's a political and national one. So to go back to where we were at the end of the last episode, that cliffhanger, she had gone to the Abeya Nader neighborhood to open a taxi driver's union office. And she collapsed or fainted, ended up going to hospital, and basically vanished from the newspapers for four days. So this is the beginning of 1950. And that was very unusual because this is a point when she's in the newspapers every single day. And then after four days, they said, Oh, she's actually had appendicititis. We've taken her appendix out. There's all the procession of churchmen and ministers going to her bedside. But actually, she's probably suffering from the cancer that will kill her. Even at this point. And later on, one of the doctors who had looked at her, who was actually the Minister of Education in the government, a guy called Oscar Ivana Seevich.

We love to see some multitasking.

Multitasking, exactly. Very impressive. He said, Actually, I looked at her in hospital and she was suffering from cancer of the uterus. And we did tests and I suggested to her, you should have a hysterectomy.

And she loses it, doesn't she? I mean, she's really, really upset by this idea.

The trouble is with this, now we're getting into territory from this point onwards that is quite murky because everybody has very vested interests. They're all telling slightly different stories. But I think it's perfectly possible that he said to her, perhaps not in so many words, he said, There is something seriously wrong with you and we would to do an operation. And she said, no, no way. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. I think there might be a slight element of perhaps a paranoia, but also some of her biographers say at that point, she sees herself as the mother of the nation and all that thing as you were saying, Tom. And the idea of such an operation is anathema to her.

What's odd about it is that not only had Peron's first wife had it, but her mother, Ava's mother had had it and had been operated on and it had been fine. She was still alive. Yeah. So it's not like it's a total mystery to her. And when she goes on her tours, she's taking cotton wool with her to deal with the hemorrhaging that she's starting to experience. She must have a sense of both how serious it is, but also an awareness that Catching it early is the best thing to do.

But she wouldn't be the first person in history, or indeed the last, to have something seriously wrong with them and just deny it to themselves. I'll carry on. Maybe it'll go away.

Is cancer a cause of embarrassment at that period? I mean, is it? You don't talk about it.

I think you don't talk about it. I think there's a combination of not talking about cancer, generally. A fear, obviously, that it's a death sentence, and so you don't talk about it, because at this point in history, people are aware of it in a way they had not been aware of it centuries previously. You're not yet at a point where people are saying, Listen, we can fix this, even though there's an argument that they could have fixed this. But I think also that particular, anything gynecological is simply not discussed in a very Catholic country like Argentina. These things aren't really aird publicly.

And what about Peron, who's first wife had had this? What's going on there?

Well, here's the interesting thing. His biographers, I mean, Joseph Page, one of his biographers, says of Peron, Peron always had a very peculiar attitude towards doctors and medicine. He often said doctors are useless. He came from a family where there were doctors in the family. And there's been talk of him becoming a doctor. And there are suggestions that he rather fancied himself as a amateur doctor. And it is possible that he would have said to her, Don't worry about it. It'll be fine. Doctors are a load of quacks anyway, because he did say such things. So we don't know. We have no evidence for it, but it is possible. All that we know is when she's recovered from this turn at the beginning of 1950, she throws herself back into her work in an incredibly manic way.

Yeah, because she says, doesn't she, I don't have time for medical treatment. Treatments are for oligarchs. She's dramatizing it in a very political way.

But also, Tom, her whole life, she has lived as a soap opera. I mean, that's soap operas that she made her name in. And her politics and her public life, she has conducted as a melodrama soap opera. And the idea of sacrifice has been there from the beginning in her adult persona.

So you think it might be willed that she's offering herself up as a blood sacrifice or to Argentina?

It's really hard to say people do have martyr complexes. We've talked about some very peculiar characters, and the rest is history. We've already made the comparison with Catherine of Siena. People who seem to have a will to sacrifice themselves. Her biographers, Fraser and Navarro say at one point, Of all the distortions that surround Avia Peron's life, the least outrageous and the closest to the truth is the suggestion that she elected to die for Peron, Peronism. Wow. I mean, that is a bizarre thing to say of somebody.

Yeah.

Even Peron himself said, She worked herself to the bone. I begged her to slow down. She wouldn't.

Is this sense she has that she can't afford to lie around in hospital because that's oligarchical? Is it also compounded by the fact that things are starting to quite as well for Peron by this point?

I think so. I think there's a sense of pressure, generally, within the regime. We talked in the previous episode about how Peron took over at a ideal goldilocks moment for Argentina. The Second World War has happened. There's a great demand for Argentine exports in Europe, but there's not imports coming the other way. But actually, what's happening when you get into the 1950s is prices are starting to go up. The returns they're getting for exports are starting to go down. The union is arrestive. There's a railway strike Which for the first time means the government is against the unions. So his own heartland is restive.

Yeah, and he doesn't want that.

Now, the thing is, he has changed the Constitution, so he has an election coming, and that's been brought forward. So it's scheduled for November 1951. And I think there's this sense of a ticking clock towards this election. I mean, it is going to be a democratic election, even though it's slightly managed democracy, the press all on his side. And her allies, when you get to 1951, her allies are calling for her to be on the ticket. Now, this is an extraordinary thing in the context of South American politics, generally. No woman has ever been vice president, I think, in any country on Earth at this point.

I mean, all the more extraordinary, bearing in mind that in the previous election, she hadn't even been able to vote.

To vote. Yeah. What an amazing thing. So the question is, who wants this to happen? Who is pressing for it? I think most historians say that because Peronism was so ambiguous, it's actually a struggle within the regime. To define it. Yeah. And the CGT, which is the big Trade Union Group, which is one of her power bases, and the other one, the women's movement, the women's party that we talked about last time, they would think it would be brilliant for her to be vice President and then presumably President. After that, we don't know. Because that would, of course, be brilliant for them. Now, the issue is, by the time that people are pushing this, she's beginning to look quite obviously ill. You mentioned that she's suffering from hemorrhages. There's no doubt about that, and she's losing a lot of blood, and she's beginning to look extremely gaunt and thin.

If this is a struggle within Peronism, the wings are basically defined by what? The poor, the unions, the people who are getting handouts from Santa Ava, and then on the other side, the army. Of course, the army. And if she's looking emaciated and thin, then I suppose in a sense, she's all the more credible a spokesperson for those who are suffering.

Yeah, she's suffering herself. She's the embodiment of suffering.

She looks apart. Yeah.

Of course, the army are never keen on this idea. I mean, the army, frankly, have never massively been keen on Peron, even though he's from that number, because a lot of them think he's got above himself. He should get back in his box. And the idea that a woman, his wife, remember there had been that initial attempt to stop block his career because people in the garrisons outside Buenos Aires said, that woman will take over. Now, they are very alarmed. And of course, for Peron, that's a big issue because basically the army are the only people that can bring him down. So they are the one group of people that he can't afford to alienate because they could shoot him. So the whole thing is a really weird story. I mean, by the way, it's not the weirdest story we'll be talking about in the remainder of this series.

It gets madder and madder with episode after episode.

So Iran thinks, I won't make my mind up. I will just let this play out. This is the classic thing, by the way, of how dictatorship, or autocracies or authoritarian regimes work. The guy at the top lets the people below have a little squabble, and then he sides with the winners. And I think that's probably what he's doing about this. I know it's his wife, but they are hardly seeing each other at this point, not because they've fallen out, but because they're both so busy with their different projects.

But you say that the army is the only institution that can bring him down, but actually the people, if they choose to coordinate themselves and get behind Ava, they can't bring him down, but they can certainly embarrass him. Yeah. So I'm thinking of all the famous scenes on the balcony at the Casa Rosada, the Don't cry for me Argentina scene in the musical. There's elements there of the Caesars appearing before the crowds at the Circus Maximus or the Colosseum.

Absolutely, there is.

I mean, they can't bring you down, but they can humiliate you, and you have to keep them on board. And I suppose the risk for Peron is that Ava is their favorite, and that without even meaning to, if she appears on the balcony and they feel that Peron is not giving her what she wants, then they can make things quite awkward for Peron.

They can. And this is precisely what happens, Tom, actually. So effectively, what happens is there's no decision about whether she'll be on the tickets or not, whether she'll be vice president. And the unions decide to force the ante, and they decide, they announced that they will have a huge mass meeting, which they'll call the Cabildo Abierto, which is like the open town hall meeting. And there have been a famous Cabildo Abierto in 1810, when the people of Buenos Aires, which is then very small, gathered to throw off Spanish rule. And they say, We're going to have another one. And it sounds quite boring, but it's an extremely big deal. They bring in an estimated 2 million people into the center of Buenos Aires. Basically, if you're a member of the CGT Union, they will organize a bus or a train for you from all over this enormous country. They will pay for you to come. They will give you your food. They will put you up in a hotel. They'll even give you cinema tickets. So a great treat. And all these people, many of them who've probably never been to Buenos Aires before.

So it's left wing to the extent that it's the people, it's the unions. It's a great demonstration, but it's also rooted in deeply patriotic traditions. If it's drawing on the memory of this the overthrow of the Spanish colonial government and the founding of the Argentine nation. It is exactly. So it's very Peronist in that sense.

It is. It's very Peronist. But it's also very Peronist and nobody really knows what's going on and nobody's quite in charge of it, and it's all a bit... So they move it from the outside the Casa Rosada to the big Avenida of the ninth of July. So that's the massive avenue, the Champs Elyse type thing in the middle of Buenos Aires. They've got huge portraits 60 feet high of Peron and Evita. They build a bridge of love, a bonkers thing to do. And the afternoon of the 22nd of August 1951, this place is absolutely full of literally millions of people. And eventually in the evening, Peron and Evita come out with all their cronies onto platform. And what follows, we don't need to go massively into all the details of it, but it is a really weird ritualistic occasion where she comes out, and by this point, she's obviously dressed in her new style, which is the very She knew the soup.

Yeah, the austere.

She looks a bit like a secularized nun. I always think of this star. Don't you tell me the dark clothes? She looks, of course, terrible. She looks really gaunt.

Well, she looks ill. Yeah. Yeah, but she also looks quite… She doesn't look terrible in the sense that she looks ugly. She looks very, very striking.

Yeah, striking in a wasted way, I guess. But also she's nervous. She has tears in her eyes. They're all nervous because I think for the first time in- She says, I mean, she's called the woman who never cries, right?

I mean, she famously doesn't cry. So for people to see tears on her cheeks, that must be quite something.

I think so. I think for the first time, she and Peron, they have almost created this monster, which is the appetite of the crowd. This is very the Caesars in Rome, isn't it? Yeah.

For melodrama. Yeah.

They have created this monster that has a thirst for sensation, and they are at the mercy of it because she basically gives this very rambling speech where she says, I just want to be a vita. I would rather be a vita than anything. I don't need to be-Vice President or something. People are, is she turning it down? Peron then speaks. The crowd are going mad. She then comes out.

Because they want a vita. They want her. They don't want Peron. They want a vita. Right.

She comes out again.

So that's not going down well with Hubby, is it? No.

Actually, at first, they wanted to speak again. She won't speak. The Union people basically force her to speak again. And then she gives this incredibly rambling, tears-stained, strange, self-mortifying speech, improvised, where she says at one point, I'm like Alexander the Great. It's a very strange comparison. Remember we said that Peron was a great fan of Plutarch's lives, so maybe he's been sitting up late. Maybe this is some garbled discussion about Alexander the Great.

I mean, yeah, forcing Plutarch's lives on women. I mean, that's the way that Peron gets his girls, isn't it?

Well, it is, as we will discover. Some very bad behaviors to come in Peron's life and indeed in this series. Yeah, and the crowd are going mad because she's not saying, I'll do it. And she's given this incredible We've said before, the thing about Peronist rhetoric is it's incredibly melodrama, but it doesn't actually mean anything, the Bridge of Love and all that.

Well, I mean, as you said throughout, it's like a soap opera script. And I suppose in a sense, for But for Avita, looking out and seeing the 2 Million crowd, and she's having to play the part, it must be like seeing her radio audience for her soap opera is physically present in front of her.

It must have been so overwhelming. That's how you feel, isn't it, when you do Rest It's History Live show?

That's exactly how I feel. Rambling. My tear-strained cheek.

Rambling, tear-stained performance.

I am a bridge of love between you and Dominic. That's what it's all... That's exactly how I feel.

Well, at your side, the slightly sinister But ultimately smooth and charming. Brilliant.

We shouldn't push this analogy too far, don't we? No, we shouldn't. Bearing in mind what is to come.

No, we shouldn't. Anyway, so it's an absolutely bizarre performance. Peronna looks furious. Everybody's really confused. She basically breaks down on the platform in front of 2 million people who are like a baying mob. They want her to say, Yeah, I'll do it. And she just gives this very strange rambling performance. It ends and no one knows what happened. And ultimately, she's forced at the end of the month, 31st of August, so a few days later, to go on the radio and to say she's turning it down. Now, some people maybe listen to this thinking, this is a weird thing to the Voter podcast to, not accepting the vice presidential nomination. What an amazing story. I said before that I've been to the Evita Museum in Buenos Aires. This moment occupies a big section of the museum. There's a darkened room, there's a screen, and there are people in there really moved. It's seen as a seismic moment of self-sacrifice.

And why are they moved?

There's a bit of it on that. It doesn't really know because I'm an Anglo-saxon pragmatist, and so I don't get the- What do they feel that she is sacrificing? I think they have all invested in this melod dramatic story, and they are dreaming of a triumphant conclusion in which she will be vice president and may be president alongside her husband, and the crowd can lose themselves in delirium.

But why do they think she's turning it down?

Because she's being so evasive and she is rambling. It's almost like they're investing in the sheer an emotion hollowed out of meaning. I don't know whether that's the right way to describe it.

I just wonder whether they felt that... I mean, is this an anti-perron sentiment? They don't think that he's leaning on her?

No, I don't think it's anti-Perron.

Sinister power brokers are?

I think some people in this senior part of the movement think he's giving into the army on this. They're quite aware of what is happening. In a weird way, you could argue it's quite good for Perron because And by not having her on the ticket, it's like he's saying to the army, Listen, when it comes to it, you'll get what you want. There's no need to overthrow me. It's as though I think people, by this point, 1951, have invested so much in this cult of Avita. You made the comparison with Diana, Tom. That left me cold as well. I didn't really get it.

I'm just wondering if there's also a political... I mean, left-wing supporters of the Labor Party, sodden with tears that Keir Starmer won't promote Angela Reina to quite the level that they think.

Is that the comparison I would go for that has kicked Diane Abbott out of the party?

I mean, is there any element of that?

Well, I mean, Theo, our producer, is better equipped than us to answer these questions.

Avita is the cross between Diana and Angela Reina.

But we should also, just for those people who don't find that an enticing enough prospect, we will also discuss the extraordinary goings on that surround Avita's death, and then the fate of her body we'll be getting to eventually.

Tell me what, Dominic, why don't we take a break at this point? And in the break, we can ask Theo whether he feels I thought that that's a fair comparison. When we come back, we will give the answer, Theo's view on whether Avita is basically Angela Reina. So don't go away. Hello. Welcome And then, coming back to the rest of the History. I'm sure everyone has been absolutely desperate to find out whether Theo thinks that Avita can be compared to Angela Reina, the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, who perhaps has been slightly put in the shadow by Keir Starmer, the peron of modern Britain. And Theo's response to this thesis was, and I quote, So there you go. Anyway, should we crack on with the stuff about her death? Because it's amazing. I think we've had enough politics.

So the evening after that, Kabila Abieto, if Avita had fainted, not surprisingly, she seems to have got completely overwrought with all the emotion of this occasion. But also she is quite seriously ill. And in the next few weeks, she has severe abdomen pains, and some days she can't get out of bed. And there's now a weird thing where Peron and his doctors now are saying, You must have more tests. You must take this seriously. And she is often refusing to be treated. She will actually try to leave the building when she knows the doctors are coming to do tests and things. They finally do them on the Monday, the 24th of September, the doctors tape her on her side and they say she has got very serious cancer and it is spread and this probably isn't going to end well.

There's nothing we can really do?

Nothing we can really do. They say the first thing we have to do, just We absolutely have to do an operation, do a hesterectomy. I mean, that's the standard thing that anyone does on this occasion. And this is less than a month, by the way, after that huge public meeting. And she is against it. They said to her, you will have to have drugs first. She refuses to take the drugs. They say, we will operate without the drugs or you take the drugs. So she agrees to take the drugs. But then while she's taking the drugs and she's having a blood transfusion, you have the first real rebellion against Peron's rule. So this is a very disorganized coup organized by a guy called Benjamín Menéndez. And they don't tell Evita about it at first until the coup has been defeated. But then they drag her onto the radio. Or does she ask to go on the radio herself? We don't really know. Maybe she asks herself as part of this self-sacrifice thing. And she first time talks publicly about her ill health. And she says she's praying to God to restore her health so that she can support Perón and the Desca Mizados, her heartland, her people, all the shirtless ones.

Shirtless followers, yeah.

And so from that point onwards, the combination of those two things, the coup and the ill health, we start to embark on this public psychodrama of the death of Avita, because people from this point on, was December 1951, they start to have masses for her. They have candle-lit vigils and all this thing.

And is there maybe a Shakespeareian quality in the sense that in Shakespeare, the king's body is often seen as a metaphor for the state of the nation? Yeah, I think so. And that her sickness is expressive of a sickness in the government and in Argentina more generally, do you think? And that that's part of what's tied up with it?

I do think so, Tom. I think it's not just a king's body. It's also the idea of a woman's body as a place onto which often men project fantasies, desires, all those things. I mean, you don't have to be a super feminist critic to see the resonance of that, I guess. People do, for example, there's a place called Luján outside Buenos Aires, where there's this mock gothic basilica where it's a virgin of Lujan, of course, who appeared to somebody and did miracles. And it's the most popular pilgrimage site in Argentina. I mean, I find this so unsettling. People who are themselves very sick will make pilgrimages to Lujan for a vita. So the classic thing is people with broken legs will supposedly walk there. Oh, wow. And they'll perform a feat. They'll do a sacrifice because they think this will get a credit from the Virgin Mary, and they will have inscriptions. They will carry huge Virgin Mary statues with the inscription, Pour la Salud de Evita, for the Health of Evita. And people will start putting it who don't travel, will put up altars in the street with candles, with the effigies of the Virgin, again, for Evita.

So this is within weeks of her saying she wouldn't take the vice presidential nomination. And there's a sense that almost she's not going to do it politically, but actually people are pouring that emotional energy into this overtly religious campaign to try and save her life. So it is all very-Intense.

It's very intense.

It is very intense. Yeah, it's incredibly intense. She has her last 17th of October loyalty rally, which is the anniversary of the day that they'd had that first big thing with Peron when his bosses had tried to kick him out.

Yeah, in which she hadn't actually played a major part, but by now everyone assumes that she has.

And now a million and a half people. Yeah. In the center of Argentina. They've dosed her up on morphine. She is there. She's now shrunk so much. She's in this suit that's hanging off her. Peron makes a tribute to her. From this point on, was people are basically talking about her as though she's already dead.

Peron is giving basically her obitury while she's standing there.

She's standing there, she starts crying. She falls into his arms. Again, you can see this in the museum. It's treated as though this incredibly solemn moment, which in many ways it is, but it's also gastly. To me, it seems excruciating in a manner dramatic to be playing this out in public. But I think she wanted it to be in public. There's a sense in which her story, in which her public story in which she has invested so much, must now proceed towards its preordained conclusion.

And it must be witnessed by her people.

Exactly. Now, the thing is, to the people who had never liked her, we talked before about the great writer, Borges. Borges despised the Perons. He despised Avita. For somebody like him, Anglophile, Understatement, tweed. Tweed, as I say tweed. Thinking about kippling, whatever he's doing.

Horrendous.

He finds this unbelievably gastly, just common, embarrassing.

Gauch, mawkish.

But I think for most ordinary Argentines, they actually regard it as incredibly moving. This woman, they think, has willingly sacrificed her health and her life for her foundation, for her work. And now she's determined to die in public. And they must all, there's It's almost a... I can't remember whether or not I used this phrase in a previous episode, but I remember writing it down while I was reading up on it. There's a totalitarianism of sentimentality about the Peronist regime, I think. So a sense that you must, you absolutely must subscribe to this high emotional drama, which is Diana, 1997, Tom.

Absolutely, yes. And so the conjunction of the film of Avita coming out in 1996 and then Diana dying in 1997 brought that home very forcibly, I think.

Yeah. So of course, Peron wins the election in November. There is a scene describing an anti-Peronist writer. She was in hospital at this point.

But she votes, doesn't she? And it's the only time that she votes.

A special ballot box was made for her and brought to the hospital. She votes in this ballot box. They take it outside. And this radical writer, David Vignas, said, afterwards, he said, I saw women outside on their knees, praying on the sidewalk, and they kept touching the ballot box that held Avita's vote and kissing it. A fascinating scene worthy of a book by Tolstoy. And it is a really weird scene, isn't it? People praying to this ballot box.

I mean, he's fascinated by the scene, but he's simultaneously made nauseous by the toding of her admirers. So there's a conflict there.

So over the next few months, her health continues to decline, but she doesn't die. Actually, the terrible thing for her, just on a human level, is that this is quite a protracted scene. Actually, by early 1952, she is still being dragged out or dragging herself out to give speeches on the balcony the Casa Rosada.

But she must be dragging herself out because as we've been saying, all her suffering has no meaning if it's not public.

Well, maybe a bit of both. It doesn't hurt the regime to keep dragging her out, by the way, because Argentina is now beginning to get into deeper and deeper economic waters. It doesn't help for people to be distracted by this great drama. She's now on a lot of drugs, and she's in an enormous amount of pain. Her speech has become It's darker and darker now. For the first time, really, she is really talking violently. If it is necessary, we will execute justice with our own hands. I will leave nothing standing that is not for Peron. And then here's an extraordinary one, May, May 1952. Those who believe in sweetness and love forget that Christ said, I have come to earth to bring fire so that it may burn more. He gave us an example of fanaticism, and for that reason, we must be fanatics for Peron until death.

And doesn't she also, from her sick bed, order thousands and thousands of pistols and machine guns and things with the aim of giving them to the trade unions?

Oh, I never heard that, Tom. That is an interesting detail.

And behind Peron's back. Behind Peron's back, she's doing this. And then after her death, Peron finds out about this and goes, Oh, and goes and gets them all back. But she's not just talking about violence. She's preparing for violence. If it's, I mean, literally the last thing she does.

So this is an interesting thing. There's definitely an apocalyptic tone to her rhetoric in the last year or months of her life. And this will be important later on, because later on in the 1960s and 1970s, as Argentina slides into terrorism and virtual civil war, people will brandish this. And this is this evita that young people will turn to, the radical, the violent, the terrorist. That's what people will get very excited about. Let's move forward towards the close of her story.

We get towards- But just before that, before she dies, I said about 10 minutes back that there are very brutal attempts to keep her alive. One of these is radiotherapy. Oh, yeah, terrible. Which basically just leaves her horribly singed, doesn't it?

They apply it very incompetently, so they basically burn her. Yeah.

The other one is a lobotomy. This is a story that came out maybe six or seven years I think. An American surgeon said that he had been brought in and given a lobotomy to Avita, which must have been licensed by Peron. I remember when we were talking about this happened with the Kennedy's, didn't it?

Mm-hmm.

One of JFK's His sister had a lobotomy. That's right, it's his sister. This was a standard medical procedure to try and release pressure on the brain.

I didn't know about the lobotomy, Tom. I haven't heard that story.

Well, it's it's debated. There are people who think it didn't happen. I think probably the balance of opinion now is that it did. I mean, if it did, then it's a measure of how increasingly desperate the attempts are to try and keep her from death.

Well, you know what her critics, Peron's critiques were saying at this point. In the Barrio Norte, which is the bit of Buenos Aires, the posh bit, where all the Anglophiles live. They were saying the rumor was people said, If you have young children, don't take them to hospital because they are taking children's blood. She needs young, fresh blood, and they are literally pumping it into her.

The quality of the vampire, someone who is undead, who, despite being dead, has the bloom of seeming life on her cheeks. I mean, this is a theme that will run and run into our final episode.

In a very bizarre and unsettling way in the next episode.

Yeah, of course, there is immense displays of love for her, but there are displays of hatred as well. So there's graffiti going up in the posher areas of Buenos Aires saying, Viva el cáncer.

Yeah. I mean, By the summer of 1952, you could argue that Argentina has gone completely bonkers, that there are just constant parades, processions, masses. Congress has a special session, names her the spiritual leader of the nation. Entire cities are changing their name to Eva Peron at this point. That Congress approves a massive monument to her, all this stuff. On the Sunday, the 20th of July, they held a huge public mass, a massive altar was set up by the Obelisk in Buenos Aires, and her confessor, who was a guy called Father Hernán Benítez, comes out and gives a speech about her. She, apparently, had been looking forward to this. She was great looking forward to it. She's too ill to attend. She listens from her hospital dead. But because he talks about her basically as though she's dead already, the hospital cut the wires to her radio because they thought it would be too distressing for her. Actually, it turns out she was really distressed. She didn't get to hear the speech. So a pretty horrible scene, all things considered. And then on the Saturday, the 26th of July, 1952, supposedly, she says that morning to her maid, she's lying in bed, and she says, I never felt happy.

I've never been happy in my life. That's why I left home. My mother would have married me to somebody ordinary, and I couldn't have stood it. A decent woman has to get on in the world.

Very Mrs. Thatcher. Very Mrs..

Thatcher, actually, isn't it? Anyway, she declined in the course of the day. She was given the last sacrumence, and then 8:23 that night, the doctors, everyone standing around the family and stuff, and the doctor said to Peron, That's it. She's no pulse. Her heart is not beating. And as if her life wasn't melod dramatic enough, her brother Juan Duarte stood there at the end of the bed and screamed, There is no God. There is no God, and rushed out. Peron, apparently, just does nothing impassive. The government announced that they didn't like the fact that she hadn't died on a round-ish number. So they changed the time to 8:25 from 8:23. So also they could then start all the news bulletins five minutes, exactly five minutes early, and begin them all with five minutes of silence. But not just that day, every day for weeks, which gives you a sense of what they're about to do, because from that point onwards, everything stops. Cinemas, theaters, restaurants, public transport.

Well, that's how a beta opens. There's people in the cinema being told. Yeah, it's done.

It's all over. All over. Everything must stop. Now, there is one person who is not stopping, and this is a man. Here we go.

With the weirdness.

Who has been waiting outside the bedroom. This is Dr. Pedro Ara, who is a professor of anatomy and is a supreme practitioner of what is called the Art of Death. He specializes in embarming people, in replacing their blood with glycerin.

I mean, he's a remarkable man because he goes around with the embalmed head of an elderly he's a legally peasant in his briefcase. So that, should he come across any potential customer, he'll whip it out as an example of what he can do. And he had, he'd embalmed Manuel de Falla, Spain's greatest 20th century composer. Yeah, who fled to Argentina after the Spanish Civil War. So he's ready. He's ready to serve, to do his duty.

And he will play a very large part in what follows. He has been told, you must prepare the body for immediate public display at the Ministry of Labor. Peron has planned this before his wife dies. There will be a funeral, so you only need to do the job for a few days to get you through a few days. And then you must embarm the rest. And this will be on display rather like Lenin at a permanent monument. So as soon as Juan Duarte has had his shouting about God and everybody has cried, Dr. Alaa goes in with his assistant and they get to work. They make her body, and I quote, completely and definitively incorruptible by putting in some glycerin or whatever they do. Then They put it in a coffin, they put an Ardentine flag over it, and they put on a glass lid so people can... And the point is, this will only... They only need to do this. This needs to get you through in the next few days. Then the body will move to the labor ministry. Now, at this point already, the crowds are so thick that in that move, eight people are killed in the crush.

And in the next 24 hours, more than 2,000 people have to be taken to hospital with injuries because they're crushed in the crowd moving her body. So now Before we were into the national period of mourning. And at this point, I think it's fair to say that Argentina has gone completely and absolutely bonkers.

So this is brilliantly done in Abita.

There's a two-day shutdown of everything like a general strike. The CGT, the Trade Union Movement, has just members have to be in mourning for a month. They have to wear a black tie for a month, Tom.

Can I just have a quick zings on?

Oh, my God, really? Yeah. You feel this is appropriate in such a sad moment?

But who is this Santa Ravita? Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow? What Kind of Goddess has lived among us? How will we ever get by without her? Well, I mean, beautifully done.

It's beautifully done.

And very, very germane for someone living in Britain in 1997 as well, as we keep saying.

Yeah, as you said. So one writer, one other writer said, What followed was a bacchanal of necrophilia. I don't think it's entirely wrong, to be fair. So you see, they had planned for three days a morning. So you would go to the Labor Ministry, you'd go up the stairs, and there would be this coffin at the top of the stairs with a glass lid. Unfortunately, what actually happens is after three days, there was nowhere near got through the number of people who are coming. So it then continues for another 13 days, and the crowds are so fast.

Thirteen days? I mean, imagine.

So the crowd's queue is 30 blocks. I mean, this is far bigger. You remember their big business with the queue? With the Queen. For the queen. So they reckon, I checked this, about a quarter of a million people queued to see the queen. It must have been at least a million people queued to see Ava Peron's body. And all this time, by the way, the restaurants are still not open. The cinemas aren't open. Public transport has been shut down. There are giant photographs of her through the city. Every morning, there is a compulsory 15 minute period of silence during which passages from her ghost-written autobiography are read out over loud speakers.

Okay, I'm going to just give you another bit of song.

Okay.

We've all gone crazy, morning all day and morning all night, falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right.

Well, that's what they're trying to do. Beautifully done. Are you complimenting your own singing when you say beautifully done?

No, I was complimenting the lyrics of Tim Rice.

Tim Rice. A listener to the rest of his history, Tom. He must have his head in his hands listening to you massacring his lyrics. Poor Tim Rice. I feel sorry, Tim.

I'm paying the fitting tribute. Right.

Now, there's one person for whom this is a massive problem. This is Dr. Ara.

Of course, because he wants to get cracking on with his sinister potions and chemicals.

He's extremely alarmed because he needs to get on with working on the body. By this point, there is a mist that has formed. So condensation between the body and the glass plate at the top.

So the body is starting to decompose.

So what they're having to do is they keep having to, at night, when the crowds have gone, drill holes in the coffin lid to try to clear the mist. But Dr. Ara says, Every time you do this, that is interfering with my work. It was incorruptible, but it is becoming corrupted. Finally, on the ninth of August, they seal the coffin up again. There is a huge parade through the streets. The next day, there's another parade. All the desk come in as odd as all the shirtless ones, all the Peronist supporters, turn out 2 million people on the streets of Buenos Aires, flowers coming down like confetti from the buildings. This is the last goodbye. It takes 3 hours to get through the city, and finally, they come to the headquarters of the Trade Unions, the CGT. They take the body out, the coffin out, and they take it into this building. On the third floor, Dr. Ara has prepared a secret laboratory, and he is waiting, Tom, to receive the body. But what happens next is much more bizarre than anyone could possibly have anticipated.

Regular listeners to this podcast will know that I'm a big admirer of El Condé, the Chilean film in which General Pinochet is portrayed as a vampire. And that's a very weird, odd, striking film. But it's not as weird, odd, and striking as what genuinely happens to the body of Avita, and which we will be covering in the final episode of this series. We haven't recorded it yet, but I would be surprised if it doesn't turn out to be one of the very weirdest episodes that we have ever done. It will be coming out very shortly, so that's fine if you don't to get it immediately. But if you do want to get it immediately, and I think it will be well worth listening to, you can go to therestishistory. Com and sign up there and get it straight away. Because, Dominic, I mean, back me up here.

The story is-So spectacularly odd. You may think the Avita is gone, but the next episode, as Tom said, first of all, it's got vaporism. It's got body snatching. It has somebody called the Warlock who runs his own Death Squad. It has terrorism. It has mad cosplaying. People returning from beyond the grave, people who are supposedly dead, but actually still becoming presidents of countries. It is a very, very peculiar story. I think probably the maddest I've ever read up on.

Yeah, all that to look forward to. We will go and have a quick break now. I'll have a cup of tea, and then we'll be recording this, and you can listen to it. Hopefully, it will be ready for you. Bye-bye. Bye.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy.

Britain's number one fiction podcast.

I'm looking for Sherlock and Core Limited. That's us. Can I help at all? My son, my son is missing.

An epic 10-part adventure.

I'm Sherlock Holmes.

What do you do Sherlock Holmes?

What's a 14-year-old boy in Hounslow doing with this diamond? Would you like to know?

I mean, well, yeah, obviously.

Then follow me. From an iconic, Conan Doyle novel. You know? That's Mary. It's Mary Morseley.

Once you eliminate the impossible...

Put your hands on your head. Faced out. Okay, okay. Whatever remains, they will be. Sherlock? No matter how improbable must be.

Sherlock, no. The truth.

Sherlock and co. From Goalhanger. The Sign of Four begins eighth of October. Available wherever you get your podcast.