SAXTONS RIVER — Varied as the country itself, Argentina's women are brave, buoyant and beautiful. Sometimes they're silent, often they are flamboyant. They're classy, cosmopolitan, rurally regal.
They range from little-known to infamous, from the politically active to the nameless poor. They own businesses, dance the tango, and have streets named for them in a Buenos Aires neighborhood where The Bridge of Woman commemorates them, even though Argentina remains largely machismo.
Among them are The Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Argentine human rights activists who for decades have fought on behalf of the children who disappeared during Argentina's “Dirty War,” when government agents killed pro-democracy activists.
Every Thursday afternoon they march in the central plaza of Buenos Aires carrying banners, wearing head scarves bearing their children's names, and reading aloud those names. They are joined by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an organization instrumental in locating more than 10 percent of the estimated 500 children kidnapped or born in detention during the military era (1976–1983).
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina's current president, is among the more famous political women. She succeeded her husband, Nestor Kirchner, when his political career faltered, spawning comparisons to the Clintons. President Kirchner, formerly a senator and once a member of the Peronist Youth Movement, belongs to the Front for Justice Party. She is the first elected woman president in Argentina; Isabel Perón, third wife of Juan Perón, served from 1974 to 1976 after he died. She often is compared to Eva Perón.
In 2007, Kirchner defeated Elisa Carrió, who is likely to run against her next year, posing a real threat. The Kirchners have come under fire for various reasons, including U.S. allegations of illegal campaign contributions, charges of embezzlement, and massively increased personal assets since taking office.
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Kirchner is said to have a “highly combative speech style” similar to Perón's, and she doesn't dispute the likeness to Argentina's most enigmatic woman. Like Evita, she is popular with the working poor, having identified herself “with the Evita of the clenched fist before a microphone.”
That clenched fist was a landmark posture for Eva Perón, who remains as intriguing today as she was before her premature death in 1952. Born in 1919, Eva Duarte went to Buenos Aires to further her acting career. There she met Colonel Juan Perón, who quickly rose through the political ranks after a 1945 military coup ousted the president. By the time Perón became head of state, Eva had been at his side through numerous disasters. She quickly became a political figure in her own right.
“Evita” was a beloved spokesperson for the disadvantaged, the working poor, and women. She developed a relationship with unions, championed the elderly, and fought for women's suffrage, thus providing herself a solid political base. Increasingly, she took to the podium, telling her followers: “My mission is to transmit to the Colonel the concerns of the Argentine people.”
She traveled widely and met famous people as well as ordinary citizens. In 1947, she told rapt Spanish women, “This century will not go down in history as the Century of World Wars…but rather as the Century of Victorious Feminism.”
Evita, a media master, began her work for women in earnest. “I'm fighting for women's right to vote, and I won't cease in my struggle until that right becomes reality,” she broadcast. In September 1947 a law guaranteeing Argentinean women the right to vote passed.
Soon after, the Peronista Women's Party, with Evita as full-control president, was established. Neighborhood centers, “something which belongs to Evita,” were quickly established.
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Evita, who loved wearing haute couture and expensive jewels, personally supervised the Eva Perón Foundation, which addressed pressing social issues. The origins of its funds were controversial, and there were complaints about dangerous Perón influence. But some claimed the criticism was purely misogynist: “Evita confronts us with the enigma of power attributed to a woman in a traditionally and formally patriarchal society, a society that devalues women as against men,” one historian noted. Others argued that Evita had lost sight of her sympathies and had become dictatorial.
In 1951, ill with cancer and with people clamoring for her, Eva was urged to be Perón's running mate. She emerged on the balcony of Casa Rosa in the Plaza de Mayo and said, “Friends … I will do as people ask.”
But a few days later, she announced her “irrevocable decision to renounce the honor which the workers and the people” had wanted to bestow on her.
Evita voted in that election, for the first and last time, from her sickbed. Then she accompanied her husband to his second inauguration. It was her last public appearance. At the age of 33, she was gone from Argentina's political arena, but she remains a vivid and curious part of that country's political and social history.