Hollander-SiEvitaViviera-1974

Si Evita Viviera
Author(s): Nancy Caro Hollander

Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 3, Argentina: Peronism and Crisisi
(Autumn, 1974), pp. 42-57
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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Si EVITA VIVIERA.
by
Nancy Caro Hollander

The experience of all liberation movements shows that the success of a revolution
depends on the level of participation of women.
-Lenin
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Peronism today is the manner
in which the movement is able to politically mobilize women. In most countries
one-half of the population is left marginal to the political process, but thanks to
the Peronist women's movement, hundreds of thousands of women in Argentina
are actively participating in that country's struggles for national liberation. Re-
cently Per6n himself asserted that it is important for Argentina to follow the ex-
ample of China regarding the important role of women in the creation of an inde-
pendent and developed nation. According to Peron (1973), the Peoples' Republic
of China is able to claim great national achievements because of the integral par-
ticipation of women in industry, science and agriculture, and Argentine women
have the right and responsibility to emulate the Chinese example in order to help
Argentina realize its potential greatness. This was not the first time that Peron
had referred to the significant role that women must play in the future of Argen-
tina. Indeed, it represents complete continuity with the principles established
during the period 1946-1955 when his movement ruled Argentina. Peron had al-
ways articulated the absolute necessity of integrating women into the process of
national liberation, and Peronist ideology had always asserted the equal political,
economic and social rights of women. Today, as in the 1940's and 1950's, women
are politically organized within Peronism through the Peronist women's move-
ment. In order to understand its contemporary appeal, it is necessary to look at
the historical roots of what remains a unique phenomenon in the Americas.
The political mobilization of women within Peronism was unprecedented in
Argentine history. Coming on the heels of long years of struggle by other femin-
ists and feminist organizations, Peronism distinguished itself from them by its
ability to appeal to the masses of Argentine women. It developed partially in re-
sponse to the integration of women into the paid work force during the thirties and
early forties - by 1949, women came to represent 31.37 percent of the capital ci-
ty's industrial workers - and built a national women's movement which not only
improved the living standards of working women, but raised the status of all
women in Argentina by giving them political equality with men and providing
them with an opportunity to organize themselves politically in a women's party
within the general movement. Official ideology eulogized women as equal part-
ners in the struggle to build an industrialized country with a just distribution of
wealth.
WOMEN AND FASCISM

Contrary to the traditional view in the United States that Peronism in the
post-war era was fascist, it represented a progressive nationalist movement
whose populist ideology stressed the equality and dignity of the working class.
Latin American Perspectives: Vol. 1, No. 3, Fall 1974
42
HOLLANDER: Si EVITA VIVIERA 43
One of the best indices of the progressive nature of Peronism was its posture to-
ward the social and political status of women. Women in the Peronist movement
played a profoundly different role than did women in fascist Germany, Italy, and
Spain. As Mussolini had stated quite clearly, "Woman must play a passive part
- . . My notion of woman's role in the State is utterly opposed to feminism. I do
not want women to be slaves, but here in Italy, if I proposed to give our women
votes, they would laugh me to scorn. As far as political life is concerned, they do
not count here" (Adams, 1939: 281-82). In Italy, whatever support that fascism
found among women came from the upper class. Some women, former radicals
like Mussolini, gave their support to fascism because it represented an attempt to
halt the people's struggles from below. They turned to the movement as a means
of protecting themselves from Bolshevism. In Spain, it was the same class of
women that rallied to the support of Franco as he attacked the Republican gov-
ernment in order to bring back the rule of traditional oligarchic interests in that
country. The women of the elite, hating the Republic and fearing the socialists,
joined Franco's campaign and worked to win the support of other women to his
cause. Women in the fascist party did not hold policy making positions; on the
contrary, they functioned on the traditional service level. Most of their activities
involved bureaucratic work, much of which was charitable.
Despite this support by upper-class women, in all fascist countries the major-
ity of women experienced a decline in status and opportunities. Germany is an
excellent example. The Nazis were in accord with Mussolini's position on women
and quoted him often. In early Nazi Germany, existing feminist organizations
were smashed and Nazi organizations of women were constructed to replace
them, although women never represented more than three percent of the total
Party membership. The Nazis took away women's rights earlier won by feminist
and Marxist organizations. German women were forbidden to sit as judges and by
1936, women were forbidden to hold any office in the courts. When the Nazis came
to power, there were 30 women in the Reischstag, and by 1938, there were none.
Moreover, the economic independence of women and their participation in the
work force were attacked. The battlecry was "children, church and kitchen," and
with that women were driven home. Official ideology functioned to take women
out of the employed population and to remove them from the professions in order
to reorient them to lower-paid occupations. Through 1933-1934, the Nazis dis-
missed an estimated 50,000 women a month from their jobs, and literally thou-
sands of women professionals lost their positions. However, Nazi ideology and ac-
tual policy soon came into conflict as Germany developed its war machine. It was
discovered that women were needed in the factories and fields so that the country
would not have to import primary and manufactured goods. By 1938, there were
more women employed in the paid work force than the total number during the
boom year of 1929. Mussolini also found himself caught in the contradiction be-
twen idology and necessity, and when Italy prepared for war in Ethiopia and in
Spain, women were increasingly absorbed into the paid work force. However, de-
spite this objective reality, women continued to be defined by fascism in their role
as reproducer rather than producer. The ideal continued to be that expressed by
Dr. Wilhelm Frick, German Minister of the Interior:
The mother should be able to devote herself entirely to her children and her fami-
ly, the wife to the husband . . . employment should remain given over to the man
(Millett, 1970: 163).
And as Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, emphasized, "The National
44 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
Socialist movement is in its nature a masculine movement . . ." Politics, he as-
serted, belonged to men, and women had to be eliminated from public life (Mil-
lett, 1970: 165).
THE CLASS ROLE OF WOMEN

Contrary to the experience of women in the fascist movements of Europe, the
masses of women during Peronism underwent an improvement in their economic,
political and social status. Moreover, it was the masses of women from the work-
ing class and the lower middle class who supported the movement, while the
women of the traditional elite and even many of the middle class could be found in
Peronism's opposition.
Undoubtedly the best symbol of women's changing role was Eva Pero'n. The
power which she exerted within the entire peronist movement placed her in sharp
contrast to the passive, shadowy figures of the wives of Mussolini and Franco, as
well as Hitler's Eva Braun. If Eva Peron was a controversial figure the world
over, there were few who would deny her outstanding personal influence during
her life as the wife of the President and the head of the Peronist Women's move-
ment. She served as a model to the masses of Argentine women, many of whom
found for the first time in their lives an opportunity to define themselves to some
extent beyond the role of wife and mother. As Eva Pero'n herself asserted,
The history of our people and the history of all the peoples of the world demon-
strates that women have been in the vanguard of all the great collective move-
ments, shoulder to shoulder with their men, with their sons, demanding their
rights in each historical period . . . the descamisadas of October symbolize our
women, committed to production, conscious of their social rights and ready to
defend them against all the oppressors and against all oppression (1950a: 22).
In fact, there are some who claim that the most striking social change to oc-
cur under Pero'n was the political mobilization of women. In 1950, Peronist Rief-
folo Bessone characterized from his point of view the most important aspect of
Per6n's social and economic programs in the following terms: "In my opinion,
the most important of the social changes of Peronism is the vote for women, not
only for what it signifies today, but also for its meaning in the future. I under-
stand that the woman's vote directly attacks the very essence of the State and
transforms it, giving it new dimensions, of which some are predictable and some
are unforeseen (1950: 52-53). And Peronist feminist Delia de Parodi, who was the
first women in the national House of Deputies to be elected as vice president of
that body, asserted that the change in the status of women under Per6n constitut-
ed "the revolution in the revolution" (1970).
The appeal of the Peronist movement to the masses lay in its power to im-
prove their real economic conditions and to articulate their passionate resent-
ment of the traditional oligarchy which had materially exploited them throughout
Argentine history. Peronism appealed especially to the migrants from the interi-
or of the country who had come to Buenos Aires during the thirties and forties, a
good percentage of whom were women. (For every 50 men who migrated, 100
women migrated to the capital city). These women represented the most exploit-
ed and marginal group of people in Argentine society. Not only had the majority
of them never before been politically organized, but they suffered from a sense of
uprootedness, loneliness and alienation that made them most accessible to a polit-
ical movement that actually improved their economic and political situation, be-
sides offering them a charismatic leader - indeed, a charismatic couple - with
which they could identify.
Within the context of Peronism, the women's movement became more nation-
alistic and popularly based than the previous Argentine feminist movement had
been. The movement's ideology continually linked the rights of women with the
interests of the masses and maintained that only with Argentina's national libera-
tion would Argentine women win the opportunity to real equality. The link be-
tween feminism and the working class movement was articulated quite clearly by
Eva Peron in a speech inaugurating the first national assembly of the Peronist
Women's Party:
Women are doubly victimized by all injustices. In the home they suffered more
than the rest of the family, because all the misery, all the desolation, all the sac-
rifices were monopolized by them so that their children would not suffer. In the
factory, they suffered from the power of their bosses . . . Despite the great in-
conveniences of their lives and the injustice with which they were treated women
did not conform themselves to be spectators, and they became actors in the most
transcendent phenomenon of modern time, the proletariat . . . Women have not
been mere spectators of the social drama. We have been actors and we will be in
the future with even more intensity. We demand a part in the struggle because
we have suffered as much or more than men . . . (1949a: 26-27).
WOMEN UNDER THE FIRST PERONIST REGIME

On October 3, 1944, in his capacity as Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare,
Peron created the first special Women's Division of Labor and Assistance in Ar-
gentine history. The Division would be responsible for important legislation af-
fecting working women who, by 1950, had increased their representation of the
salaried employees and wage earners in the whole of Argentina to 21.89 percent.
As was always the case, women workers tended to be concentrated in certain in-
dustries. Considering wage earners (productive workers) alone, they constituted
50.12 percent of the country's textile workers, 67.96 percent of its garment work-
ers, and 31.17 percent of its chemical workers.
The number of women workers increased even more in the capital city, where
the concentration of industrial investment continued at its traditional level.
There, women's representation of the salaried employees and wage earners in
industry climbed to 29.96 percent, while of the wage earners alone, they repre-
sented 31.37 percent. Moreover, women were going into the work force at a more
rapid rate than men. The number of female employees and workers in industry in
1950 was 78.63 percent greater than their number in 1939, while the number of men
increased over the same period by only 31.05 percent (Ministerio de Asuntos Tec-
nicos, 1939; 1949-50).
Improvements in the work conditions and wages of this increasing number of
working women was the goal of the labor legislation passed under the influence of
Peron. As early as 1944, women workers began to feel the benefit of new regula-
tions established by the Department of Labor and Social Welfare. In that year,
piece work, the most exploitative terms on which employers hired workers, be-
came illegal in all branches of industry. Moreover, equal pay for equal work for
male and female workers was establish-ed as an important principle to be imple-
mented. Also in 1944, for the first time in Argentine history, women who worked in
their own homes for employers came under a minimum wage regulation.
On September 13, 1945, decree 21.550 established that the protective legisla-
tion of 1926 be applied to telephone operators, heretofore not covered by any gov-
ernmental regulations. On September 28, 1945, decree 23.372 fixed the minimum
wage in the food industry and gave women a minimum wage of 20 percent below
that of men. While not implementing the important principle of equal pay for
equal work, the measure nonetheless improved the traditional situation in which
women were generally paid 40 percent of what male workers earned in that
industry.
In 1949, women working in the textile industry were given the right to equal
wages with men. The new regulation affected more than 15,000 women working in
that industry. It is not possible to document whether in fact this last measure was
universally implemented. In 1959, according to a questionaire sponsored by the
International Labor Organization, women workers in Argentina earned on the av-
erage of 7 percent to 15 percent less than men. While by no means equitable, this
differential in wages according to sex in Argentina is one of the lowest in the non-
socialist world. It is testimony to the really material improvements which women
workers experienced during the Peron years. Their self-esteem and social status
also grew because Peronist ideology emphasized the dignity of working class
women who, through their hard work and love of home and country, contributed
to the development of Argentina. As Eva Peron told women workers at an assem-
bly organized by the women's commission of the General Confederation of Labor,
it was from among the humble women of the country that the leaders of the Per-
onist women's movement would come. "The leaders will emerge from the mas-
ses;" she asserted, "and it will be the most hard working, the most abnegating
and the most disciplined who will be those who stand out, because it is the masses
that will decide. And I will support the elected individuals with affection and the
respect that I always feel for the decisions of the people" (1949b: 3).
Women's civil status was also improved during the Per'on years. In 1949, the
married woman was given constitutional guarantees of equality in marriage with
her husband and equal authority over her children, a significant departure from
traditional Argentine family law. In 1954, Peron actively supported a law which
gave illegitimate children the same dignity and rights conferred on those born in
marriage. In that same year, the Congress passed a new family code. It included
the right of divorce, a reform fought for by feminist organizations for decades.
Too radical for certain sectors of Argentine society, in 1955, following the military
coup which forcibly removed Peron from power, the diivorce law was abolished.
One of the most significant victories for women during Peron's regime was
the conquest of suffrage and the right to be elected to public office. Argentina had
had a long history of congressional debate with respect to women's suffrage at the
national, provincial and municipal levels. Through the years, feminist groups and
congressional sympathizers had presented proposals which were continually re-
jected after long debates about the "true" nature of women, the effects of their
vote on the family and society and the changes that the political system would
undergo if women were allowed to express their collective voice. There was never
enough support in Congress to even experiment with the repercussions on society
of women's suffrage.
EVITA AND THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT

What distinguished the attempts during Peron's Presidency to legalize wom-
en's suffrage from previous periods was the fact that the President and his follow-
ers were vocally in favor of the principle. Equally important was the active cam-
paign waged by Eva Peron on behalf of franchizing women. Eva's arguments par-
alleled those of earlier Argentine feminists who justified women's suffrage in
terms of the important role that women played within the family and the domi-
nant role they had in socializing each succeeding generation of Argentines. And
Eva, like many feminists before her who identified themselves with the working
HOLLANDER: SI EVITA VIVIERA 47
class, also demanded a political voice for women as just retribution for their his-
toric oppression by the ruling class. She extolled women's participation in the pol-
itics of the streets, claiming that their capacity for political mobilization had
earned them the right to express themselves as full and equal citizens.
On September 23, Law 13.010 was promulgated, establishing absolute political
equality between men and women. Evita asserted that the vote which women had
won was a new tool in their hands. "But our hands are not new in struggle, in
work and in the repeated miracle of creation," she said, urging women to use the
vote with the same consciousness that they had demonstrated historically in fight-
ing and working by the sides of their men to build a great Argentina (1950b: 11).
A national female voters' registration drive was carried out, and women were
able to vote in the elections of November 11, 1951. The majority of women every-
where voted the Peronist ticket; the percentage of women's votes going to Peron
ranged from 83 percent to 53 percent.
Why did such a large percentage of women vote for the Peronist Party? The
most widely held opinion, especially among anti-Peronists, is that women voted
for Peronism because Peron gave them suffrage. This assertion reflects a very
superficial view of women's political behavior. Generally in most countries the
voting patterns of women have been more conservative than those of men with
respect to parties advocating social change. In this case, by 1951 Argentina's pro-
gressive populist movement had more support in the national elections among
women than men. Alicia Moreau, socialist feminist and no friend to Peronism,
made a study of the voting pattterns of women in the capital city in order to deter-
mine their motivation for voting. She reported that in the working class districts
which she investigated, a very large percentage of women voted in favor of Per-
onism, while in the upper middle class districts, the majority of both men and
women voted for the liberal Radical ticket. Moreau concluded from her findings
that "women voted more from a sense of class than in gratitude for the suffrage
law" (1969: 293).
Perhaps the most significant fact of all marking a new departure in Argentine
history was the number of female candidates elected to the national and provin-
cial Congresses. All the elected female candidates were Peronists. The Radical
Party allowed no female candidates to participate in the election, and other politi-
cal parties, including the Socialist and Communist Parties, ran female candi-
dates, none of whom were elected. In contrast, all the Peronist female candidates
who ran were elected. Seven female Senators and 24 female Deputies took their
seats in the national Congress. No other country in the Americas could boast of
such a high number of elected female representatives. Many of these women were
from the middle and working classes with hardly any political experience. They
came, asserts one Peronist feminist, from the very guts of the people.
Despite whatever personal animosity male Congressmen held toward the
entrance of women into the political arena, on April 25, 1953, the Deputies of the
national Congress elected Delia de Parodi as its vice president. This event sym-
bolised the rising status of women during this period. She was the first woman in
Argentina, and one of the first women in the world, to occupy such a high position.
The political organization of the masses of women had begun with the cam-
paign for women's suffrage. Peronist women who were organizing women in the
poor neighborhoods formed women's centers that eventually developed into the
movement's unidades ba'sicas (literally, basic units or cells). These unidades bais-
icas, which were organized separately for men and for women, came to represent
in Peronist ideology the basic cell of the entire movement, the structural connec-
tion between the masses and the leadership. The Peronist women, often totally
new to political organizing, went into the barrios and factories, talking to women
about the need for political organization and consciousness raising. Apparently
moved by the enthusiasm of Eva Peron, these activists established unidades ba'si-
cas for women throughout the entire country, one for every four or five blocks in
working class and middle class neighborhoods of the capital city. The functions of
the unidades ba'sicas were to affiliate women with the Peronist movement; to
provide a social meeting place for women outside their homes; to provide day
care centers for the young children of women; to supply free legal and medical
aid; to offer classes in language skills, painting and sewing; to offer conferences,
lectures and discussons of current events; and to give annual exhibits of the work
which the women had accomplished during the year.
The Argentine government published books to be used in the classes of the
unidades basicas. The books had a simple style; and in a language the people
could understand they taught, from the Peronist perspective, the basic principles
of political economy, the nature of class society and the history of the Peronist
movement. They included statements about the role of women in society and the
necessity of implementing equal pay for equal work to dignify the labor of women.
In Mundo Peronista, a Peronist magazine, reports of the activities of various uni-
dades basicas kept other activists appraised of successes and problems in politi-
cal organizing. The following is a good example:
The women's unidad basica of Margarinos Cervantes No. 4168 in Buenos Aires
has sent in reports of its meetings for September and October . . . An article
about Peronist reality was read (one of the ones published by this magazine).
After explaining the article, questions were asked of the people and an interest-
ing dialogue ensued, reflecting the attitude with which the women followed the
development of the argument. Things which were unclear were clarified. This
procedure is efficient, and we advise this method for all the meetings. Clearly
here, the ability of the individual putting forth the ideas has much importance;
however, one should think always that one is not a teacher, but simply one com-
rade more, who in good faith and with the help of others, is developing oneself
and helping to initiate the formation of others (Nov. 1, 1952: 38).
In this way, women received public recognition of their existence and praise
for their efforts.
Much more so than the unidades basicas of the men, the women's provided a
warm environment in which they dealt together with a wide range of personal as
well as political problems. According to women who worked all day in the uni-
dades basicas, for the first time in their lives, they felt fulfilled in their work and
were able to develop a collective spirit with other women.
The separate organization of women was institutionalized, and the unidades
basicas were absorbed as part of the new Peronist Women's Party, which was
inaugurated on July 26, 1949, under the leadership of Eva Peron. This event was
also an historic departure in Argentina with respect to the political organization
of women, because the forms traditionally used by other political parties relegat-
ed the political activity of women to "women9s committees" and "women's auxil-
iaries." In the case of the Peronist movement, official ideology placed the wom-
en's branch of the party on equal stature with the male branch. In fact, the move-
ment was officially composed of three equal parts, the Peronist Men's Party, the
Peronist Women's Party and the General Confederation of Labor.
It is believed that the separate political organization of women was the result
of the political ideas of Eva Peron. The motives or interest of Juan Peron in such
an organizational form are not clear. However, what is clear are the motives of
the women who actually participated in the creation of the Peronist Women's
Party. To them the separate party was essential within the movement so that
women could be free to develop their own ideas in their own way. Since men had
had much more political experience and therefore always dominated any situa-
tion or group, it was argued that women needed their own organization in order to
acquire their own political expertise. The Party did offer women a sense that
their political involvement was not limited solely to supporting their husbands.
Rather, they were working in their own interests as autonomous people. The Par-
ty's program maintained that women had their own separate branch within the
movement because, according to Eva Peron, "just as only the workers could
wage their own struggle for liberation, so too could only women be the salvation of
women."
The program of the Peronist Women's Party went on to state that the Peron-
ist movement gave women full equality with men and that the Women's Party
functioned to integrate women into the movement which was struggling for the
causes of economic independence, social justice and the liberation of women.
"The Peronist Women's Party opens its doors to all women of the people, and
especially to the humble women who have been forgotten by the poets and by the
politicians," the program stated (Consejo Superior del Partido Peronista Femini-
no, 1955: 5).
In her speech inaugurating the first national assembly of the Peronist Wom-
en's Party, Eva Peron proclaimed that the aspirations and the program of the
Party were based on Peronist doctrine, and she congratulated the female dele-
gates who, she said, represented the masses of women ready to join the national
revolution against economic and social injustice. Because of having suffered dou-
ble exploitation, both in the home and on the job, she stated, women were joining
the struggle of the working class with a commitment equal to that of men. Ideo-
logically she linked the women's movement to the struggle of working class for a
strong Argentina independent of the control of the bourgeois and foreign capital-
ist powers. Eva personalized the relationship between feminism and the people's
struggle in the following way:
. . .as the standardbearer of the Peronist Women's Movement, I cannot carry, I

refuse to carry, another banner that is not the banner of the people. The day that
I feel incapable of interpreting my people, as I interpret them fervently and fa-
natically, I would resign before defrauding them, those whose spirit and flesh I
carry within me and whose race neither the flattery of fame nor the grandeur of
power could make me betray. I cannot betray the people because it would mean
the betrayal of myself (1949b: 10).
Contradictory to this progressive identification of feminism with the interests

of the working class and national liberation, certain conservative attitudes re-
garding women also existed in Peronist ideology. If on one hand women advanced
politically and economically, on the other they did not transcend their definition
as the "second sex". The ideology of Peronism continued to restrict them by trad-
itional patriarchal concepts which had always condemned woman to passivity
through an existence which was justified mainly through her role as wife and
mother.
Peronist ideology perpetuated the concept that women are inherently psy-
chologically different from men based on their biological role as reproducer. In A
Nation Recovered, Partial Perspectives of a New Argentina, it was argued that
because woman possessed an inherently more peaceful and loving nature which
"illuminates the struggle of man," the conquest of women's suffrage was a histor-
ical necessity. It was precisely because woman was the depository of the happi-
ness of the people and was able to intuit the truth that she deserved to be accorded
political equality. Thus this document used practically the identical concepts
about the nature of woman that were used by individuals arguing against female
suffrage, this time in order to assert the absolute necessity that women vote and
participate in the public life of the nation (Granata).
School texts also reflected a contradictory image of women. For example, an
official fourth grade text book from the period included information on the great
historical victory of women's suffrage, but the lessons taught young girls that
their political rights and duties should be carried out for the happiness of others
and that women's concerns were confined mainly to the home, which was their
great and irrevocable destiny.
One of the ways in which Peronism made its way into the hearts of the people
was through its songs, the most popular of which was The Peronist Youth (Los
Muchachos Peronistas). Although the men's version was the most widely sung,
there was also a version for women, the words of which reflected the Peronist
concept of the distinct roles of men and women. A comparison of the first stanza in
each will suffice to point out the difference:
the men's version:
The Peronist youth
All united we will triumph
And as always we will give
A cry from the heart:
Viva Per6n! Viva Pero'n!
For that great Argentine
Who knew how to conquer
The great masses of the people
Combating capital (the capitalist class).
the women's version:
The Peronist young women
With Evita we will triumph
And with her we will offer
Our life for Peron
Viva Peron! Viva Perd'n!
For Peron and for Evita
We want to give our lives
For Captain Evita
And for General Pero'n.
The men's version reflected a more active, more participatory attitude toward
political action than that of the women's, which emphasized the sacrifice of
their lives to the individual Pero'n.
The Program of the Peronist Women's Party reflected the same tension between
the definition of woman as both autonomous and dependent. The Party's general
statement of principles asserted that it had been created under the leadership of
Eva Peron to the end of dignifying woman and that although the Peronist Wom-
en's Party was intimately linked to the Peronist movement, it was independent
from the Men's Party in order that women be autonomous from men and find the
road to their authentic liberation. However, Peron occupied a paternalistic posi-
tiOtx in relationship to the Women's Party.
Although the movement in general was characterized by its paternalism, it was
ironic that the autonomy of the women's movement ended with an absolute loyalty
to the man Peron. The Party's program specified that the Supreme Chief of the
Peronist movement, General Peron, was the leader of the Peronist Women's Par-
ty and had total authority to modify or to nullify decisions of the Party authorities.
One of the most explicit expressions of this contradiction within Peronist femin-
ism was the speech which Eva Peron delivered at the inaugural act of the first
national assembly of the Peronist Women's movement. Female delegates from
the entire country crowded into the sumptuous National Cervantes 'Theater in
Buenos Aires on July 26, 1949, to hear Evita, wife of the President and leader of
the Peronist Women's movement, address them with respect to the significance of
that day. Declaring that the separate organization of women did not in any way
mean that the women's movement was separate from the Peronist national revo-
lution of the people, she nonetheless spoke to the special oppression which women
had historically suffered and to the necessity of raising the banner of the specific
demands of women within the national struggle. She praised women for their spe-
cial qualities of gentleness, openness, fortitude and strength, urging them to dedi-
cate their energy to the national revolution which existed thanks to the leader,
General Peron. The most blatent manifestation of the movement's paternalism
occurred in Eva's constant references to Peron, asserting at one point that "for
women, to be a Peronist is, before anything, to be loyal to Peron, subordinate to
Peron and blindly confident in Peron! " (1949a: 6). Thus it was that women owed
their political awakening and a changing image of themselves as active beings
engaged in the world to a man. And thus it was that in exchange, they owed to that
man their unquestioning gratitude and support.
EVITA AS POLITICAL ACTIVIST

Perhaps it is Eva Peron herself who provides the best synthesis of the pro-
gressive and conservative tendencies in Peronism with respect to the image of
women. Born an illegal child to a lower-class family in Los Toldos, she suffered
the stigma of such status in a society dominated by bourgeois values. In 1935,
when she was in her teens, like hundreds of thousands of other women suffering
from the depression and seeking jobs in Argentina's capital city, Eva moved to
Buenos Aires. She was motivated by the desire to become an actress, one of the
few supposedly glamorous alternatives to domestic or factory work for young
women of her class.
For approximately eight years she was condemned to a life of poverty and
marginality in the compromising world of the theater where she achieved only
limited success. Through diligence and a stubborn desire to expand her horizonis,
she managed to become known as a bit actress in the theater and to appear in
several mediocre films. She even secured a steady position at the important radio
station, Radio Belgrano, and at her own suggestion, developed a radio series on
the biographies of famous women in history. She also acquired minimal union ex-
perience as the head of the Argentine Radio Association.
When Evita met Colonel Juan Peron in 1944, she was a young woman of 25
years, with little formal education and hardly any political experience. Her politi-
cal concepts evolved within the contest of her personal relationship with Peron
who had already developed his Justicialist ideology. However, her political senti-
ment came from her own personal history which engendered a profound identifi-
cation with the descamisados and an authentic hatred toward the oligarchy from
whose power and values she had suffered her entire life. But the strength which
came from that hatred only partially offset the debilitating effects of the internali-
zation of the values of patriarchal class society.
Throughout her political career, Evita's socialization as a woman and the in-
securities which she suffered because of her class origins weighed heavily on her.
Her own underestimation of herself and her intellectual dependency on Peron is
reflected in the official version of her autobiography, My Life's Mission:
We married because we loved each other, and we loved each other because we
wanted the same thing. In different ways, we both had wanted to do the same
thing; he, knowing well what he wanted to do; I, by only intuiting it; he, with
intelligence; I, with the heart; he, prepared for the struggle; I, disposed to all
without knowing anything; he, cultured and I, simple; he, enormous and I,
small; he, the teacher and I, the student. He, the figure and I, the shadow (1951b:
63).
She emphasized constantly that she owed all she knew and was to Peron and
that all of her actions were founded on her love and admiration for him. In all of
her speeches, she urged women to imitate her in her devoted loyalty to the man
who was responsible for making Argentina a sovereign and just nation.
At times her feminism was blunted by her acceptance of the male as the re-
pository of intellect and action and the female as the custodian of emotion and
intuition. For example, in a series of classes which she gave on the history of
Peronism, she implored Peronist women to remember that:
It is not necessary to scorn man, because he lends his intelligence (to the strug-
gle) and we our hearts, so that together with intelligence and feeling, we will be
able to collaborate, as we are right now, supporting General Peron to construct a
happier, more just and more sovereign homeland (1951a: 151).
And in various ways, while she urged women to struggle autonomously for
their own political development, she reinforced the traditional view of the role of
women in the home as the mainstay of the society.
Especially in the first years as the President's wife, Evita chose a public im-
age which reflected her internalized reification as a woman in bourgeois society
and her desire to escape her lowly social origins by achieving the life style of the
bourgeois woman. Because of her class and the life she had led in the theater
world of Buenos Aires, she was refused entrance into the elite society of the wives
of the oligarchy and denied admission into the upper class women's organization
The Beneficence Society, both honors due her as the wife of the President. Resent-
ful and bound to show off her status in spite of the rebuff, she began to dress in
elaborate and expensive dresses, fur coats and jewels, and demanded that she be
referred to officially as Senora Dona Maria Eva Duarte de Peron. To her descam-
isadas, she justified her costly clothing as something that every woman, even the
poorest, should have the right to wear.
But her image began to change as she increasingly defined herself as some-
thing more than the wife of the President. She learned to see herself as a political
activist in her own right through her practice which kept her in daily contact with
the people. She gradually adopted a more simple style of dress and preferred that
people call her simply Evita. She became known throughout Argentina as
"Companera Evita," and often said that her name had been transformed into a
"battle cry for all the women of the world."
At times Evita had a revolutionary potential which helped her stand before
the people as independent of Peron: "The people can be sure," she once said,
"that between them and their government, there never could be a separation. Be-
cause in this case in order to divorce himself from his people, the President would
first have to divorce his own wife! " (Pichel, 1968: 163).
The ferocity with which she executed her projects distinguished her commit-
ment to social change from the more pluralistic methodology of Peron. In fact,
much of her personality was characterized by an intensity and determination
which engaged her followers and deeply offended her enemies. She was angry,
and when she had the chance, she avenged herself and her class against the mem-
bers of the oligarchy who would not cooperate with the Peronist government. One
of her favorite tactics was to nationalize the company of an uncooperative busi-
nessman; and while she was considered ruthless and arbitrary by those who were
hurt, her bravado undoubtedly won the admiration of the workers who lived vicar-
iously through her challenge to their class enemy.
Although the official interpretation of the Peronist movement that its histori-
cal task was to eliminate the struggle between the classes and to substitute it with
the cooperation of labor and capital, such reasoning did not satisfy Evita: "I,
however, because of my mode of being, am not always on that exact point of equi-
librium. I recognize it. Justice for me is almost always a little bit more than mere-
ly one half of the road . . . nearer the workers than the bosses! " And in response
to the accusation that her politics were motivated by mere personal resentment
because of the life she had led, she emphasized the political nature of her feelings:
"I am sectarian, yes, I do not deny it . . . Could anyone deny me that right? Could
anyone deny to the workers the humble privilege that I am more with them than
with their bosses? . . . My sectarianism is besides a compensation, a reparation.
During a century the privileged were the exploiters of the working class. It is ne-
cessary that that be balanced with another century in which the privileged are the
workers!" (Cairdenas, 1969: 160). These comments are a telling example of why
Evita has always been considered the representative of the left within Peronism.
Evita's class resentment was reinforced by her anger which came from being
a woman in patriarchal society. She knew that no matter how hard she worked,
and no matter to what extent she influenced governmental policy, the male world
would never allow her to assume an official political position within the govern-
ment. In fact, her attempt to represent the Peronist Party as its vice presidential
candidate in the 1951 elections was squashed by opposition from the military and
possibly because of Peron's own fears of her potential competition for the leader-
ship of the movement. Thus Evita was relegated to the more ambiguous status as
the "spiritual leader of the nation."
Peron was known for his ability to compromise, to get along smoothly with
different interest groups, to conciliate. Evita was known for her quick temper, her
stubbornness, her inability to compromise and her sense of revenge when she felt
she had been wronged. Those qualities represented the process of channeling out-
ward toward the society the anger that she had been taught to turn inward against
herself as she grew up in a society which demeaned women. To the extent that she
became conscious of the anti-feminist values which had caused so much of the
pain of her own life, and able to achieve a political position to do something about
them, she articulated her understanding in a powerful appeal to women to organ-
ize against their oppression based on their class and on their sex. She developed
an identification with other women and a commitment to certain basic feminist
ideas. She insisted that, as her past had taught her, economic independence was
absolutely essential for the dignity of every woman. Upon marriage, she pro-
claimed, each woman should receive her own wage that would come from all the
paid workers of the nation, thereby allowing the wife and mother independence
from her husband. Such a plan would also dignify the labor of the housewife, who
was destined to work in constant monotony without any financial recognition by
society of her important contribution. She also demanded that women receive
equal pay for equal work if they had jobs outside the home.
Convinced that women had unique and positive qualities of love and strength,
Evita did not want them to become "masculinized" by emulating men in their
political activity. On the contrary, she stressed the radical expansion of the influ-
ence of the qualities which she felt were embodied in women:
I believe that a women's movement, organized so as to become a definite force in
each country and throughout the world, would be of immense benefit to the whole
of humanity. I have read somewhere that what this world of ours mostly feels the
lack of is love . . . I should rather say that the world at the moment suffers from
a lack of women. Everything, absolutely everything in this world, has been con-
ducted on men's terms . . .
Asserting that women were much more prone to respect human life and much
less inclined to wage wars of economic conquest than men, Evita concluded that
the world would benefit from the positive influence of women in the political ar-
ena (1951b: 283-287).
Evita's death from cancer at the age of 33 brought to an abrupt halt the car-
eer of one of the most powerful women in the world. We do not know to what ex-
tent she might have developed in independent political analysis and a more radi-
cal political position than that of her husband Juan Peron. Neither do we know if
she would have eventually confronted him in a demand for an official political
position within the Peronist government. We do know, however, that it was Evita,
the strong willed individual woman whose militant anti-oligarchic attitudes en-
deared her to the masses, rather than Evita the feminist, which made her a leg-
end in her country. In the 31 years since her death, her image has remained the
standard bearer for her descamisados in their struggle against years of economic
stagnation and political repression. Today the Peroxist movement is profoundly
divided between a right wing, representing the bourgeoisie and conciliatory lead-
ers of the CGT bureaucracy, and a left wing, composed of rank and file workers,
the petty bourgeoisie and students who are struggling to bring about radical social
and economic change as a solution to the problems of their country. Fitting to her
life and thought, it is the left within Peronism that embraces the image of Evita as
its symbol of struggle. Posters plaster the walls of Buenos Aires with the slogan
"If Evita were alive today, she would be a Montonera." And in demonstrations,
often numbering up to 100,000 men and women, the people chant:
Evita Montonera
Evita of the FAR
Evita, captain
Of the popular war.
Peronism was able to build a women's movement with a national mass base
for a variety of reasons. The feminist movement was not isolated from, but inte-
grally part of, a national movement of both men and women whose ideology
stressed national economic sovereignty and social justice. The organization of
women, even within the form of a separate party, was not viewed as a threat to
the general movement, nor an attempt on the part of women to divert energies
from what was considered the main task at hand, which was the struggle against
historic dependency and the construction of an industrial state with a just distri-
bution of the wealth. Earlier socialist feminists, as well as feminists within the
communist movement, had ideologically linked the woman question to the anti-
imperialist and class struggle, but their practice reflected the same weaknesses
and inability to appeal to the masses as did the practice of their parties in general.
Moreover, contrary to most of the earlier feminists, the leaders of the women's
movement within Peronism, including Evita, tended to come from the working
and lower middle classes and had a very natural link to the women whom they
were organizing.
The ideology of Peronist feminism was not profoundly radical enough to total-
ly challenge the established role of women. The political contradictions inherent
in a populist movement such as Peronism were reflected in its attitude toward
women. Even while women were urged to take an active role in public life and
their political equality was legitimized, their spiritual role within the family was
often defined as their major sphere of influence. In this way, Peronism did not
entirely threaten men and women who were socialized within the traditional value
structure of Argentine society. Despite the militancy of Evita's message to the
women in the Peronist Women's Party, the feminist movement in the final analys-
is had as its leader a man, President Peron, and this paternalism dampened the
threat which men and women would have felt from a totally separate and auton-
omous feminist movement. Since Peron was the political leader of the women who
joined the Peronist Woman's Party, as well as their husbands' leader in the Per-
onist Men's Party, women found it easier to enlist their energies in a cause to
which both they and the men of their families owed their allegiance.
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF PERONIST FEMINIST IDEOLOGY
A special word must be said regarding the contradictions within Peronist

feminist ideology. Historically patriarchal values have defined woman as inher-
ently more emotional, loving, gentle, passive, pacific and less intellectual than
man. While on the one hand she has been idealized for these attributed qualities,
on the other hand it has been asserted that because of them she is inferior to man
and therefore capable of fulfilling only the functions of wife and mother, with the
consequence that she should be excluded from participating in public life. Peron-
ism turned that thinking on its head. While it accepted the idea that woman is
inherently more loving, gentle, intuitive and pacific than man, it eulogized those
qualities and justified the political equality of woman precisely because of them.
Thus in Peronism, the socialization of women as wives and mothers which trained
them to be loving, comforting, self-denying and sensitive to the needs of others,
was not used against them to limit their sphere of influence. On the contrary, they
were praised as possessing positive qualities without which the nation could not
become great.
The contradictions within Peronist ideology regarding women partially ac-
counted for its wide appeal. Some women were comfortable within the Peronist
movement because of elements of the ideology which emphasized the traditional
idea of the place of women in the home. These women could consider themselves
Peronists without having to challenge their own socialization or confront the real
secondary role which they occupied in their immediate social relations or in the
larger social relations of the society. On the other hand, the radical ideas of Per-
onist feminist ideology legitimized the militant potential of many women to
change the traditional and narrow definition of themselves. These women, too,
could consider themselves Peronists and therefore justify their attempts to open
new options for themselves, following the example of their powerful and dynamic
leader, Evita. Finally, the contradictions which were evident in Evita's political
thought and practice were themselves contradictions with which many women
could identify. As contemporary Argentine sociologist, Juan Jose Sebreli, writes:
The virtues and the defects of Eva Peron are those of the Argentine woman of her
era with its immense possibilities and its limitations, and all women of Argentina
should view themselves through her mirror. Not completely class conscious, her
passionate, spontaneous, anarchistic conception at once reflected and stimulated
the spontaneity of the Argentine working class. The workers saw themselves re-
flected in Eva Pero?n because they lacked ideological tools . . . and because they
did not have an authentic class-based party, nor a coherent, revolutionary ideolo-
gy . . . (Sebreli, 1966: 74).
The reformist policies of Peron did not challenge the basic socio-economic
structure of Argentina which had been traditionally controlled by the oligarchy
and foreign interests. Thus no sustained economic growth could take place from
the early 1950's on. Whatever advances women (and the working class in general)
experienced under Peron were undercut, especially after the 1955 military coup
which removed him from power. Populism then, could not change enough of tradi-
tional Argentine society to guarantee real and lasting changes for women. Years
of economic stagnation, a rising cost of living and continual political instability
have been responsible for the present condition of women: increasing unemploy-
ment among women workers, declining opportunities for female college gradu-
ates and a decrease in female participation in the political life of the country.
These same conditions have been responsible for increasing class conscious-
ness, anti-imperialist sentiments and militant resistance among the working
class, students and some sectors of the petty bourgeoisie. Women have participat-
ed in a variety of ways in the growing mass struggle against the military dictator-
ships of the 1960s and early 1970s and have become important as an organized
sector of the revolutionary tendency within Peronism whose goal is to build a so-
cialist society in Argentina. The Peronist armed groups which began operating
clandestinely about six years ago claim their share of female activists, all of
whom have demonstrated courage and commitment to revolutionary armed
struggle, often at the expense of their lives. The "revolutionary tendency," whose
ideological leadership is provided by the Peronist armed groups - the most im-
portant of which is the Montoneros - created an organization in 1973 called the
Agrupacion Evita whose intent is to influence the conservative politics of the trad-
itional Women's Branch of the Peronist movement. The Agrupacion Evita prov-
ides an organized opportunity for leftist female activists to reach women in the
factories, slums and poor neighborhoods of Argentina in order to politicize them
regarding the oppression they suffer based on their class and on their sex. Femin-
ism in the Agrupacion Evita reflects some influence of the contemporary wom-
en's liberation movement of the United States and Europe, and many of the tradi-
tional contradictions found in the Peronist Women's Party are not quite so pron-
ounced. According to Agrupacion Evita's publications, the separate organization
of women is still an absolute necessity because women have their own struggle to
wage and their own demands to raise within the general revolutionary movement
against imperialism. The group maintains that women must struggle now to de-
velop their own political analysis and leadership in order to guarantee that in the
future society women will enjoy economic, social and political equality with men.
The class antagonisms which have continued to increase in Argentina during
the past several decades are manifested openly within the Peronist movement it-
self, with a division between its right wing and left wing widening daily in a vi-
olent and hostile confrontation which threatens to break the back of Populism
once and for all. The importance which women have been able to assume within
the movement is demonstrated by the fact that both the right and left tendencies
are today symbolized by women. When Peron won the presidential campaign of
October 1973 after 18 years of exile, his wife, Isabel Perodn, became his Vice Presi-
dent. On his death in July of 1974, Mrs. Peron assumed the Presidency, becoming
the first woman President in the history of the Americas. Highly unpopular with
the masses, she is simply the titular head of the government and is managed by
the conservative elements in the Peronist movement. At the same time, the left
within the movement becomes increasingly radical in its political position, assert-
ing that its historical task is to create socialism in Argentina. This tendency has
as its inspiration and symbol of struggle a woman. Pictures and quotations of
"Companera Evita" adorn the walls of public buildings, unidades basicas and pri-
vate homes throughout Argentina. Evita's contradictions while she lived are now
separated into the antagonistic symbols of Isabel and the right wing of Peronism
on the one hand, and Evita and the left wing on the other.
REFERENCES
Adams, Mildred
1939 "Women under the Dictatorship," Dictatorship in the Modern World, Minnesota:
G. S. Ford, Ed.
Bessone, Rieffolo
1950 Derechos sociales de la mujer, Buenos Aires
Cardenas, Gonzalo et al.
1969 El Peronismo, Buenos Aires: Carlos Perez, Editor
Consejo Superior del Partido Peronista Femenino
1955 Reglamento general del Partido Peronista Femenino, Buenos Aires
Granata, Maria
n.d. "Valoracion de la mujer en el Peronismo," Una nacion recobrada, enfoques par-
ciales de la nueva argentina, Juan Imbrogno, et al, Buenos Aires, Subsecretari'a de
Informaciones de la Presidencia
Millet, Kate
1970 Sexual Politics, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co.
Ministerio de Asuntos Te'cnicos
1939, 1949-50 Estadt'stica industrial, Buenos Aires
Moreau de Justo, Alicia
1969 "Participacion de la mujer en la politica nacional," Revista de la Universidad
Nacional de Co'rdoba, X, (March-June)
de Parodi, Delia
1970 Interview, April 30
Peron, Eva
1949a Discurso en el acto de la primera asemblea nacional del movimiento Peronista
femenino, Buenos Aires, July 26 1
1949b Habla a las trabajadoras del pats, Buenos Aires,
1950a Escribe Eva Pero'n, Buenos Aires: Subsecretaria de Informaciones de la Presi-
dencia
1950b La mujer ya puede votar, Buenos Aires
1951a Historia del peronismo, Buenos Aires: Escuela
1951b La razon de mi vida, Buenos Aires: Editorial Peuser
Pero'n, Juan
1973 Peron convoca a la mujer, Buenos Aires: Mensaje 6, Agosto 27
Pichel, Vera
1968 Mi pazs y sus mujeres, Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudestada
Sebreli, Juan
1966 Eva Pero'n: aventurera o militante?, Buenos Aires: Editorial Siglo Viente

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Si Evita Viviera

Author(s): Nancy Caro Hollander

Nancy Caro Hollander

WOMEN AND FASCISM

And as Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, emphasized, "The National

THE CLASS ROLE OF WOMEN

WOMEN UNDER THE FIRST PERONIST REGIME

EVITA AND THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT

. . .as the standardbearer of the Peronist Women's Movement, I cannot carry, I

Contradictory to this progressive identification of feminism with the interests

EVITA AS POLITICAL ACTIVIST

THE CONTRADICTIONS OF PERONIST FEMINIST IDEOLOGY

A special word must be said regarding the contradictions within Peronist

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