Eva Peron... ???

I could comment on the matter at hand but I don't think I could qualify under your requirements...

Interesting question, gunga.

As a Baby Boomer from the peak of the BB, I have to tell you that I was five when Eva Peron died. I would hardly have known of her at the time. You really need to ask people of the WWII generation about the Perons.

I would also add that the Perons are sometimes not considered leftists and that there have always been charges of Fascism, a right-wing political philosophy, levelled at both Eva and Juan. Biographers have explained the Perons links to Franco as more ethnic than political and have noted that the Perons were not anti-Semitic, although there was an anti-Semitic bend to Argentine politics before Peron. However, Juan helped Nazis settle in Argentina in order to gain technology. It is thought that Eva had no understanding of Facism or Nazism. Furthermore, Juan was not a totalitarian and he allowed opposition parties to exist.

This quote from the Wiki article on her may answer some of your questions:

In a 1996 interview, Tomás Eloy Martínez referred to Eva Perón as "the Cinderella of the tango and the Sleeping Beauty of Latin America". Martínez suggested Eva Perón has remained an important cultural icon for the same reasons as fellow Argentine Che Guevara:
Latin American myths are more resistant than they seem to be. Not even the mass exodus of the Cuban raft people or the rapid decomposition and isolation of Fidel Castro's regime have eroded the triumphal myth of Ché Guevara, which remains alive in the dreams of thousands of young people in Latin America, Africa and Europe. Ché as well as Evita symbolize certain naive, but effective, beliefs: the hope for a better world; a life sacrificed on the altar of the disinherited, the humiliated, the poor of the earth. They are myths which somehow reproduce the image of Christ.

Books: Woman with the Whip, by Mary Main; another by John Barnes, unnamed in the Wiki article; another biography by Nicholas Frazer and Marysa Navarro; Peron and the Enigmas of Argentina by Robert D. Cresswaller; Julie M. Taylor, a professor at Rice University, wrote Eva Peron: The Myths of a Woman. An article by John McManners in the Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity examines the Eva phenomenon in terms of Latin American "mythology and concepts of divinity." Evita is second only to Our Lady of Guadalupe in terms of the devotion she has engendered.

I doubt this article on Wikipedia does Evita some justice.

There are also articles on her in 58 other languages on Wikipedia and, as I can understand some of those languages, I can say they contradict each other, depending on the country where they were written.

Those in English focuse mainly on her wrongs while many others stress mainly on the myth she created while defending her people..

I looked at the link you provided. I was trained as a journalist and I have done academic research through two master's theses. I write that not to brag but to support what I have to say next: The link is a kind of yellow journalism. At some point, either one of my journalism professors or a journalist whose lecture I attended said that if you begin research looking for a way to malign, criminalize or destroy the reputation of an individual or an association or a branch of government, your research will allow you to do what you set out to do.

Your question is framed in such a way that it depicts the left as a vast but amorphous and international web. You must learn that what is left and right in America is not left and right in France or Argentina or China or Zambia. Furthermore, what was left of center in America in 1890 may not have been left in 1920 or 1950 or 2010.

Perhaps the political history of France illustrates the vacillation between left and right, liberal and conservative more than the history of America does. Throughout France's long history, that nation has moved back and forth across the political spectrum and groups have risen only to fall. When I look at the political histories of both the US and of France, I see different movements capturing the imaginations of small groups of people for various reasons, including the state of the economy, the size of the population and the level of technology.

Culturally, America is closer to France. Argentina resembles neither nation. It is a combination of its Spanish heritage . . . and Spain fluctuated between being a world power and isolated back water for centuries . . . as well as the indigenous cultures of that country. HAve you read any magical realism? If you have not, you should as it would enable you to better understand Latin America.

Finally, remember that the film Evita is more than slightly ahistorical.

evita workexd at a whorehouse for years that's fine by me but that expalins a lot

Only mind deprived Americans can make such assertions.

That says a lot about brainwashing...

One general rule is that Wikipedia is immensely valuable as a resource for any sort of question for which no controversy could plausibly exist e.g. 'how does a 2-stroke diesel engine work?' or 'How many people live in Gdansk?', but is nearly worthless for controversial topics, which would include the Perons.

That doesn't explain much at all. Juan Peron could probably have afforded several whorehouses of his own without having to marry anybody...

That has largely been discredited.

Which is exactly the reason to turn to Wiki first. Yellow journalism is no journalism.

Like I said, Wiki is utterly useless for anything controversial; you'll read one side of whatever it is and there will be no mention that any other side even exists.

One thing the yellow journalist DID get straight is that by all rights Argentina should be an economic powerhouse roughly equivalent to the US, that it in fact WAS so around 100 years ago, and for some reason no longer is; that's a basic bottom line.

Some of what I read on sites which view Peronism as the solution to the universe's problems is amazing, e.g.

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/Juan_Peron.htm



I mean, that's beyond anything even Fairfax County ever dreamed up. Again it's one thing if the country is really generating the wealth to pay for all of that; quite another if you're basically just selling the nation's future to buy votes and pay for some sort of a one-generation binge and, again, I don't really have answers for this one.

One thing for sure, the biggest problem film-makers would have with Eva would be finding an actress pretty enough.

And that 'actress' was not Madonna. The woman can not act. I thought Evita was a festival of boredom that lasted for three days. My kids and I watched it together. We turned it off before it was done.

Gunga --

Listen, you need to look into objectivity. The only time a 'side' counts is in a personal account.

No, Wiki is not useless.

Yes, you miss the point about yellow journalism.

Well, Argentina is still the most middle class of the South American countries with a literacy rate of 97%.

That would be true if the middle class was measured by literacy rates. But it's not. It's measured by the % of people making between $6k and 30k a year.
At this moment only Mexico and Brazil are in the top 25. It is projected that Venezuela will be the only Latin American country to join the others by the year 2050.

One of the biggest problems for Argentina and the rest of Latin America is the pervasive influence of the"mordita"(little bite), a system of corruption and bribery that distorts the free market system.

Do you see the Perons as heroes of any sort?

Why do you ask?

I found that the statement that Argentina is the most middle class of South American countries and added that it has a literacy rate of 97%. Actually, in America, where the middle class in ambiguous, membership is measured by having a college education and earning more than $100,000/annum, according to one standard.

That leaves very few in the middle class. My parents considered themselves middle class. My mother was a high school graduate who was a stay at home mother while my father left school in the 8th grade to support his mother whose multiple sclerosis had begun to manifest itself. His top wages were about $17,000 in the early 1970s.

Since 1979, the real wages of 80% of the work force have remained constant.

The mordida is a Mexican system and seems not to exist in Argentina. I found no mention of it although my survey was brief. I did, however, find it active and growing in Texas.

Like I said, I'm having a hard time forming an intelligent opinion of them. Stuff I find on them is all over the place.

One thing I notice is that the Americans must have been trying to starve Spain into some sort of regime change right after WW-II and the Argentines basically said "Hey, **** YOU!!, we're not gonna let the people of our home country go hungry because of any of YOUR sexual hangups"..., and supplied food. That must have given Harry Truman and everybody in Washington at the time a terrible case of the ass against the Perons.

seems pretty high for middle class. In any case, the study I read used 6k-30k American for a world-wide list of countries with the largest middle class.


la mordida(thanks for the correction) is a Mexican slang word but the practice is prevalent in Argentina.