The “life” of Evita didn’t end at her death. Not just due the persistence of her memory, but because her embalmed body was kidnapped by a squad called “Revolución Libertadora”. The decision was made after hard debates about what it should do with the corpse,including ideas such to throw it to the sea from a plane, or to incinerate it.

Finally, they decided that they should take it from the CGT’s building (CGT is the main syndicate of Argentina), to avoid that the place to become in a place for culte, and as a consequence, in a place for meeting of all her fervent devotees.

The sub secretary of work said: my problem are not the workers, my problem is the syndicate.

On November 22, 1955, on the night, the Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Eugenio Moori Koenig, actual chief of the intelligence service of the army, and his delegate mayor Eduardo Antonio Arandía ordered to captains Lapano, Alemán and Gotten to leave their position in the guard of the CGT, at the door that separated the body of Eva Peron from the exterior world.

The colonel, the mayor and the gang that was with them together brought the order of the highest authorities of the called “Revolución Libertadora” to steal the the corpse of the woman more beloved and most hated of Argentina.

And so, due those things of “obedience” and his own hate, they completed their mission in front of the astonished glance of the doctor Pedro Ara, who watched how they take with Evita, his most perfect work.

The orders were very accurate: they should give to the body a “Christian sepulture”. It didn’t mean but a clandestine burying.

But the chief of the gang was not only the chief of the intelligence but also a fanatic “antiperonista” that fell a particular hate for Evita. That hate was turning in a necrophile obsession that drove him to disobey the wishes of the same president Aramburu, and to carry the body all over Buenos Aires in a flower-shop truck.

He intended to deposit it in a division of the Navy and finally, he left it in the hillock of the house of his partner and confident,  Mayor Arandía.

Despite the hermetism of the operation, the resistance seemed to follow the clue of the corpse and wherever it passed by, flowers and candles appeared.

The paranoia didn't let him to sleep. A night, he heard noises in his house of General Paz Avenue, and in the believing that it was a peronista squad that came to rescue the corpse of Evita, he took his gun and emptied the charger over a shadow that moved in the dark: that shadow was his pregnant wife, who fell down death.

Moori Koenig tried to move the body to his house; but his wife opposed firmly.

That man had an unhealthy passion for the corpse. The testimonies match on affirm that he collocated the body - saved in a wooden box that previously contained raw material for radio-transmissions - in a vertical position, in his office; he touched and raped the corpse and he showed it to his friends as a trophy.

One of his unexpected visitors, the future movie director Maria Luisa Bemberg, couldn’t believe what he saw; alarmed for the impudence of Moori Koenig, she ran to tell it to her friend and chief of the military house, captain Francisco Manrique.

When the president was noticed about it, ordered the dismissal of Moori Koenig and his transference to Comodoro Rivadavia. The place was taken by the colonel Héctor Cabanillas, who proposed to move the corpse out of the country and to organize a “moving operation”.

Then, the future president Colonel Alejandro Lanusse got in scene. He asked for help to his friend, Chaplain Francisco Rotger. The plan was to move the corpse to Italy and to deposit it in a cemetery of Milan with a fake name. The key was the participation of the Saint Paul Company, religious community of Rotger, who would take in charge to watch the grave.

The challenge was to commit the help of the general director of the order, father Giovani Penco, and the same Pope Pio XII.

Rotger traveled to Italy and finally succeed. At his return, Cabanillas executed the “moving operation”. They shipped the coffin in a vessel called Conte Biancamano heading to Geneva; in the official mission went the officer Hamilton Díaz and sub officer Manuel Sorolla. In Génova Penco waited. The body of Evita was carried away as “María Maggi de Magistris”.

The inhumation was in the Cemetery of Milan, with the presence of Hamilton Díaz and Sorolla, who performed to Carlo Maggi, her brother.

A nun called Giuseppina Aroldi, best known as “Tía Pina”, took in charge to take flowers for Evita during the next 14 years, the period of time that the body was buried in Milan. Pina never knew that he was taking flowers for Eva Perón.

The operation was successful and the best saved secret of Argentinian’s history.

This affair begins again when in 1970, Montoneros (an armed movement) kidnaped to Pedro Aramburu and demanded for the corpse of Evita.

Aramburu said that the corpse was in Italy and its documents saved in a security box in the Bank of the Nation. He promised that he would bring the corpse back, in change for his freedom.

The communication number 3 of Montoneros, dated in May 31, 1970, says that Aramburu accepted the responsibility of the profanation of the place where

the remains of Evita rested and its next disappearance, to take from the population even the last material remain of who was its standard-bearer.

In 1971, during the presidency of Lanusse, as a sample of friendship, he brought back the body to Perón. Rotger traveled to Milan and got the corpse. Cabanillas y Sorolla traveled to Italy too. The exhumation was in 1 of July, 1971, it was taken to Spain and delivered to Perón in “Iron Door” (the name given to the house of Perón in Spain), two days later, by the ambassador Rojas Silveyra.

By a request of Perón, Pedro Ara checked the corpse and he found it intact; however Eva’s sisters and doctor Tellechea, who restored it in 1974, said that it was very damaged. Peron came back to Argentina with Isabel (his last wife) and José Lopez Rega, without the body of Evita.

When Perón passed away, Montoneros robered the corpse of Aramburu to demand Eva’s return. Isabel (now president) accepted the trading and ordered the moving, finished in november 17th.

The body was deposited beside the body of Perón in a crypt especially designed in the house of the president, in Olivos, to the public could visit them. In 1976, with the military government just started, admiral Massera proposed to throw the body to the sea.

Finally, the dictators accepted the claims by Eva’s sisters and to move the corpse to the pantheon of the family Duarte, in the cemetery of Recoleta

Somebody asked to a high chief of the army, very closed to Videla (the most reminded repressor):

“Why it was more urgent to move the corpse of Evita instead of Peron?”

The answer was: - “Because she was the only one who most scared us, even after her death”.

 

This text has been taken and summarized from a work by Felipe Pigna.

 

PD: It's the real history of the Eva's corpse. The song "Don't cry for me Argentina" is based on her speech, in the presidential house in 1946, when her husband won the presidential elections. I do not meant you to correct so long text, but I'd like to know whether you understand the meaning.