Santa Evita

Santa Evita is a historical novel based on the real story of the corpse of Argentine public figure Eva Peron, who died of cancer at age thirty-three. Author Tomas Eloy Martinez tells a fictionalized account of the saintly status that was given to Peron's corpse after she died in 1952. The novel uses magical realist techniques to convey the political and cultural situation in Argentina in the middle of the twentieth century, and includes ideas on the nature of storytelling and cultural myth-making, which lead Eva Peron's body to acquire the status that it did.

Eva Peron began her life as a small-time Argentine actor but made a name for herself when she decided to marry Juan Peron, who was elected to the presidency in 1946, a year after their marriage. Eva spent the six remaining years of her life dedicated to the political parties of Argentina and to the “Peronists,” a party that was pro-labor union and supported the work of her husband, Juan. Eva Peron became both an idealized, beloved figure for Argentinians and a despised woman to opposing political parties. Eva became a figurehead for the soul and life of the Argentinean people, much like the beloved Jackie Kennedy in America. Martinez, the author, poses as an investigative journalist into the affairs of Peron's life and the life of her corpse, in order to trace what happened to the body after her death in 1952. However, rather than taking a strictly journalistic approach to his story-telling, Martinez transforms the tale into an absurdist comedy, with a dark edge, in order to make an argument about storytelling and the absurd political situation in Argentina at the time.

Eva Peron died of a particularly malignant cancer at a young age, at the height of her role as a figurehead for the decamisados, or “shirtless ones,” the laboring men who supported the work of Juan Peron. Legend has it that Peron paid for a prestigious Spanish embalmer to travel all the way to Argentina in order to perfectly preserve the corpse of his wife, for whom Peron intended to build a monument. After three years, Peron was overthrown and the monument was never built.



The main action of the book comes from Colonel Moori Koenig, who is part of the military coup that overthrew Peron and who is obsessed with stealing Eva’s body in order to destroy it, thus eviscerating one of the most significant symbols of the Peronists, who hope to take back the Argentinian presidency. Emotionally attached to the body, Koenig and his troops begin to believe that it has magical, hypnotizing, and healing powers. The body is hidden for nineteen years while the military remains in power; it isn't returned for a proper burial until 1974.

Similarly, the embalmer who created the beautifully portrayed corpse of Eva Peron also becomes obsessed with the body, not for its powers, but because he says the work as one of his most masterful. The Spanish embalmer, Dr. Ara, creates many wax replicas of the body to maintain the beauty of the woman and of the work, creating trouble for the troops of Colonel Koenig, who are often unsure whether they have the real body of Eva Peron or one of Ara's wax replicas.

Meanwhile, fanatical supporters of Eva, who is now referred to as Saint Evita or Santa Evita, track down the body no matter where Koenig hides it, leaving flowers, notes, and other mementos by the grave, revealing its hiding place. Enraged by their inability to deter the followers of Evita, the military finally hides the body in a cemetery in Milan, making copies of the corpse, which they scatter all over the world to distract followers from having a single grave at which to hold a vigil.



Martinez, himself forced into exile, moved to the United States in 1975. A journalist, he was exiled after the publication of his political novel, The Passion According to Trelew, which told the story of the Massacre of Trelew. However, Santa Evita is perhaps his most famous book, published in thirty-three languages and in fifty different countries. Martinez wrote fifteen books before his death from a brain tumor in 2010. His accounts of Eva Peron and her corpse became the foundation for a Broadway musical and an acclaimed feature film, Evita (1996), which caused Eva Peron to become a cultural icon not only in Argentina but also around the world. Most of Martinez's books deal with the Peronist era and the aftermath of his dictatorship.