Evita Peron and her Legacy

 

Almost a Must-See for every visitor to Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the Evita Museum.  It is run by the Evita Peron Organization to remind visitors to her impressive legacy.  Not only as the First Lady and as a supporter of labor rights.  She also ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Peron Foundation, championed for women’s rights in Argentina, and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party.

Before her early cancer death, she took an unprecedented role as a powerful creator of a foundation to help workers and the poor.  She was called the “Spiritual Leader of the Nation" by the Argentine Congress.   As much as Evita was loved, she was equally hated by many of the country’s wealthy and powerful who were wary of her growing popularity and influence.  

Seven decades after her early cancer death in 1952, and the State Funeral in Buenos Aires at the Recoleta Cemetary, Evita continues to awaken passions in Argentina as her followers believe her image as a champion of the poor is more relevant than ever at a time when inequality and poverty are rising as the economy remains stagnated amid galloping inflation.  Evita has been the subject of countless books, movies, TV shows, and even a Broadway musical. Still, for some of her oldest, most ardent followers the connection with the actress-turned-political leader is much more personal.

The Evita Peron Organization describes her: 

The children in the Society’s orphanages, heads shaven, identified by numbers, not by names, stood on the street corners holding tin bowls or stiff signs - “Collection for Poor Children.”  Evita knew what it was to be without work and poor, and after she visited postwar Europe in 1947 she learned what to do and what not to do for those who needed help.

Her towns, schools, hospitals, villages for seniors, and homes for working women and their children were designed with the concept of helping and respecting people as individuals rather than efficiently accommodating numbers.  In the Children’s City, uniforms were banished - but clothes and toys came from the best shops in Buenos Aires. If you look at the children in the residences built by Evita’s Foundation throughout the country you will see that each child is dressed differently.

Part of Evita’s legacy was accomplished in partnership with Perón and Congress. Together they forged a safety net for the children, the workers, the seniors, and the poor of Argentina. Each group had a Decalogue of Rights. The Rights of Seniors were assisted to a dwelling place, to food, to clothing, to health care, to spiritual care, to entertainment, to work, to tranquility and to respect. 

The workers’ safety net included access to health care, minimum wage, paid vacations, and pensions. Also, Evita was instrumental in obtaining the vote for women. In 1951, women were elected to Congress for the first time. And they were all Peronistas. Only the Partido Peronista Feminino had presented a list of women candidates for Congress.

...Many of the things she made available - pots and pans, beds, houses, sewing machines, footballs - had meaning and usefulness because Evita was aware of exactly what difference it made to the life of a poor family to have these things. The work of the Foundation was efficient and personal, far more so than it might have been had it been bureaucratically exercised."

Evita’s Foundation constructed twelve hospitals throughout the country. The Polyclinic President Perón in the working class neighborhood of Avellaneda was a teaching hospital. It sent out a Tren Sanitario in 1951. The train went throughout Argentina providing free inoculations, x-rays, and medicines.

Evita established a School of Nursing. Just as she worked to get women the vote and a place in Congress so she worked with the head of the School of Nursing, Teresa Adelina Fiora, to create a new kind of nurse - one who could drive a jeep, set up and run a clinic in the interior of the country where doctors were scarce, go overseas on humanitarian missions, take initiative.

Her Homes for Seniors were really “ villages,” complete with workshops so that those who wanted to continue working at a useful occupation (from carpentry to milking cows) could do so. Evita believed that seniors should live in a place that encouraged them to go on living, not just wait for death.

Her Children’s Homes, the Hogar-Escuelas or Home-Schools, were also a place to live securely and to grow, a place where you were called by your name, never by a number, and never a place where you would have your head shaved as punishment because you were poor.

Continue reading all she had done for her country and the whole biography

https://www.evitaperon.org/part1.htm

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Evita Museum
Tuesday - Sunday 11:00 - 19:00  Admission 4,700 pesos ca. $5
Calle Lafinur 2988,  Intersection Juan Marìa Gutièrrez
https://www.evitaperon.org/eva_peron_museum.htm

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General Strike in Argentina - Photos from Buenos Aires

 

Peaceful protesters are marching to the Congress / 

armored police cars, officers heavily armed, and in riot gear are clocking the streets already 

Hope no one gets hurt ...

Photos I took on Av Mayo from 9 to 11 am

Deafening noise - and it will go on until midnight

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Argentinas Horrendous Junta Years

ESMA Museum

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Latin America underwent a period of political instability marked by military dictatorships and authoritarian governments, installed to fight against Communism in the context of the Cold War - and heavily supported by the United States! 

In Argentina, after a long series of military dictatorships, a new coup d’etat declared on March 24, 1976, was the beginning of the most bloody repressive period of its history, also called the Dirty War, ending in 1983.

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The ESMA Museum

The ex-ESMA is emblematic of the dark period in Argentina's history that left an estimated 30,000 people killed or forcibly disappeared, according to human rights groups. Of those, about 5,000 entered the site.  Very few re-emerged.  Established in 1928 to instruct naval officers and sailors, it was the largest and most active detention, torture, and extermination center operated by former genocidal soldiers being tried by civil courts to this day. 

Shackled, handcuffed, and hooded, victims arrived at the building’s cellar first.  For many, it was the last time they stepped on land before being taken away, disappeared, and thrown to their death.  Here, prisoners were tortured, beaten, raped, kept in chains for months on end, hooded – all in the hopes they would give up other people suspected of being "subversives".  Pregnant detainees had their babies taken and given to families with connections to the dictatorship.  Several still don't know their true identities today.

And every week – generally on a Wednesday – detainees were rounded up for what they were told were "transfers" but were in fact so-called “death flights” during which prisoners were thrown out of planes over the Río de la Plata – both dead and alive.

This is the aft door of the Skyvan, from where people were tossed out to fall down into the ocean

The Junta (from Wikipedia):

The Junta, calling itself the National Reorganization Process, organized and carried out strong repression of political dissidents (or perceived as such) through the government's military and security forces. They were responsible for the arrest, torture, killings, and/or forced disappearances of an estimated 22,000 to 30,000 people. 

With the help of Washington, the Junta was aided with $50 million in military aid!!!  

Prior to the 1976 coup, the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, otherwise known as Triple A, was another far-right group that provoked many deaths and installed methods that continued to be used by the dictatorship. 

Both, the juntas and Triple-A targeted young professionals, high school and college students, and trade union members. These groups became the main targets because of their involvement in political organizations that resisted the work of the right-wing group.  

Additionally, 12,000 prisoners, many of whom had not been convicted through legal processes, were detained in a network of 340 secret concentration camps, located throughout Argentina.  A vast majority of those who were killed disappeared without a trace and no record of their fate.

The military tried to regain popularity by occupying the disputed Falkland Islands.  During theresulting Falklands  War, the military government lost any remaining popularity after Argentina's defeat by Britain, forcing it to step aside in disgrace.  Then allowed free elections to be held in late 1983.  Since then democracy has ruled Argentina.

Under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner, the Argentine government re-opened its investigations on crimes against humanity and genocide in 2006 and began the prosecution of military and security officers.

Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo 

(Spanish: Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo) is a human rights organization to find their children stolen and illegally adopted during the 1976–1983 Argentine military dictatorship. 

Since 1977, every Thursday at 3:30 pm, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo walk around the Pirámide de Mayo in the city center of Buenos Aires.  The Mothers walk around the Pirámide de Mayo, wearing white headscarves, a symbol with which they have been identified for years, and demand to know the final fate of their children who were victims of enforced disappearance during the last civilian-military dictatorship.

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Read more:

Dutton, Ilana, "Argentina’s Dirty War: Memory, Repression and Long-Term Consequences" (2018). Summer Research. 308.

https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/death-flight-plane-that-flew-mothers-of-plaza-de-mayo-to-their-death-to-be-repatriated.phtml

https://datactivism.wordpress.com/2020/04/30/las-madres-de-la-plaza-de-mayo-revolutionaries/

https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/summer_research/308/

https://www.britannica.com/event/Dirty-War

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Camels, Guanacos, Llamas, Alpacas, and Vicunas

 

All of them are related to camels. Guanacos, vicunas, llamas, and alpacas.  But they live in South America, while camels are found in Africa and Asia.  Guanacos and vicunas are wild animals, but llamas and alpacas have been domesticated and were probably bred from guanacos. 

Guanaco 

Standing less than 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall at the shoulder, guanacos have a slender body, long legs, and a long neck. They are shorter and smaller than their camel relatives. Standing less than 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall at the shoulder, guanacos have a slender body, long legs, and a long neck. They are shorter and smaller than their camel relatives. 

Llama: 

It has a longer nose and much less fur on its face than alpaca. Llamas have a longer neck and head and ears in the shape of a banana. This also differs from the smaller alpaca. They are also less hairy. The size and bulk figure distinguish them from the sleeker and smaller vicuña and guanaco. Llamas can have a wide range of colors: brown, white, gray, and black, either solid or speckled.

 

Alpaca:

Alpacas are more reminiscent of a small llama than slimmer guanacos and vicuñas. They have straight and pointed ears. Alpacas have cute faces with a lot of furs and rounded noses. Their hair grows densely on their legs and cheeks. There is a much bigger variety of natural colors of their fur than of llamas, 22 in total, which range from white to black with various shades of brown and grey.

 

Vicuña:

Vicuñas are the smallest and most delicate of the four. They look similar to guanacos, but are more delicate and smaller and have shorter heads. Their ears are also pointed and share a similarly colored coat. It means light brown backs with white hair on the bellies, necks, and legs. Vicuña is the wild ancestor of the alpaca.

All of these animals are very shy, and as soon as you stop your car or bus to take a photo, they run away.  

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The guanaco's population, reduced by nearly 95 percent from the original number believed as much as 50 million, is now predominantly based in Patagonia.  Many farmers shoot them too as they don’t want them to eat the few grasses that they think are reserved for their sheep herds.  And instead of using dogs to herd the sheep and stop predators, they build fences everywhere …

An oft-quoted reference to wildlife from the ranch-land owners in Argentina illuminates the issue, “Todo son bichos”, translated as, “They are all insects”.  This has led to the hunting of pumas, guanaco, Darwin's rhea, Patagonian Humbolt skunk, Patagonian armadillo, in fact virtually everything that moves - cruelly producing an unbalanced, unhealthy ecosystem.

It is disheartening and shocking to see so many of the guanacos dead:  Often when they try to leap over the ranch fences, they are stuck on the barbed wires, cannot get forth or backward, and miserably die - often over hours and days.  Sometimes, even vultures pick on them while they are still alive.  In some areas, for example, when I took the bus to El Paine, I could see them from the road, hanging in different stages of life or dead still on the fence or the carcasses nearby. 

Read more here:

https://theecologist.org/2013/apr/16/fencing-plan-south-america-threatens-wildlife

https://theecologist.org/2013/feb/18/running-grassland-queen-patagonia

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