ARGENTINA: Little Eva

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On Buenos Aires' broad, stately Avenida Alvear last week, municipal workers in faded blue denim wearily hammered together a new temporary grandstand. "What is this for?" asked a reporter. "The July 9 Independence celebration? The arrival of Chile's President?" "Quién sabe?" answered a carpenter. "Perhaps for that. Perhaps for the return of the Sñora from her voyage. Ah, sñor, you have read of this voyage? A miracle, is it not so? Surely, all the world must know of it."

Surely the world did. And without a doubt, the triumphal tour of Argentina's beryllium-bright First Lady to the musty corners of the Old World had its miraculous aspects. For sleek, 28-year-old Doña María Eva Duarte de Perón was no ordinary tourist. There was scarcely a capital where her iridescent progress had not been reported inch by inch, scarcely a newspaper from the Times of London to New York's Daily Worker which did not wonder out loud over the significance of the trip.

In Argentina itself, Evita's tour was the talk of every town. Whether they considered her God's gift to the working class or a devil's advocate against the established order, the citizens of Argentina, who are Argentine first and partisan second, could not repress their pride in the First Lady's spectacular accomplishments.

"I Don't Care." Eva herself was an old story by now, but this latest romp had given conversation a new spice. For weeks, shopgirls riding the crowded subway of Buenos Aires had aired their views. "I don't care what she was," said one. "I just hope she can do what she promises." Pomaded young executives in the Calle Florida and stolid porteños (citizens of Buenos Aires) sipping tea in the Boston Bar rehashed the question of Eva's position. "I don't mean to be snobbish. I don't mind her humble origin in the least; many of us descended from poor immigrants, but there are other considerations." In the American Club, U.S. businessmen snickered knowingly over the old unprintable gags, as they followed Eva in the daily papers. And befurred society women stopped time & again to tell each other: "And my dear, it seems unbelievable, but did you hear what she said in . . ."

Even in the chancelleries where Eva's trip had been planned (President Perón hailed it as "the greatest act of its kind in Argentine history"), anguished ministers kept constant tabs on Eva by transatlantic telephone. "If only," thought some, their fingers crossed, "she'll keep off politics!" At the last minute, four weeks ago, when Eva was about to take off from Morón airport, President Perón had rushed his pet ghostwriter aboard her plane, just in case. But one never could tell about Eva. To the women of Spain, on the first leg of her journey, she said disarmingly: "I did not come for an Axis, but only as a rainbow between our two countries."