ARGENTINA: Little Eva

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There was little but determination to recommend Eva as an actress, but with energy and persistence she managed to wangle a few small parts in radio and the movies. (Her movies are never shown in Argentina these days.) She landed at last in a permanent if lowly job with Radio Belgrano, one of the biggest stations in the Argentine capital. There had been many men to help her on her way, and she had soon learned to pick the comers among them.

One night in July 1943, a month after the Generals' Revolution that put an end to Argentina's landholders' regime, Eva marched into her dressing room at Radio Belgrano. "Girls," she told her fellow actresses, "watch me." With that she picked up the telephone and asked for General Ramirez, the new President of the Republic. "Hola" she chirped, while the girls gaped, "is that you, General? Well, I'd love to dine with you. Thank you so much. You're very kind."

High Velocity. In no time, news of the call reached fat, excitable Jaime Yankelevich, the station's owner. Eva's salary was upped from 150 to 5,000 pesos a month. Her "official velocity," as the girls called it, was under way. Spiraling vortexlike in the wake of a revolution, it was to carry Eva to dizzying heights.

Three months later, Radio Belgrano had a party at its studios. The grand salon was filled with artists from stage & screen, important people in business and in the new Government. Among them were an eligible widower, Colonel Juan Perón, the Under Secretary of the War Ministry, and Eva Duarte, the rising radio star. It was the kind of warm, spring night on which romance blooms readily, and Eva Duarte and Juan Perón looked long and languidly at one another. Later, they went together to Tigre, a suburban resort a few miles up the muddy Rio de la Plata, where many a porteño goes to relax among the orange trees and the purple blossoms of the jacaranda. Soon afterward, Eva began to arrive for work at Radio Belgrano in a War Ministry limousine.

By 1944, Colonel Juan Perón had become the most powerful man in the Government. Eva was earning 35,000 pesos a month in radio, and almost that much in movies. She had moved to a new, modern apartment in fashionable Calle Posadas. Apartment A was her number. Colonel Perón took Apartment B. Evita (as he always called her) and Juancito (as she called him) were discussed from one end of B.A. to the other. Three society girls were arrested for spitting on their doorstep, but prospering Evita cared little. Her own star, and that of Juan Perón, were rising.

The Coatless. Unlike most of his co-revolutionaries, Perón was wise enough not to put all his faith in the military. In Argentina's Labor Ministry he worked long & hard to cultivate the miserable workers whom everyone else had neglected He became the friend of the worker, the champion of the descamisados, or coatless ones. At his side Eva Duarte discovered within herself a deep compassion for the underprivileged. She planned labor reforms, became head of the Radio Association, and took to calling her coworkers "my children." With Juancito she forged ahead valiantly in her new interests until October 1945, when Perón was suddenly forced out of the Government.