ARGENTINA: Little Eva

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Yet the Presidenta, her waxen face as deadpan as it always is when she is not smiling, will insist time & again that her husband governs alone, neither asking nor getting her advice. "I am his wife," she says, "and I am interested only in social work."

Last week, in an expensive flowered dress and white picture hat, her burnished, bleached gold hair in sleek rolls over her ivory nape (Italians compared her to Lana Turner), Eva Perón bared her soul to Italy's League of Women Voters. "I am a woman of the people," she said. "All my efforts, all my longings and all my concerns are directed to support women's just aspirations." Eva and the women of Italy sighed deeply. Then, smiling graciously, Argentina's First Lady accepted their gift: a 1554 copy of the Divine Comedy—by Dante, an ancient author.