Word: evita
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Maria ("Isabelita") Martinez de Perón, 42, has obviously learned more steps than did her predecessor. Evita's hopes of becoming Vice President in 1951 were dashed by a determinedly male-chauvinist military. This time round, with an overwhelming election victory for both Peróns, no such opposition is anticipated. Barring the total collapse of order in Argentina, Isabelita will become her country's first female Vice President on inauguration...
...replacement of Ramírez in 1944 with another general, Edelmiro Farrell), Perón's fellow officers cooled toward him. His romance with Maria Eva Duarte, then a third-rate actress of questionable reputation, did not help matters. Perón was a widower when he met Evita in 1943. His first wife, Aurelia Tizón, had died of cancer in 1938. Perón's ungallant epitaph: "Poor thing, she always bored me." Evita never bored him, but her captivation of Perón angered his moralistic, status-conscious colleagues...
...censure both Perón's political ambitions and his affair with Evita, the officers finally demanded and got his resignation from the government in October 1945. The maneuver backfired. The unions, abetted by army officers still friendly to Perón, called a general strike and staged a massive demonstration outside Government House on Oct. 17 (since celebrated as Peronist Loyalty Day). As they shouted, "Our lives for Perón!", he suddenly appeared on a balcony. "Where have you been?" they cried. Peron replied with the first of many demagogic harangues he would deliver from that same...
...first few years of his regime, Perón rode high. He continued to cultivate the workers, granting them more pay raises and awarding them unprecedented social security and vacation benefits. At the same time, Evita became the wife-mother of the poor, "the little Madonna" who spread millions of dollars in largesse among them from a loosely audited cache of government funds and forced "donations." The Evita cult grew alongside that of Perón himself. When Evita died of cancer at the age of 33 in 1952, there was an unsuccessful campaign to get the Vatican to proclaim...
Shortly after Evita's death, it became apparent that Perón was spending much more than the government was taking in. In fact, he had been squandering the huge profits that Argentina had accumulated as a neutral supplier of foodstuffs during and after World War II (making it then the richest country in Latin America, with foreign-currency reserves totaling $1.7 billion). The nationalized industries stagnated; inflation soared. Even the workers began to have second thoughts about el Líder as their paychecks purchased less...