"Evita Peron, partido feminista!" The crowd echoed as Doctor Ricardo worked in the dimmed room. Juan Domingo Peron, president of Argentina, cradled the head of his deceased wife lovingly.
"Oh but it's sad when a love affair dies, the decline into silence and doubt." Peron sobbed as the Doctor began the embalming process. Hired by Peron, Ricardo was the best embalmer in the world. His task, preserve the lady of Argentina as if she were napping for all time. Eva's mother sat nearby, crying horribly. Peron's advisors now warned that without Eva, he had no hope of controlling Argentina. He would surely loose power. He sobbed again. "Ladies and gentlemen, Eva Maria Duarte de Peron has just been pronounced dead of Uterine cancer." Peron recognized his Military aide, Colonel Sanchez, on a bullhorn. The crowd gasped, and sobbing echoed en masse. Peron sighed, and lay down on the floor, and sleep came instantly.
The day of the funeral dawned cold and gray. Peron wore a black and gray suit. The glass coffin was loaded on a Military caisson. The procession walked slowly down the boulevards and avenues of Buenos Aires. The cathedral dominated the scene as Peron followed his wife's remains up the stairs. Dignataries were in full force. Pope Pius XII sat in a forward pew, the Prince of Wales sat in the rear. General Francisco Franco stood reservedly nearby, and sat as Peron sat. The Vice-President of the United States sat nearby. The funeral mass went slowly and quietly. The crowd that mobbed the church were weeping noisily. Afterwards Peron walked among the crowd. A man with a thin mustache cornered him.
"Peron, Your queen is dead, you are through. She is not coming back to you." The man disappeared back into the throng, but Peron knew he was right.
Juan Peron was forcibly removed from power six months after Eva's death by a Military coup. Che Guevera was killed in 1962 during the Bay of Pigs
Fiasco, in which he and several dozen others tried to assassinate Fidel Castro. Eva's body was hidden after the Military coup, and secreted to Italy, where it was buried under the name of Mary Magaldi. In 1965, when Peron managed to regain power in Argentina, he had Eva returned home. Peron died two months later, and joined his beloved Eva in the Duarte vault in La Casta cemetery in Buenos Aires. In 1987, vandals broke into the vault, and removed Juan Peron's hands with an electric saw. It remains one of the greatest unsolved crimes in Argentina. A plan started by Peron is underway to create a monument to Eva that would be twice as big as the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, and have Eva's glass enclosed remains in a special viewing room in the statue. Peron himself is now buried in the Presidential vaults of the Casa Rosada.
