An illegitimate child never recognized by her father, Maria Eva de Duarte (her maiden name) displayed early on an independent spirit that gave her a reputation for being wild. She came to Buenos Aires as a teenager and established herself as a radio actress when she met Colonel Juan Peron. The couple were married in 1945. A year later he was elected president, and Eva threw herself into the role of first lady, setting up charitable foundations for the poor and the elderly that she personally directed. She also became an outspoken supporter of women's rights.

Quickly she gained the adoration of the common people. Their devotion reached its zenith during Peron's second inauguration in 1949, when millions of descamisados ("shirtless ones") marched on the capital to demand that she be named vice president. By the time of her early death from cancer in 1952, she had assumed the status of a saint in the minds of the common people.

According to her biographer Alicia Ortiz, Evita left behind three myths about herself that continue to the present day: The first is the myth of the secular Blessed Mother, the all-loving, compassionate matriarch interceding with the powerful on behalf of her children, the descamisados. The second, popular among the Argentine upper classes, is that of the Scheming Whore, who slept her way to the top. Both of these are variations of the virgin/whore dichotomy that is a familiar feature of patriarchal societies, in which women are represented as belonging in one of the two extreme categories, regardless of reality. The third myth is that of the Red Evita, which developed among the generation coming of age in the 1960s. These young radicals enlisted her name on behalf of socialist politics, claiming that the connection to her semi-Fascist husband was an accident of history and a distortion of her true self.

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