More than 30 years after his death, former Argentine president Juan Domingo Peron remains an iconic figure, a charismatic strongman whose appeal to the working classes still transcends his autocratic style, his sympathy for Nazi war criminals and his open admiration for Benito Mussolini.
Peron’s public devotion to his second wife, Eva, cemented his popularity with the masses who adored her. Evita was a poor girl turned actress/prostitute turned first lady whose life story became a movie starring Madonna. She worked to empower women politically, to feed, educate and house the poor and to raise laborers’ salaries at the expense of the middle class–all before dying at age 33.
A bereft Juan Peron lasted two more years before he was ousted in a coup. By the time he returned to power 18 years later, he had acquired a third wife, Isabel, a former nightclub dancer 34 years his junior. Though she served as vice president, not first lady, she never measured up to Evita. And she was a poor replacement for Juan, whose death in 1974 elevated her to president just as the right wing of the Peronist party was turning violently on left-wing insurgents.
Last week, Isabel Peron was arrested in Spain, where she lives in exile. An investigative judge wants her to answer questions about a student activist who disappeared weeks before Peron was ousted by the armed forces in 1976.
The administration of current President Nestor Kirchner has aggressively prosecuted the military leaders responsible for that coup, which launched eight years of state-sponsored terrorism known as the “dirty war.” Nearly 13,000 are officially listed as dead or missing, and human rights groups say the number is closer to 30,000.
Isabel Peron’s arrest signals a new twist in the prosecution, which until recently focused on abuses that occurred under the military regime that deposed her. Now prosecutors are going after the Argentine Anti-communist Alliance, or Triple-A, a right-wing death squad blamed for at least 1,500 deaths from 1973-76.
The case against Isabel Peron is built around a 1975 presidential decree authorizing the armed forces to “annihilate subversive elements” throughout the country. But the Triple-A had been “disappearing” left-wing opponents for years before the documents were signed. It’s unthinkable that Juan Peron didn’t know about the death squads, which were controlled by his aide, Jose Lopez Rega, a student of the occult who later became Isabel Peron’s closest adviser. But Argentines tend to blame Lopez Rega and the widow Peron, scornfully dubbed “the wizard and the tart.”
Questioned in 1997, Isabel Peron said she had no idea abuses were being committed in her name. She characterized herself as a “poor ignorant woman” who lacked the political experience to run the government. It’s a pathetic defense, but plausible: The political and economic chaos during her 20-month presidency were remarkable even for Argentina. That won’t spare her from prosecution or ignominy. She was the commander-in-chief and she is, conveniently, alive. Juan is not. Once again, he gets a pass.
