Resting in peace has never been easy for Juan and Eva Perón, Argentine icons whose bodies after death were separated from each other and have endured everything from frequent international airplane travel to grotesque physical defacement.
Next month, officials plan to write a new chapter in the convoluted saga, moving Juan Perón's coffin from his family crypt in Buenos Aires to a ceremonial Mass in the offices of a labor union coalition, then on to a new mausoleum about 35 miles outside Buenos Aires. But the question is, why would they want to?
Reason No. 1: Perón remains an enormously stirring political symbol, and celebrating the populist strongman's legacy is a powerful ritual in a country where the party he founded still dominates national politics. Reason No. 2: Argentina has a long history of honoring -- obsessively so, some would say -- its dead. Reason No. 3: Surviving members of Perón's family believe he would have wanted it this way, and that moving his remains will bring him one step closer to a reunion with Eva, who is buried in a different cemetery in Buenos Aires.
The new crypt was designed to accommodate multiple coffins, his and hers.
"The idea is one day Evita might join him there," said Alejandro Rodriguez Perón, 45, a grandson of Juan Perón's brother, who has helped coordinate the move. "Apparently one of her sisters is opposed to the idea right now, and we're respecting that, but maybe someday another relative will agree to it."
The planned move will end a relatively uneventful period of more than a decade for the beleaguered cadaver of Juan Perón, who died in 1974, about 22 years after Evita died. His body was last disinterred in the late 1980s after authorities discovered that thieves had broken into the mausoleum and -- for reasons unknown -- had cut off his hands and stolen them.
"It's a terrible idea to move him again after all that has happened," said José Luis Perrete, who since 1979 has been selling flowers at the Chacarita Cemetery, where Perón's body lies along with those of his mother, father, brother and niece. "I don't know why they can't simply leave him alone."
The ultimate act of homage
For many, the reason is clear: Reuniting the two corpses would be the ultimate act of homage to a couple whose political philosophy championed the poor. And if the funereal nature of such adoration seems morbid in some circles, most of those circles exist outside of Argentina. In this country, the line between the reverential and the macabre has always been thin.
"The Argentine passion for the relocation of cadavers has a long history and has aroused infinite conjecture," Argentine novelist Tomás Eloy Martínez wrote in a 1996 essay entitled "Lessons of Necrophilia." To prove his point, Martínez scoured Argentine history and came up with a long list of examples, starting with the story of Juan Lavalle, an opposition military leader who was killed by a stray bullet in 1840. When decomposition foiled a plan by Lavalle's followers to hide his body from his enemies, they decided to reduce the body to its skeleton and venerate the sparse remains.
"At last we see you smiling, my general, after so much weeping!" said one of the soldiers, saluting his commander's skull.
But little in Argentina's history could have foretold the story of the Peróns. When Evita died in 1952, her husband spent nearly $100,000 to have her immaculately embalmed for eventual display in an elaborate shrine that he planned to build. But a military coup toppled Perón in 1955, and soldiers seized Evita's body for fear that her remains might serve as a potent symbol that could incite a Peronist rebellion.
They secretly shipped the corpse -- which had been physically defiled -- to Italy in 1957, where it was buried under a false name. It was unearthed in 1971 by military rulers and sent as an appeasement to Perón, who was exiled in Spain and whose supporters were threatening the dictatorship with unrest. Perón reclaimed the presidency in an election in 1973, but he died before he could arrange the return of Evita's corpse to Argentina. His third wife, Isabel Perón, took over as president and had the corpse flown to Buenos Aires in 1974. The corpses of both Peróns were displayed together during public viewing ceremonies on the grounds of the presidential estate.
But when another military coup knocked Isabel Perón from the presidency in 1976, the new military leaders decreed that the bodies of Juan and Evita be sent to their respective family crypts -- his in Chacarita, hers in the Recoleta Cemetery in central Buenos Aires.
Tourist destinations
Both graves today are tourist destinations. Hers usually attracts more visitors, in part because of its central location in one of the city's most-visited neighborhoods.
"Evita should stay in one place -- forever," said Luis Mendias, who guides four or five tour groups through Recoleta Cemetery each week. "She's still alive in the Argentine soul, and she deserves to rest in the heart of Buenos Aires -- not in a place that has nothing to do with this country's history."
But according to those who back the move -- including a coalition of 62 labor unions expected to turn out members in large numbers for the reinterment -- the coffin's next home, San Vicente, was a favorite place for the Peróns to unwind. The suburb is located in the province of Buenos Aires, where Perón was born and where he once indicated he would like to be laid to rest. Family members -- including Isabel Perón, who lives in Spain -- have approved plans to move the corpse, and officials said they expect to get a judge to sign a transfer order before the end of the month.
"The mausoleum in Chacarita is not a fitting place for General Perón, someone who was a three-time president of Argentina and who was one of the greatest political leaders the world has known," said Gerónimo Venegas, general secretary of the Argentine Union of Rural Workers and Longshoremen. "He deserves more."
