Question time: “O Evita, Where Art Thou?”

Many people come to Buenos Aires and wonder where Evita’s body is. I’m not sure if it’s a necrophiliac thing, or just common curiosity, but here’s the answer: in her family vault in the Recoleta cemetery. The reason behind this question is that the old broad did quite a bit of moving about, her dead body I mean, even going all the way to Italy at one point.
    The basic story of what could be called ‘Eva’s body’s travels’ is this: in 1955, three years after Evita bit the dust and her body was embalmed for all to worship and whatever, there was a huge ‘kilombo’ because a ‘dictadura militar’ took over ‘el gobierno Argentino’, which lasted from 1955 to 1958. The leader of this coup, Aramburu, was not a big fan of PerÛn, quite the opposite in fact, and Eva’s body, a big symbol (duh) of Peronismo, was kidnapped. I know, gross, right? They say her body was moved about the city in an anonymous truck, changing location daily so it couldn’t be tracked down. Aramburu then sanctioned ‘Operacion Traslado’ in 1957, and ‘el cuerpo’ was shipped off over the big pond to the land of pizza and Donatella Versace in a coffin under the name ‘Maria Maggi de Magistris’ and the coffin buried in a cemetery in Milan. Some versions of the story claim that the military made three wax copies of the body and sent them throughout Europe, as decoys I suppose. In 1971, halfway through the following military dictatorship of 1966 to 1973, the dictator General Lanusse ordered ‘Operacion Retorno’, which called for the return of Eva’s body and proved that the military really had no imagination when it came to naming their secret operations. Eva’s body was unburied and taken to Perón, her husband, who was then married to his third wife Maria Estela Martinez a.k.a Isabelita, where he lived in Madrid, and the corpse was missing a finger and the nose was a bit mushed, but apart from that quite intact. In 1973 Perón returned to Argentina with his current wife in tow and served as President until 1974 when he dropped dead and joined Evita in the sweet hereafter. Isabelita, now President of Argentina and first lady president of an American republic (suck on that, Cristina!), brought Eva’s body back to Argentina, which is weird considering Eva was her dead husband’s previous wife (if I were Isabelita I’d probably have dropped Eva in a ditch or some unmarked grave), but I guess it was some political/symbolic move or whatever. Then, in 1976 Isabelita was kicked out of power by another military junta, the infamous one of 1976-1983, and Eva’s body was given to her family, the Duartes, who buried her in their family vault in the Recoleta. And so ends the tail of ‘Evita’s body’s travels’, a thrilling tale of stupid operation names, corpse relocation and third wives! This is the stuff ‘telenovelas’ are made of. A mold was made of Eva’s dead face and can be found in the Museo Evita for those of you who are so (morbidly) inclined, as well as dresses and shit.
    El Pendejo Porteño