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From Argentina: Sarah Palin Is No Evita!, Granny Jane
4 January 2010By Jane Stillwater
"Do you have any Evita T-shirts?" I recently asked a
docent at Buenos Aires' Evita museum. I wanted a
T-shirt with a picture of Evita Peron on the front. Is
that too much to ask for? Apparently so.
Here in Argentina, Evita is either worshiped as a
saint or vilified as the devil incarnate. In either
case, no one here wants to wear her image on a
T-shirt. Rats.
Even finding the Evita museum was a whole bunch of
work and involved at least two subway transfers and a
whole bunch of "Donde esta...." It's located out in
the Palermo district, sort of like the Beverly Hills
of Buenos Aires -- and there's a reason for that too,
which I will explain later.
I suppose in some ways you could think of Evita Peron
as Argentina's Sarah Palin. After all, our Evita did
have a passion for designer clothes. Plus both Sarah
and Evita cherished the limelight. But the
similarities between Evita and Sarah stop there.
Back in the 1950s, before it was even stylish and WAY
before grassroots bloggers like myself took up the
cause of America's economic underdogs, Evita Peron
seemed to be obsessed with offering help to the
poverty-stricken underclasses of Argentina -- and her
main goal in life appeared to be to narrow the huge
gap between the very rich in Argentina and the very
poor. Sarah Palin's life goal, however, appears only
to try to make herself wealthy too -- while using
America's discontented poor as a stepladder, climbing
up to the top on their backs.
I think it is fair to say that Evita Peron changed
Argentina forever -- from a feudal society of barrios,
peasants and overlords to a much more economically
democratic mix. And the few rich people who controlled
Argentina at that time hated her. But do rich people
today hate Sarah Palin? I think not.
In America today, like in 1950s Argentina, the goals
of the rich seem to be to create cheap labor and to
use government money for themselves. And the rich in
America appear to be achieving these two goals easily
-- by dividing us lower and working class types into
two different camps and then encouraging us go at each
others' throats so that we won't be noticing so much
as our wealthiest 1% clean out the till.
And with regard to splitting America's lower and
working classes into two warring factions, Sarah Palin
has been a really big help.
I myself find Palin to be rather tedious and a
media-hog. On the other hand, however, I find Evita
Peron to be endlessly fascinating. Evita walked the
walk. She built orphanages, schools and hospitals for
the poor, supported labor unions, championed
healthcare, etc. And when she died, the line of people
who came to pay respects at her coffin stretched out
for 35 blocks in the rain during the two long weeks
before her body was finally taken off display. Eat
your heart out, Sarah!
While in Buenos Aires, I also had the good fortune to
visit Evita's tomb -- and here's the video to prove
it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvsMX_pbu38. They
buried her in the rich people's cemetery, apparently
as a final insult to her love of the common man. But
this move by the elite has backfired and there are
still flowers being left on Evita's tomb by her
"shirtless ones" -- and by all of us tourists as well.
Recently I was lucky enough to run into Dawn Makinson,
a Canadian journalist covering her newspaper's South
American desk. "Got any hot Evita Peron stories for
me?" I asked her.
"I do." Then she told me about the time that Evita
went out and talked to supplicants outside the Casa
Rosa, Argentina's "Pink House".
"According to one of her drivers, Evita loved to
curse. And when she saw a woman in tears standing
outside the Pink House, she said, 'What the blankety-blank
are you crying about?' And the tearful woman replied
that a bank had just foreclosed on her home. So Evita
stuffed the woman into the presidential limo and drove
her off to the bank, whereupon Evita then cursed the
bank manager out and saved the woman's home."
Can you even imagine anyone in the Bush-Obama
administration -- or even Sarah Palin -- cursing out a
banker? No.
"But what about the orphanages that Evita founded?" I
asked. "Were they real or just for show?"
"No, actually I happen to know a surgeon who grew up
in one. According to him, that orphanage saved his
life."
Meanwhile, back at the Evita museum: Apparently it
used to be a home for poor widows at one time, and the
wealthy had been really pissed off to wake up one
morning and find "los pobres" living right down the
block.
I loved the Evita museum. It not only displayed many
of her dreamy 1950s outfits but also several film
clips from her old movies. She was the Lana Turner of
Argentina. The museum was well worth the trip.
So. We've explored the Evita myth and we've visited
her tomb and her museum, which is still going strong
even though Evita herself died back in 1953 or
something. Do you think that we will be having such a
popular Sarah Palin museum in the year 2066 also?
Probably not.
And here's even better news. I actually finally found
an Evita T-shirt!
PS: Che Guevara also comes from Argentina. And, like
Evita, he devoted his entire life to trying to
eliminate misery and degradation among South America's
poor. And guess what? Our Sarah Palin is no Che
Guevara either!
Becoming America's Che Guevara and fighting for the
rights of America's downtrodden is apparently not what
Palin had in mind when she declared that she was
"Going Rogue".
PPS: And while we are still on the subject of various
famous "going rogue" legends in South America who have
spoken out for the Common Man, let me remind you that
Sarah Palin is no Salvadore Allende either.
When I was in Chile, someone there told me that
Allende had first been a doctor who had been forced to
complete his internship by doing autopsies. "He
performed over 1,000 of them -- on people who had died
from poverty, violence and abuse. And after this
horrifying experience, he decided to become a
politician so that he could improve the situation of
poor people in Chile. And once elected president,
Allende supported the lower and working classes and
said that he wanted to make education affordable and
make people healthy -- and that he would put an end to
economic speculation." And the rest is history. The
CIA hated it when he did that. So they nailed him.
Palin will never have to worry about that happening to
her!
PPPS: When I went to the Evita Museum, I was still so
dazed and confused from getting lost on the subway
that I forgot to make a video of the museum. But not
to worry, I put together a short video of my photos of
the museum, including Evita's 1951 black Cadillac V-8
limousine and her wonderful black evening gown.
Anyway, here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDIdNOFXw98
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