As is known, the Evita’s “life” it did not end with his death. Not only because of the remarkable persistence of memory, but also because his embalmed body was kidnapped on the first floor of the CGT by a commando called “Liberating Revolution”. The decision was made after arduous debates about what should be done with the body that included prescient proposals, such as throwing it into the sea from a Navy plane or cremating the body. Finally it was decided that, first of all, she must be removed from the CGT to prevent the building on Azopardo street from becoming a place of worship and therefore a meeting place for its ardent supporters. As the undersecretary of Labor of the coup government was heard to say: “My problem is not the workers. My problem is ‘that’ which is on the second floor of the CGT”. 5
On the night of November 22, 1955, Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Eugenio Moori Koenig –his surname means “king of the swamp”–, head of the Army Intelligence Service (SIE), and his lieutenant Major Eduardo Antonio Arandía ordered the captains Lupano, German and Gotten to abandon their guard posts in the CGT over the door that separated the corpse from Eva Peron from the outside world. The colonel, the major and the gang that accompanied them brought the order emanating from the highest authorities of the so-called “Liberating Revolution” of kidnapping the corpse of the most loved and most hated woman –although not in the same proportions– in Argentina. And so, due to those things of “due obedience” and class hatred itself, they completely fulfilled their mission before the astonished look of the doctor Peter Ara, who saw how they got along with avoid to his most perfect work.
The orders given by the coup leaders, curiously called “liberators”, to the lieutenant colonel and his group were very precise: the body had to be given a “Christian burial”, which could not mean anything other than a clandestine burial. But the “king of the swamp” was not only the head of that intelligence service, he was an anti-Peronist fanatic who felt a particular hatred for Evita. That hatred gradually became a necrophiliac obsession that led him to disobey his own President Aramburu and subjecting the body to unusual walks through the city of Buenos Aires in a flower van. She tried to deposit him in a Marine unit and finally left him in the attic of the house of his partner and confidant, the eldest arandia. Despite the secrecy of the operation, the Peronist resistance seemed to follow the trail of the corpse and wherever it went, candles and flowers appeared within a few hours. Paranoia kept Major Arandía from sleeping. One night, he heard noises in his house on 500 General Paz Avenue and, believing that it was a Peronist commando that was coming to rescue his standard-bearer, he took his 9-millimeter and emptied the magazine on a bundle that was moving in the dark. : It was his pregnant wife, who fell dead on the spot.
moori koenig tried to take the body home; but his wife, Maria, was adamantly opposed. That’s how she remembered him a few years ago with his daughter, Susana Moori Koenig: “Susana: dad was going to bring him to our house, but mom got jealous. María (interrupts): And when he wanted to bring it, I said no, not at home the corpse. Everything has a limit”. 1
The man had a sick passion for the corpse. The testimonies agree in affirming that he placed the body –kept inside a wooden box that originally contained material for radio transmissions– in a vertical position in his SIE office; that he handled and harassed the corpse and that he exhibited Evita’s body to her friends as a trophy. One of her unsuspecting visitors, the future filmmaker María Luisa Bemberg, could not believe what she saw; She was embarrassed by Moori Koenig’s self-confidence, she ran scared to tell the family friend and head of the Military House, Captain Francisco Manrique, about the fact.
Aware Aramburu of the matter, arranged the relief of Moori Koenig, his transfer to Comodoro Rivadavia and his replacement by Colonel Héctor Cabanillas, who proposed to take the body out of the country and organize an “Operative Transfer”. There, the future de facto president and then head of the Horse Grenadier Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro Lanusse, entered history, asking for help from his friend, chaplain Francisco “Paco” Rotger. The plan was to move the body to Italy and bury it in a Milan cemetery under a false name. The key was the participation of the Company of Saint Paul, Rotger’s religious community, which would be in charge of guarding the tomb. The challenge for Rotger was to engage the help of the superior general of the Paulines, Father Giovanni Penco, and of Pope Pius XII himself.
Rotger traveled to Italy and finally achieved his goal. Upon his return, Cabanillas put into practice the Transfer Operation. They embarked the coffin on the Conte Biancamano ship bound for Genoa; accompanied the mission by the officer Hamilton Díaz and Petty Officer Manuel Sorolla. Penco himself was waiting for them in Genoa. Evita’s body was taken out of the country under the name “María Maggi de Magistris”.
Evita was buried in the Major Cemetery of Milan in the presence of Hamilton Díaz and Sorolla, who acted as Carlo Maggi, brother of the deceased. A consecrated laywoman of the order of Saint Paul, called Giuseppina Airoldi, Known as “Aunt Pina”, she was in charge of bringing her flowers during the 14 years that the body remained buried in Milan. Pina never knew that she was bringing flowers to Eva Peron.
The ecclesiastical-military operation was a success and one of the best kept secrets in Argentine history.
The matter returned to the forefront when in 1970 Montoneros kidnapped Pedro Aramburu and demanded Evita’s body. During the interrogations, he was insistently asked about the fate of Evita’s body. According to statements of Mario Firmenitch: “We asked Aramburu about Evita’s body. He said that he was in Italy and that the documentation was kept in a safe deposit box at the Banco Nación, and after thinking about it a lot and not wanting to say things, he finally said that Evita’s body had a Christian burial and that all the documentation for the The case was in the hands of Colonel Cabanillas, and he also promised that if we released him he would make Evita’s body appear. But we said that this was not a negotiation, that it was a trial. For us the penalty was not in discussion [de muerte]. But we were also interested in finding out about the body of Eva Perón. For this reason, we did not plan a simple street attack, but rather a more far-reaching, more audacious action, which was like saying: ‘we are going to play, we are going to do what the people have sentenced’”. two
Montoneros Communiqué Number 3, dated May 31, 1970, says that Aramburu declared himself responsible “for the desecration of the place where the remains of comrade Evita rested and their subsequent disappearance in order to take from the people even the last remains. material of whoever was its standard-bearer”.
In 1971, during the presidency of Lanusse and in full formation of the Great National Agreement, as a gesture of recognition, he returned Perón’s body. Rotger traveled to Milan and obtained the body. Cabanillas and Sorolla traveled to Italy to comply with the “Operative Return”. The body was exhumed on September 1, 1971, taken to Spain and delivered to Perón in Puerta de Hierro, two days later, by Ambassador Rojas Silveyra.
At Perón’s request, Pedro Ara checked the body and found it intact; but for Eva’s sisters and Dr. Tellechea, who restored it in 1974, it was very deteriorated. Perón returned to the country with Isabel and the “sorcerer” José López Rega, but without the remains of Evita. Once Perón was dead, the Montoneros organization kidnapped Aramburu’s body on October 15, 1974 to demand the repatriation of Eva’s. Isabel agreed to the exchange and ordered the transfer, which took place on November 17 (day of the Peronist militant). Evita’s body was deposited next to Perón’s in a specially designed crypt in the Quinta de Olivos so that the public could visit it. After the coup of March 1976, the leaders of the dictatorship had long discussions about what to do about it. Admiral Massera, following his custom, proposed throwing Evita’s body into the sea, adding it to those of so many detainees-disappeared. 3 Finally, the dictators decided to accede to the request of Eva’s sisters and transfer the remains to the vault of the Duarte family in Recoleta. In the aforementioned note, María Seoane and Silvana Boschi asked a high-ranking leader of the illegal repression, very close to Videla, a witness to those cabals: “Why did the Board urge the transfer of Evita’s body more than Perón’s? ”. The military’s response was immediate: “Perhaps because she is the only one who always, even after death, we were afraid of.” 4
References:
1 Testimony of María and Susana Moori Koenig in the documentary “Evita”, directed by Roberto Pistarini for RAI, 1995.
2 Mario Firmenich, report by the author published in Felipe Pigna, The Past Thought, Planeta, Buenos Aires, 2005.
3 María Seoane and Silvina Boschi, “Evita’s last trip”, Clarín, July 30, 1995.
4 Ibid.
5 Refers to Colonel Manuel Raimundes.
* Felipe Pigna, historian, author of “Evita. Shreds of his life” (Planet)
by Felipe Pigna, historian
