Example research essay topic: The Life Of Argentinian Saint Evita Peron - 1,489 words

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Evita Peron, to many Argentines, was a saint. 40, 000 of them would write to the pope attesting to her miracles. She was born on May 7, 1919, in Los Told, and baptized Maria Eva, but everyone called her Evita. Her father abandoned the family shortly after her birth. In early 1935, the young Evita fled to Buenos Aires. She wanted to be an actress, and in the next few years supported herself with bit parts. She began regular visits to the offices of a movie magazine, talking herself up for mention in its pages.

When, in 1939, she was hired as a second-tier actress in a radio company; she discovered a talent for playing heroines in the fantasy world of radio soap opera. This was a period of political uncertainty in Argentina, yet few people were prepared for the military coup that took place in June 1943. Among the many measures instituted by the new government was the censorship of radio soap operas. Quickly adapting to the new environment, Evita approached the officer in charge of allocating airtime, Colonel Anibal Imbert. She seduced him, and Imbert approved a new project Evita had in mind, a radio series called Heroines of History. Six months after Evita met Imbert, an earthquake struck Argentina.

Colonel Juan Peron, the secretary of labor in the military government, launched a collection for the victims. He arranged for the Buenos Aires acting community to donate its time for an evening's entertainment, with the proceeds going to disaster relief. Evita was present on the big night, and she wanted to meet the colonel. They talked for hours and left together.

Within days Evita had moved into Peron's apartment. Peron had risen quickly in the government and had accomplished a major coup with the unions, essentially taking control of them. In February, Peron engineered the ouster of the president and took over the war ministry. Evita continued her radio portrayals of famous women, but her ambitions lay in the movies. She wanted Peron to help her in her film career, and he did by procuring the film itself, a commodity difficult to obtain during World War II. He offered it to a movie studio in exchange for Evita's starring role in a film.

Four months into their relationship, Evita was named president of a new actors union Peron had created. Soon afterward, she began a daily radio broadcast called Toward a Better Future. It was government propaganda, and it was the first time Evita's dramatic talents had been harnessed to advance the political interests she was picking up from Peron. When World War II ended in 1945, Peron, then vice president, became a target of demonstrations because of his widely known fascist sympathies. In the fall of 1945, the army demanded his resignation, saying he was a lightning rod for discontent. Peron acceded, reluctantly.

But he refused to go quietly. Peron controlled the unions, and the unions controlled millions of men. Appearing in early October before 15, 000 unionists, he announced that his last act as secretary of labor -- a post he still held -- would be to grant a general wage increase. His pandering won loud cheers as he exhorted the crowd to "carry on our triumphal march!" That evening Peron learned that he was going to be arrested by the army, which could not risk leaving the popular leader on the street. He and Evita fled Buenos Aires but were apprehended a short time later. They were driven back to the capital, where Peron was put aboard a navy boat and sent away.

Evita and Peron had made no secret of their relationship. Evita tried to get Peron out of prison. But she could not even learn where he was being held; in fact, that became the great mystery in the streets of Buenos Aires. Where was Peron? He passed a letter out of prison, and it was published in the newspapers.

He also managed to have himself transferred to Buenos Aires for medical attention, thus contriving to be in the city because he knew about plans to free him already underway. Many have claimed that Evita set these plans in motion by offering herself to union leaders. All that is known for sure is that in the early-morning hours of October 16, groups of workers began walking toward the center of the capital. Hundreds of thousands of people moved with such deliberateness that the government could do nothing without shedding blood. The crowd was demanding only one thing -- Peron. Listening to the demonstrators outside, Peron smugly told his captors to reinstate him or risk a major uprising.

They agreed, and that evening Peron spoke to 200, 000 people from the balcony of the presidential palace. He told them to disperse peacefully, but with this order in mind: they were not to go to work the next day -- October 17 -- but to celebrate their victory instead. For many years to come, October 17 th would be the great day of Peronist Argentina. Four days later, Peron and Evita were married. Peron soon won the presidency.

Evita quickly became the darling of the Argentine media. By 1947, Peron had already replaced the justices of the Supreme Court with his own appointees, including Evita's brother-in-law. In his second term, police torture would become routine. But to win re-election, he needed a new constitution, one that did away with the one-term limitation on the presidency. He pushed that reform through in March 1949.

Another innovation Peron sponsored was women's suffrage. When the law was enacted, the full power of the propaganda machine went to turning newly enfranchised women into Peron handmaidens. In July 1949, Evita addressed the first meeting of her own Peronist Women's Party. She asked the women "to be loyal and to have blind confidence in Peron. " Such comments went far toward creating a cult of personality around Juan Peron. Evita had learned her parts so well that even if she did not write most of the lines, she improvised to perfection. The remarks one finds in her ghostwritten History of Peronist are the ones she would build upon in every speech: "Peronist is everything...

We all feed from his light. " People were increasingly feeding from the light of Evita Peron as well. In 1948 a foundation was created in Evita's name. The foundation was a phenomenal success. From the idea of the foundation sprang a range of programs designed to advance the Peronist cult of personality: youth sports leagues with Evita's profile on every uniform, hospitals with her initials on the linen, polio vaccines that bore her name. It was around this time that Evita began her almost daily sessions with the poor, the well-publicized ministrations that would shape the legend of a saint. By 1951, her name was being mentioned for the vice presidency, and in August a labor meeting was called to endorse a Peron-Peron ticket.

But on August 22, Evita went on radio to renounce the post. She wanted only a supporting role in Peron's "marvelous chapter in history. " One month later, Evita was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus. When news of her illness got out, people began holding special masses. Over the course of the next year, Evita's death was dramatically played out in public. She died professing love for her people and receiving their expressions of devotion in return.

In such an atmosphere, Peron's re-election itself became a sort of ritual, so that when Evita voted from her hospital bed, the nurses fell to their knees and kissed her ballot box. After the election, a biopsy revealed that the cancer had spread. In June 1952, calling her "the most remarkable woman of any historical epoch, " Peron's congress named Evita the Spiritual Leader of the Nation. Her own final contribution to that deification came in her will, in which she wrote that she wanted "the poor, the old, the children, and the workers to continue writing to me as they did in my lifetime. " She died on July 26, 1952. A specialist was brought in to embalm the body and make it "definitively incorruptible. " Evita's body lay in state for 13 days. Deprived of his dynamic and popular wife, Peron was soon forced from office by a coup.

Evita's body was passed among the military, spending a year in the attic of the Argentine military intelligence service before being secreted out of the country to Milan, Italy. In 1971, after a number of demands by terrorists, the Argentine government agreed to return Evita's body. It was shipped to Peron in Spain. That year, Peron was allowed to return to Argentina; two years later he was president again.

He died in office, and it was his wife and successor, Isabel, who brought Evita's body back to Argentina, in the hope that the aura of a saint would again dazzle the public.

Research essay sample on The Life Of Argentinian Saint Evita Peron