The Eva Perón Foundation

Today almost 70 years after her death, the legacy of Eva Perón, or Evita as many call her, still looms large over Buenos Aires, literally and metaphorically. On the city’s famous Avenida 9 de Julio, a 10-story metal sculpture of her face has been built onto both sides of the Ministry of Health building, modeled after the iconic sculpture of Che Guevara on the Ministry of the Interior building in Havana. Commissioned by then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2011, it is a constant reminder of her presence and work primarily among the country’s sick and poor mothers and children. With the opening of the Centro Cultural Kirchner in 2015, Eva Perón’s office at the Foundation was re-created further memorializing the Foundation and her work. Born María Eva Duarte to a poor, rural family, she moved to Buenos Aires in 1934 at age 15 to pursue a career as an actress. Ten years later she met Colonel Juan Perón, her future husband. In 1946 he was elected President of the country, and she assumed the role of First Lady in a way unlike any of her predecessors. For the next six years, until her early death from cervical cancer in 1952, she championed labor rights, women’s suffrage, and political involvement within the administration. Along with her position as the unofficial Minister of Labor and Health, she founded the Eva Perón Foundation in 1948 (Eva Perón Historical Research Foundation, 2011). Her Foundation was a key force in the providing health services but was often highly controversial and seen as an extension of the political regime.

Eva Perón was born into a working class family in a rural town in the Province of Buenos Aires. Thus, she was aware of the lack of social welfare and services in Argentina and felt a personal conviction to be a part of helping the less fortunate. At the time, most charity work in the city was done by the Sociedad de Beneficencia, a social organization affiliated with the Catholic Church. In addition to the social work, the society provided medical care through its hospitals. Traditionally, the First Lady was designated as a chairperson of the society but the invitation was not extended due to Evita’s working class and outsider background among the elites of Buenos Aires (Eva Perón Historical Research Foundation, 2011). The women of the society were deeply classist towards Eva Perón, similar to the way many anti-Perón elites did not want working class people from the province of Buenos Aires moving into the city (James, 1988). They maintained their anger towards her until her death when they supported the “Viva el Cáncer” graffiti written on city walls in her last days and after her death (Golbert, 2008). Eva Perón, unable to join the society, and increasingly frustrated by the lack of social services and the image that most charitable organizations were run by the rich, decided to start her own foundation in 1948, the Eva Perón Foundation (Navarro and Fraser, 2014). Much of the work of the foundation concentrated on mothers and children with programs that built schools and orphanages, handed out toys at Christmas and provided group homes and services for single mothers (Eva Perón Historical Research Foundation, 2011).

Among the interests of the foundation was a focus on improving medical care and facilities in the public medical system. Nurses previously were not knowledgeable in medical procedures in large part due to the insufficient nursing schools in terms of the quality of their instruction. At the request of Eva Perón, the four state-owned nursing schools were merged. A new nursing school was created for nurses to attend from all over the country free of charge (Biernat and Ramacciotti, 2015). The Foundation also turned their efforts to improving the quality of the public hospitals, which were vastly inferior in comparison to private hospitals. Throughout the country 21 hospitals were built, of which 12 were located in the province of Buenos Aires (Reche, 2016). In comparison to state hospitals, which were often in a state of decay, these hospitals “had marble foyers and staircases, large windows, rooms where patients could watch movies, wards which contained only three beds” (Navarro and Fraser 2014, 229). Surgical equipment was brought in from the United States, the highly paid doctors were among the best in the country, and medical supplies were provided free of charge (Navarro and Fraser, 2014).

However, the Foundation and the work done by Eva Perón was often heavily criticized. Many people saw her work as a sort of propaganda for Juan Perón. Many of the clinics and hospitals that the Foundation built were named after herself and Juan Perón and their grandiosity was seen as a propaganda statement. Detractors believed that more hospitals could be built with less money and that she had chosen to use the money to showcase her work. The nurses trained at her school were often seen as an extension of the regime of Juan Perón as they marched in military parades behind the soldiers in uniforms with Evita’s name on them (Navarro and Fraser, 2014). Throughout Perón’s time in office, labor unions grew in importance and were essential to maintain the regime. To those skeptical of the Foundation and Peronism in general, Juan Perón’s cult of personality and ties to the labor unions allowed for the Foundation to exist and have the resources for these projects (James, 1988).

A major conflict within the administration was managing the role of the foundation with the Ministerio de Salud Público (MSP) whose director was Ramón Carrillo. The Ministerio was tasked with providing health services and facilities such as hospitals and clinics. Initially, the two organizations were on good terms and in 1951 they collaborated to sponsor the Tren Sanitario Eva Perón which traveled throughout the country providing medical services (Ramacciotti, 2009). However, when the Foundation shifted more towards building hospitals it directly competed with the agenda of the MSP and created a tense relationship between Carrillo and the Perón administration (Ramacciotti, 2009). As the Foundation grew it was preferred by the Perón administration for its more hands-on and sentimental approach that emphasized Eva’s role as a mother and caretaker to the less fortunate. People would commonly write Eva letters requesting aid for to educate their children or to take care of elderly family members. Many people were unsure how to receive this support working in with the often times inefficient bureaucracy and saw Eva as a charismatic figure that could help (Guy, 2016). Ramón Carrillo felt that Eva Perón had overstepped her role and the Foundation was taking away from the work of the MSP.

In terms of funding, when the Foundation first began it received 10 percent of the MSP’s funding but by 1952 it received more than double that of the MSP (Ramacciotti 2009, 116). Much of this came from labor union dues, a key Perón constituency, further highlighting the Foundation's preferred status due to political connections. It also received much of its monetary support from private businesses and revenue from the lottery, horse races, casinos, and movie tickets (Ramacciotti, 2009). The Eva Perón Foundation was able to sustain itself and generate such large degrees of capital through tax dollars leveraged from labor unions and everyday people, unlike the Ministerio de Salud Pública, which did not have these additional funding resources. This specific conflict between an institution of state bureaucracy and the Perón regime, is symptomatic of the larger tension that existed between the personalist approach of the regime and state institutions (Guy, 2016).

In 1952, Eva Perón died prematurely of cervical cancer and the Foundation was not able to maintain the same level of productivity. In 1955, when the Perón regime ended her Foundation came to an official end, yet the legacy endures. The Eva Perón Foundation was an essential part in providing health and social services to many in Argentina throughout the late 1940s and 1950s and the work of the Foundation contributed to her status as a beloved icon. Eva Perón herself took an active role in the workings of the Foundation and emphasized its personal approach. However, the Foundation still remains controversial due to the association and support from the Perón administration that came at the expense of public organizations, most notably the Ministerio de Salud Pública. The rise and fall of the Eva Perón Foundation illustrates the challenges of maintaining new and progressive social policies when they are so directly intertwined with one political regime. The Eva Perón Foundation was directly dependent on the government, especially labor unions, for funding in order to maintain its programming and when the regime fell there was little chance for it to maintain itself. On a broader scale, many health policies and programs are created under populist regimes but face similar challenges in maintaining themselves once the regime comes to an end. This association of an institution with a regime, whether that be through funding or personality, often have challenges in maintaining their establishment in the long term and establishing the institution as separate from an administration.

Related Articles

• Ramón Carrillo, Argentine Minister of Health
• Social Medicine in Chile

Additional Resources

Barnes, J. (1978). Evita, First Lady: a biography of Eva Perón. New York, New York: Random House.

Barry, C., et al (eds) (2008). La Fundación Eva Perón y las mujeres: entre la provocación y la inclusión. Argentina, Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos.

Canal Encuentro. (2019, May 6). Eva Perón. 100 años-Canal Encuentro [Video File]. Retrieved From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V_tMitysmE

Fraser, N and Navarro, M. (1996). Evita: The Real Life of Eva Perón. New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

James, D. (2000). Doña María’s Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity. North Carolina, Durham: Duke University Press.

Karush, M.& Chamosa, O (eds) (2010). The New Cultural History of Peronism. North Carolina, Durham: Duke University Press.

Ortiz, A. (1996). Eva Perón. New York, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

References

Biernat, C., Cerdá, J. and, Ramacciotti, K. (2015). La salud pública y la enfermería en la Argentina. Argentina, Bernal: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes Editorial.

Eva Perón Historical Research Foundation. (2011). The Official Evita Perón Website. Retrieved from http://www.evitaperon.org/index.htm

Golbert, L. (2008). Las políticas sociales antes y después de la Fundación Eva Perón In C. Barry (Ed.), La Fundación Eva Perón y las mujeres: entre la provocación y la inclusión (19-50). Argentina, Bernal: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes Editorial.

Guy, D. (2016). Creating Charismatic Bonds in Argentina: Letters to Juan and Eva Perón. New Mexico, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

James, D. (1988). Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the argentine working class, 1946-1976. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Navarro, M. and Fraser, N. (2014). Bounteous, Beneficent Mother of the Nation: Evita and the Eva Perón Foundation In P.S. Murray, Women and Gender in Modern Latin America (222-231). New York, New York: Routledge.

Ramacciotti, K. (2009). La política sanitaria del peronismo. Argentina, Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos.

Reche, J. (2016). Fundación Eva Perón, Centro de Estudios para la Investigación y el Desarrollo. Retrieved From http://www.cepid.com.ar/fundacion-eva-peron-3/