A corpse kidnapped, insulted and banished – 07/05/2019

It was one of the best kept secrets of the history of Argentina. Around him was created a macabre legend combining reality and fiction. For nearly 16 years, the Argentineans wondered where Eva Perón's body was.

The story began on the night of November 23, 1955, two months after the Liberation Revolution, when a disturbed lieutenant-colonel, Carlos Moori Koenig, then head of the Army Intelligence Service ( SIE), at the head of a commando, entered the headquarters of the CGT. Quickly, he went to the second floor, where the body had been deposited. And in the presence of a terrified Pedro Ara, the famous embalmer of the corpse, who feared for the integrity of his "masterpiece", removed the remains and lost himself in l & # 39; darkness. Since then, the fate of the body would be poorly known until his return to Juan Domingo Perón in 1971, in Madrid.

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However, some surprising avatars of the fate of the corpse have been transcended. Because Moori Koenig, unaware of the instruction of President Pedro Eugenio Aramburu to give him a Christian burial (to read, burying him secretly), submitted in the first months to an unusual "walk" in the middle of Buenos Aires in the van of a florist. Unusually, he tried unsuccessfully to leave him in a naval unit – the most anti-Peronist force – and put him in the attic of his second mate, Commander Arandía. On a night of horror, believing that Peronist resistance had entered his house to take his body, Arandía shot his pregnant wife.

Moori Koenig was crazy about the corpse. He came to stop the coffin in his office and grope him, among other meanness. He's even devoted to showing it to his visitors. Until one of them, the famous filmmaker María Luisa Bemberg, afraid to comment on the fact to his friend, head of the House of the Army, the captain of ship Francisco "Paco" Manrique.

The data reached the ears of Aramburu who, appalled, ordered the relief of Moori Koenig and placed Colonel Héctor Cabanillas in his place, who had to comply with the order to give him a Christian burial. . But no one in the government had a good plan.

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To top it off, near the coffin, there were pictures of Evita and candles that confirmed that the Peronists knew where he was. Aware of the problem, the leader of the regiment of mounted grenadiers, the then-lieutenant-colonel Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, with the help of chaplain of the unit Francisco "Paco" Rotger , devised a plan to conceal the body with the collaboration of the Church. The plan – carefully revealed by a survey of Clarin from 1997 it was the stealthy transfer of the body to Italy and its burial in a Milan cemetery under a false name. The key was the participation of the San Pablo Company – religious community of Rotger – who would protect the grave. His intervention had the advantage of cutting practically all roads leading to the body. But he had a double challenge for Rotger: that the superior general of Paulins, Father Giovanni Penco, come to the aid and that Pope Pius XII does not oppose it.

In pursuit of these goals, Rotger made a special trip to Italy. After long conciliations, the priest obtained a green light. Upon his return to the country, Cabanillas launches the "Operational Transfer: aboard the ship" Conte Biancamano "to Genoa.

The officer carried the coffin between officer Hamilton Diaz and master master Manuel Sorrolla. In the Italian port, Penco himself was waiting for him. The corpse – under the name of Magistri-Maggi Maria – was buried in the cemetery of the mayor of Milan. Penco commissioned a dedicated layman, Giussepina Airoldi, to bring him flowers, he said, to "a kind Italian woman who died in Argentina in a car accident and wanted to be buried in her country. native". Airoldi scrupulously respected the mission for 14 years.

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During those almost three decades, only Cabanillas knew exactly where the coffin was. The question of the corpse reappeared in 1970 when the Montoneros, in their bloody beginnings, abducted Aramburu and demanded the appearance of Evita's body. Cabanillas rallied to make it, but did not arrive on time: the former president was murdered. The following year, already being president of Lanusse, he began the thaw by Peronism and, as a gesture, He brought the body back to Perón.

Rotger was then to go to Milan to get the collaboration of the new superior general of the Paulines, Father Giulio Madurini – Penco had died in 1965 – what he had. Soon, Cabanillas and Sorolla went to Italy – the Montoneros and CGT Secretary General, José Ignacio Rucci, were about to collapse – to comply with the so-called Operativo Devolución. The body was exhumed on 1 September 1971, taken to a van in Spain and handed over to Perón, Puerta de Hierro, two days later, in the presence of his third wife, Isabel Martínez.

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The ecclesiastical-military operation had been a success. But there was no agreement on the state of the body. For Ara, who saw it 24 hours later, it was almost intact. For the sisters of Evita and Dr. Tellechea, who restored it in 1974, it was very deteriorated. Perón returned home, but without the body of Evita. Persevering, the Montoneros then kidnapped the corpse of Aramburu and told him that they would return it when the remains of "Comrade Evita" were repatriated. But it would be Isabelita, already deceased, who would be responsible for bringing them to the country.

With the military coup of 1976, the body – which was in the villa of Olivos – was delivered to the Duarte family and deposited in the family vault of the Recoleta cemetery, under two plates of 39 thick steel. Nobody is encouraged to make sure that it is the end of a hectic immortality.

(. *) Sergio Rubin is the author of "Secret of confession: how and why did the Church hide the body of Eva Perón for 14 years". Editions B.