Monument to the licentious, the "Colossus of Rhodes" Peronist who has never been erected

They were the first years of the decade of the 50s. General Juan Domingo Perón had started his second term as President of Argentina. The images of the justicialist government, with the exaltation of its principles, the figures of the worker, Perón and his wife Evita, were present through well-oiled posters, books and various propaganda mechanisms.

But it needed something more. A gigantic work, for all eternity, which represented both the transcendence of justicialismo and the consolidation through the art of all its doctrinal postulates. With this foundation was born the idea to build what was known as "The monument to the rejected".

The project of great work has established that in the area of ​​Recoleta, where today is the generic Floralis – better known as the metal flower – was going to build a huge building of 137 meters high in l 39; honor of this worker with popular roots baptized
shirtless for the justicialist liturgy. In addition, at the base of this Peronist "colossus of Rhodes", there would be a circular secular temple with allegorical statues and access stairs to the construction of about 100 meters in diameter.

After the untimely death of the first lady of the nation, in July 1952, the project would be transformed into "Monument to Eva Perón". Although the statue of the legendary Peronist worker was not going to change, in the lower temple, the sarcophagus of the named
Spiritual leader of the nation.

On July 26, 1953, at the Ministry of Labor, Leone Tombadi, the Italian sculptor responsible for carrying out the work, was inaugurated with the model of what would be the monument and its contiguities. And by the end of April 1955, while the company's stands were already completed, Peron himself gave the symbolic spoonful of initial mix during the ceremony that ushered in the construction of what would be the most great monument of the world. The "Eighth Peronist Wonder" began to be erected.

But in September 1955, when the justicialist government was overthrown by the so-called
Liberating Revolution, the monument to Eva Perón was in absolute nothingness.

The statues that have already been made have suffered infamous destinies. "Some were mutilated and thrown into the Riachuelo, and others who were in the sculptor's Italian workshop were destroyed by a paramilitary commando that sent the government to the coup d'etat. & # 39; 55 ", tells the NATION Oscar Andrés De Masi, lawyer and specialist of heritage and monuments.

The site of the colossus

The first project of the statue in honor of the descamisado dates back to October 1946. According to a forthcoming book by journalists and historians Hugo Gambini and Ariel Kocik, the construction of the monument was approved in Parliament on that date, but not planned with the dimensions that were given later.

In addition, it was planned to place the company in Plaza de Mayo. In 1949, another law moved the monument to Avenida de Mayo and 9 July. Finally, it was decided that the Peronist colossus – and the Evita mausoleum at his feet – would be installed in a field of Recoleta.

The Colossus would be located approximately at the location of the current Rubén Darío Square, that is to say between Avenida Libertador and Figueroa Alcorta, Calle Austria and the National Museum of Fine Arts.

According to the motives of De Masi in the book "Monument to Eva Perón", the chosen place could be related to this. On the one hand, the height of the building could be erected into a kind of lighthouse and had therefore sought a place next to the river.

On the other hand, it can be inferred that the proximity of the company with what was at the time the presidential residence, the place where Eva Perón had breathed his last breath, and where today – after this residence was demolished by the
Liberating Revolution– The National Library is erected. The monument would be exactly opposite, in a straight line to what was the house of Perón and Evita.

A network of high voltage cables and two main pipelines from the nation's sanitary facilities discovered during excavation of the ground caused several delays. Then, a high strength iron grate was placed for the work base, where 4000 m3 of concrete was dumped. It had to be taken into account that the new plate had to be strong enough to support 42,000 tons of the weight of the entire monument.

The construction of the works would be entrusted to the German company Wayss & Freitag, which won a call for tenders involving 19 signatures.

The sculptor

The man chosen to interpret the megaobra was Leon or Leone Tommasi, an Italian born in Pietrasanta, on the northern coast of Tuscany, in 1903. This artist had made sculptures installed in the building of the Eva Perón Foundation, where Faculty of Engineering.

Specialist in marble works – the Botanical Garden of Buenos Aires houses sculptures of its author – this artist made the first model of the work in 1951 and presented it to Eva Perón herself, who the approved, but, according to the newspapers. time, making some suggestions.

Unlike – or not – the legendary sentence attributed to General Perón, "If you want something not going well, create a commission", the monument to the descamisado had its own commission of follow-up. Led by Senator Juana Larrauri, and attended by, among others, the Deputy Héctor Cámpora and the Deputy Secretary of Information of the Presidency of the Nation, Raúl Alejandro Apold – key man in the apparatus Peronist propaganda – this commission organized a trip to Pietrasanta to follow the work of Tommasi.

The sculptor alternated his tasks between the workshop he had at home and the one he had installed here in San Isidro. According to De Masi, the artist made clay and plaster models in Argentina, while in Italy he worked on marble from a town near Pietrasanta, Carrara.

The exorbitant cost of the works, then estimated at 400 million pesos, was one of the questions that the monument posed to public opinion, especially after the fall of the justicialist government. But another of the negative proposals was the reason why a foreign sculptor had been chosen to make it. In this regard, De Masi notes that at that time, Apoll was credited with a reflection that exposed him to Peron: "Will there be good Peronist sculptors?" To which the general would have replied with disenchantment: "It's the fear that I have."

Job Details

The entire architectural complex would measure one and a half times more than the Statue of Liberty in New York and three times more than the Christ the Redeemer of Rio de Janeiro. "The grandeur of the work will be the permanent testimony of the exaltation that New Argentina makes of the memory of its Abanderada", indicates the brochure of presentation of the monument distributed in 1955 by the Secretariat of Press and Diffusion of the nation.

The huge descamisado who crowned this construction – according to the model – presented the severe face turned to the horizon, the shirt open up to the waist, the strong chest in the air and the clenched fists on both sides of the waist. It was manufactured according to "a complex and hollow structure, covered with patinated and patinated copper plates, very similar to the statue of liberty", says De Mbadi.

From an internal helicoidal staircase, one could reach the statue's head and intermediate stops were arranged for panoramic observation of the city, such as a terrace nestled in the anvil as part of the work.

The temple / mausoleum of the base concentrated the precepts of justicialista ideology. "Each of its parts will symbolize the titanic work of Perón, the fire of the revolution of October," explained the brochure of the time.

The outer circular gallery would consist of 16 columns, each with a 4.5-meter-tall, one-piece marble statue, which represented the postulates of the Peronist doctrine: among others, social justice, solidarity, the only privileged the children In the same sculptural ensemble, there was an allegory to The reason of my life and two images of Peron: the colonel and the conductor.

According to Ariel Kocik, a report of a commission of inquiry on the expenses and possible malpractices of Peronism composed of the government of the self-proclaimed
Liberating Revolution He noted that the price of each of these statues, not to mention the work of the sculptor, was about 50,000 US dollars.

The three doors to the temple, huge, bronze and with bas-relief images, would represent the three principles of Argentina that ignite the speech of the justicialistas of yesterday and from the beginning. today, when they roar for a socially just, economically free and politically sovereign homeland.

In the main hall, lined with marble, cobblestones and red granite columns, would be a statue of Eva Perón, accompanied by two allegorical sculptures, those of manual and intellectual work.

Above the columns, an inscription in capital letters would occupy the whole circumference of the temple: "There was a woman next to Perón who was dedicated to bringing to the president the hope of the people, that Perón concretized later that the people affectionately called Evita. "The extension of the quote accounts for the large internal diameter of the mausoleum.

The sarcophagus of Eva Perón

"During her trip to Europe in 1947, during her visit to Paris, Eva was impressed by the National Palace of the Invalides and the mausoleum of Napoleon who was inside." She thought she could do so. likewise here, a kind of funeral monument in the honor of the stripped naked, "tells the NATION the goldsmith Juan Carlos Pallarols.

What
this woman I did not know at the time that this mausoleum designed for the anonymous naked torso would be transformed after his death in his own temple for the last rest. The project located the sarcophagus of the
Spiritual leader of the nation in a basement of the mausoleum, lit by a zenith light.

It was planned that the said tomb would be carved in rock crystal and would cover a cover depicting the lying man Eva Perón would work in silver, a model that would be the exact replica of the ruler's body, made by the father of Juan Carlos Pallarols. "My father worked with the corpse, which was in the basement of the CGT, to make the mold that it would later reproduce in silver – the son of the artist tells us today. ; hui ". Eva's body was so consumed after her illness that she had to give volume to the face mask by injecting hot paraffin into the nose and cheeks. "

"My father was famous because he was casting money by hand, in the manner of a plasterer. The sheet of this precious metal for Eva measured two meters by eighty and was 1.2 millimeters thick, "says Pallarols Jr. As a detail, the goldsmith added," The idea was that each July 26 – date of death of the justicialist ruler – the silver cover would be lifted with chains and the real body embalmed of Evita would remain exposed ".

The fact that the corpse was exposed "testifies to a tremendous mystical impulse in the monument and allows its ritual display, in the manner of the saints of the church exposed, from time to time, at feasts and processions ", says De. Masi in the aforementioned book
Monument to Eva Perón.

The fall

The Colossus of Rhodes, this majestic statue – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – that kept the harbor access to the said Greek island, succumbed in 226 BC because of a tsunami. The great despicad justicialista fell, even before being erected, because of the anti-Peronist fury that brought the self-labeled
Liberating Revolution.

Legislative Decree 4161 of the new de facto government was essentially aimed at "disunion" of the country. It was forbidden to mention the names of Perón and Eva Perón, as well as to use an image, a symbol or an element referring to justicialismo, on pain of spending 30 days to six years in prison.

In this context of persecution and oppression, Pallarols recounts what his father did: "He broke Eva's plaster model into pieces and wrapped them in tablecloths and bread baskets at the Tortoni coffee, because that my grandparents owned this place, and everything was packed to preserve it, and the silver part cut it in pieces, melted it and sold it to pay part of the cost. "

With the premature interruption of the Monument to Eva Perón, the silversmith, who had not wanted to receive payment in advance for his work, was in absolute economic ruin. With time and work, the Pallarols have recovered and even in 1983, they reconstructed the cast of the lying Eva, which is now in the workshop owned by Juan Carlos Jr. in San Telmo.

Many statues having integrated the monument have been destroyed and others thrown at the Riachuelo. Two of them, the one that represents the reason for my life and the rights of the worker, are at the moment when it was the fifth of the wedding weekend of Perón and Eva, in the locality of San Vicente, instead it became the "Museum of 17 October" and where are still today the remains of the justicialist ruler.

"These statues were saved at the time by the municipality of Lomas de Zamora, with the intervention of Mayor Bruno Tavano and the staff of the local museum", explains De Masi. In these cases, the sculptures depicting Eva holding La Razón de Mi Vida and Perón, accompanying a worker, are decapitated.

The rest of the statues of the monument have never been carved, destroyed or lost. The little that had been built on the site of Recoleta, near the solar flower, was demolished.

The project of the monument to the licensees – later to Eva Perón -, an epic work, the largest in the world, which would reflect the magnificence of the
New Argentina of the Peronist government, it was thus converted into a mere dream condemned to destruction and oblivion.