All things Eva and Ecological

Yesterday we continued our walking tour with our excellent guide William (who, despite his name, is as Argentinian as a side of beef!). This time we visited the cemetery at Recoleta and other sites associated with Eva Peron, the second wife of the Argentinian president, General Peron and the darling of the Argentinian masses. William is not a fan of Eva and the Peronists who, from what we understand, seem to reinvent themselves every few years and come back into power-the current president, Cristina Kirchner, wife of the ex-president Mr Kirchner, is a Peronist and apparently appears in front of a photograph of Evita, wearing her hair in a similar style and with suits modeled on those that Eva wore. Again from what we understand, although their policies seem flexible (sometimes pro nationalisation, sometimes pro privatisation, for example) a basic thread is the populist streak and a fair degree of authoritarianism. The original General, in addition, was sympathetic to the Nazis, although ultimately forced to sell grain to the Allies, and allowed a lot of Nazis into Argentina at the end of the war, thus explaining the German settlements in Patagonia and Northern Argentina. Eva used her considerable charms first of all to capture Peron and then to manipulate the masses (she had been a radio soap opera star and had many of her speeches written by the author of her soap opera scripts), many of whom still regard her as some sort of unofficial saint, to the extent that there was a popular outcry in Argentina at the way in which Madonna depicted her (too human) in the eponymous film. Anyway, tonight we are going to the musical, Eva, that has been a wild success in BA and which, it is claimed, gives the Argentinian depiction of Eva. We shall see. I can´t help feeling that she probably did have something of the same scary (because unaccountable) charisma of Princess Diana, although of course, her background was very different (illegitimate child of a rich farmer, never accepted by her father´s family etc) and the plot in which she is buried at Recoleta is, compared to some of the mausoleum´s there, a very modest one, constructed for her by her sister when her body was brought back to BA 16 year after her death-she had been spirited out of the country, buried in Milan and then sent to Spain where Peron was living with his thrid wife.

This morning for a completely different experience, we did another walk, following the 8 km track through the ecological reserve that borders on the River Plate. There were lots of runners, bikers and walkers and this area is obviously another of the reserves of the beutiful people-so, of course ,we fitted right in!

Tomorrow we are taking Greg to the market in San Telmo and then in the eveing to a jazz club. On monday we fly up to Iguazu for three days of Luxury in the Sheraton. More soon.