The Macabre Journey of Eva Peron’s Traveling Corpse

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“Eyes, hair, face, image – all must be preserved.

Still life displayed forever, no less than she deserved.”

The last scene of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Evita” shows lines of Argentinian devotees as they stream past the coffin of their First Lady, Maria Eva Duarte Peron, dead at age thirty-three from cancer. Her waxy figure is displayed under a glass coffin, not unusual for a state funeral, but the last lines of the musical hinted at something further.

Eva Peron’s story is remarkable enough,...