the last book I ever read (Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón, excerpt five)

from Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón by John Barnes:

On June 4, 1946, Juan Domingo Perón became the twenty-ninth President of Argentina. Restored to his army commission and promoted, he wore the blue dress uniform of a brigadier-general as he stood before the newly reconstituted Congress and took the oath of office, swearing by ‘Almighty God’ to uphold the constitution. Exactly three years to the day after his band of colonels seized the Government, he pledged ‘respect for the country’s traditions and institutions.’ Then, to the notes of martial music and the cheers of a million Argentines, he drove along Avenida de Mayo to the Casa Rosada.

the last book I ever read (Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón, excerpt four)

from Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón by John Barnes:

In the last few days of the campaign, Perón was handed an election issue which had nothing to do at all with economics or social justice. To his delight, the United States took that particular moment to add yet another chapter to its unhappy record of Big Stick diplomacy in Latin America. The State Department, in a move to influence the election, published a handbook reviewing Perón’s record of fascism and collaboration with Nazi Germany in World War II. Primly titled Consultation among the American Republics with Respect to the Argentine Situation, but better known as the ‘Blue Book’, it was the work of Assistant Secretary of State Spruille Braden, whose brief ambassadorship in Buenos Aires the previous year had been marked by the blunt, undiplomatic manner with which he had publicly attacked Perón and the Argentine Government. Braden was determined to stamp out the vestiges of Nazism in the southern continent, even though Nazism had already been replaced by Communism in the American mind as the enemy of world peace and democracy.

The other Latin American nations recognized the ‘Blue Book’ for what it was – an attempt by the Americans to go on fighting a war that was over – and they ignored it. Perón and many Argentines, not all of them Perón supporters, looked upon it as unacceptable meddling in their country’s internal affairs. Eva quickly took advantage of such a marvelous propaganda gift for those final days of the campaign. In her radio broadcasts, which went out to every town and village in the country, she called on all Argentines to repudiate the threat of ‘Yanqui’ imperialism with the cry of ‘Perón yes! Braden no!’ It was an unbeatable slogan and almost certainly won the votes of many indignant patriotic Argentines who would otherwise have voted for Tamborini.

the last book I ever read (Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón, excerpt three)

from Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón by John Barnes:

The threat of civil war still hung in the air. Eva Duarte took to carrying a grenade in her handbag, while her lover defiantly proclaimed: ‘Everybody is demanding my head, but thus far no one has come to get it.’

He spoke too soon. Some of his fellow officers had finally had enough. But, ironically, it was not Perón’s heavy-handed dictatorship which provoked them into plotting his downfall. They simply could not stand his girl friend. They had watched with mounting embarrassment and anger as Perón turned more and more to Eva Duarte for political advice. As soldiers, they were supposed to be running a military dictatorship. Yet a woman pulled the strings. It outraged their sense of dignity and their masculine prife. No Argentine dared laugh at them, of course, at least not to their faces, anyway. But they were uncomfortably aware that ribald cartoons undermining their authority had appeared in the newspapers of neighbouring countries.

The final indignity, as far as they were concerned, came when Eva arranged for her mother’s latest boy friend, a postal clerk named Oscar Nicolini, to become Director of Posts and Telegraph, a position once held by her first military lover, Colonel Imbert. No sooner had Nicolini taken over his new job, than Eva moved right in to the office next to his. There was no doubt in the minds of senior army officers that Colonel Perón’s mistress had deftly placed herself in control of all of the nation’s communications. They were not going to tolerate it. She had to go.

the last book I ever read (Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón, excerpt two)

from Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón by John Barnes:

The early months of 1945 were not good ones for Perón and Eva. They finally realized they had picked a loser in Nazi Germany, and their humiliation was rubbed in by Winston Churchill who commented: ‘They have chosen to dally with evil but not only with evil but with the losing side.’ Their country stood friendless in the world. And, understandably, relations with the Americans were the worst they had ever been; President Franklin D. Roosevelt pointedly remarked on ‘the extraordinary paradox of the growth of Nazi-Fascist methods in a country of this hemisphere at the very time that these forces of aggression and oppression are drawing ever closer to the hour of defeat.’ In undiplomatic language, the US Ambassador to Argentina, Spruille Braden, referred to the military regime as one ‘which in commong honesty no one could call anything but fascist, and typically fascist.’ Angrily, Perón responded: ‘Some say that what I am doing follows the policy of Nazism. All I can say is this: If the Nazis did this, they had the right idea.’ When his hero, Benito Mussolini, was executed by Italian partisans, he defiantly eulogized him: ‘Mussolini ws the greatest man of this century, but he committed certain disastrous errors. I, who have the advantage of his precedent before me, shall follow in his footsteps but also avoid his mistakes.’ To make sure the Argentines did not get ideas about one precedent, Perón banned all newsreel film that showed Mussolini’s body hanging by the heels alongside that of his mistress.

the last book I ever read (Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón, excerpt one)

from Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón by John Barnes:

Life was rough for Juana Ibarguren for the next couple of years. Juan Duarte had been her sole means of support. All that he left her was a legal declaration that her children were his – in order for them to be able to bear his name. So, in order to pay the rent for her tiny one-room house, she and the girls hired themselves out as cooks in the home of the local estancias. It was then that Eva got her first close look at the rich, powerful families who controlled Argentina through the wealth generated by their ownership of the land. In Buenos Aires Province, which includes Los Toldos and is the largest of the pampas provinces, 15 families owned a million acres of land each. Another 50 families owned 50,000 acres. The estancias where Eva often worked existed virtually as independent mini-kingdoms. They had their own schools, chapels and hospitals. The estanciero families would divide their year between Paris and Buenos Aires, visiting the estancia usually at Christmas-time, at the start of the long, hot Argentine summer. Their journey to and from their nearest pampas railway station was, more often than not, their only connection with the tiny pueblos that had grown up around the stations that the British-owned railways had built to serve the estancias. For Eva, helping out in the kitchens, it was a world to be gawked at as a child – the crowds of guests and children, the nannies, governesses and major domos, and the patron, wearing the inevitable, expensive imitation of the clothes that the impoverished gauchos wore on the plains.

the last book I ever read (Denis Johnson's Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond, excerpt twelve)

from Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond by Denis Johnson:

Certainly I hadn’t forgotten: I had a small fortune in U.S. hundreds folded into tiny strips and secreted in the waistline of my pants. It was too late for bribes. The Commissaire adjusted the large pad of lined white paper on the desk before him and asked me about my purpose and my activities in his country. I told them everything I could remember.

I gave them everyone’s name and explained what each one had done without any understanding that these simple acts the Liberians had performed on my behalf were condemnable. No, not these simple acts, but the names themselves condemned them, nothing more than their own names, because in much of the world nothing at all can actually be permitted, and simply to make your existence known is to demand punishment. But none of this occurred to me. I was angry and I wanted to make them work, writing down lots and lots of details, names and dates and places, my every move from the moment I stepped off the plane in Abidjan until I crossed the border three days later. In this way I betrayed every last person who had helped me.

the last book I ever read (Denis Johnson's Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond, excerpt eleven)

from Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond by Denis Johnson:

The most spectacular character-building was being undertaken by one of my classmates, a paralyzed kid in a wheelchair. His houseboy pitched his tent for him on a metropolis of jungle fire ants and drove away, and this boy spent the weekend trading his supply of ice-water—a big jug of it he had—for insecticide and bug repellant. Although we weren’t friends, just vaguely acquainted, under these unusual circumstances I suddenly recognized that we were a lot alike. He allowed himself to be enrolled in everything, clubs, Little League, choir, and so on, but he refused to stick to his script—we were supposed to admire and pity him and he was supposed to be cool, but actually he acted like a big brat, uncontrollably dissatisfied and constantly sneering or complaining or acting defeated. I still see him slumped over in his wheelchair, flushed with baby anger, squirting poison fumes into the dirt around him.