It is easy to be confused about who was the wife of Juan Perón, who was elected as the President of Argentina in 1946. The reason is that there were actually two women who were known as Perón’s wife.
The first time he was elected as president, Perón fought the electoral campaign alongside Eva, a former actress, and he married her after being elected. Eva is depicted as the female protagonist in the Broadway musical Evita, and was deeply loved by the people of Argentina. Eva had the ambition to become Perón’s vice president, but in the end due to cancer, she died in 1952 at the young age of 33 without fulfilling her ambition. Argentina, having stayed neutral in World War II, accumulated wealth from selling food to both sides, and Perón distributed this wealth to the labor unions that supported him, gaining overwhelming support from the working class; however, after the war, once America and Canada recovered and entered the food export market, Argentina’s trading suddenly stagnated. After the death of charismatic and popular Eva, Perón faced increasing criticism, and with the naval coup d’état of 1955, Perón was forced to flee the country. The country he took refuge in was Spain, which was under the dictatorship of Generalísimo Franco. The musical Evita was made into a movie, and the singer Madonna performed as Eva.
While Perón was in exile in Spain, he married again to a nightclub singer, Isabel. Even after Perón’s exile, Perón supporters remained strongly influential in the politics of Argentina, and in the midst of a violent opposition between the left and right wings, Perón was invited back to Argentina as the only possible politician who could resolve this opposition; after returning to his home country, he was elected as president for the second time. Perón appointed his wife Isabel as his Vice President, but one year later, he suddenly died in 1974. After Perón’s death, Isabel was promoted to President, but the country was incredibly unstable, and Isabel relentlessly imprisoned and killed antigovernment groups and human rights activists. Due to a coup d’état led by an army officer—Jorge Rafael Videla—in 1976, Isabel was overthrown, and she took refuge in Spain. President Videla also kidnapped, tortured, and killed political opponents, human rights activists, and others. These times are called the “Dirty War.” An excellent Argentinean movie that indirectly depicts this period is The Secret in Their Eyes.
Máxima Zorreguieta—the daughter of Jorge Zorreguieta, who was a cabinet member of the Videla administration—fell in love with the Netherlands’ crown prince, Willem-Alexander; the Dutch were very opposed to their prince marrying the daughter of a government official involved in a massacre, but since Maxima’s father Zorreguieta was proved to have had no direct involvement in the massacre, Máxima and Willem-Alexander were able to officially get engaged in 2001, and they married the next year in 2002. Argentina and Europe, which appear to be distant, are actually quite connected.