Review: The Evita Museum Obscures Peronist History

The article argues that Buenos Aires’ Museo Evita presents Eva Perón in a narrowly celebratory way, highlighting her acting career, elegant clothes and work for poor people while leaving out the damaging legacy of Peronism. The writer says this selective account matters because the Peróns’ political movement remains influential in Argentina.

Eva Perón was married to Juan Perón, a populist leader who governed Argentina in the 1940s and ’50s and briefly in the 1970s. The article says Peronism has won 10 of the 14 presidential elections in which it has been allowed to participate, and contends that the Peróns’ economic policies helped drive the country’s economy into decline. The writer recalls visiting the museum in 2015 and feeling that its focus on Evita’s charitable work omitted the economic context that, in the writer’s view, contributed to poverty.