If one day you wake up and I am gone do not cry, do not grieve, do not write paragraphs about how much you loved me.
Because when I was alone in my darkest hours and when I needed you the most, you were not the one that stayed up all night to make sure that I was alright.
I sank into sadness. I had only solitude for company.
I realized that for you, for the person that I considered special, I did not exist. This was a very negative feeling that caused emotions of rejection and abandonment.
The time had come in my life when I had to realize, when I realized, I am alone. Nobody will accompany me, nobody will be with me. I am alone, I have to walk alone.
Solitude is the only thing that you find when you are not looking for it.
At the mass rallies the crowd demanded that Evita announce her candidacy as vice president. She pleaded for more time.
This exchange between Evita and the crowd of two million became a genuine, spontaneous dialogue, with the crowd chanting, ‘Evita, Vice-Presidente’.
When Evita asked for more time the crowd demanded, ‘Ahora, Evita, ahora’.
Eventually, she declined the invitation to run for vice-president. She said her only ambition was that history would mention a woman who brought the ‘
… hopes and dreams of the people to the president’, a woman who turned those hopes and dreams into ‘glorious reality’.
This event has come to be referred to as ‘The Renunciation’, portraying Evita as having been a selfless woman in line with the Hispanic myth of marianismo.
An aspect of the female gender role in the machismo of Hispanic American culture, the veneration for feminine virtues like purity and moral strength.
On 9 January 1950, Evita fainted in public and underwent surgery. She was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer. By 1951, it had become evident that her health was rapidly deteriorating.
Although her diagnosis was withheld from her by Juan, she knew she was not well. Only a few months after ‘the Renunciation’, Evita underwent a secret radical hysterectomy.
Despite the hysterectomy, Evita‘s cervical cancer had metastasized and returned rapidly. She was the first Argentine to undergo chemotherapy – a novel treatment at that time.
She became emaciated, weighing only 36 kg by June 1952. Eva died at 8:25 p.m. on Saturday, 26 July 1952.
The Press Secretary’s Office of the Presidency of the Nation fulfills its very sad duty to inform the people of the Republic that at 20:25 hours, Mrs. Eva Perón, Spiritual Leader of the Nation, died.
Ordinary activities ceased; movies were stopped and patrons were asked to leave restaurants.
The government suspended all official activities for two days and ordered that all flags be flown at half-staff for ten days. It soon became apparent that these measures fell short of reflecting popular grief.
The morning after her death, while Evita‘s body was being moved to the Ministry of Labour Building, eight people were crushed to death in the throngs.
In the following 24 hours, over 2,000 people were treated in city hospitals for injuries sustained in the rush to be near Evita as her body was being transported, and thousands more were treated on the spot.
For the following two weeks, lines stretched for many city blocks. The streets of Buenos Aires overflowed with huge piles of flowers.
Within a day of Perón’s death, all flower shops in Buenos Aires had run out of stock. Flowers were flown in from all over the country, and as far away as Chile.
After a final Mass, the coffin was laid on a gun carriage pulled by CGT officials. It was followed by Perón, his cabinet, Evita‘s family and friends, the delegates and representatives of the Partido Peronista Femenino – then workers, nurses and students of the Eva Peron Foundation.
Flowers were thrown from balconies and windows.
Evita has never left the collective Consciousness of Argentines.
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