No P in RIP

On Tuesday (October 17th), a union-led group will be heading a march/pilgrimmage/PR stunt that will disinter former President and working class folk hero Juan Domingo Perón from his current resting place in the working class Chacarita Cemetery and move the corpse to Perón's former suburban retreat in slightly less working class San Vicente (above), where he will be replanted. In a country with corpse obsession--Evita's corpse was spirited all over Europe for two decades; somebody broke in Juan's crypt and cut off his hands--this is not without precedent, nor controversy (or hope: some Peronists yearn to someday move Evita to be with her ex-hubby). A woman named Martha Holgado who claims to be Perón's daughter filed suit to stop the move, while one of Evita's relatives will not let her corpse be moved. And of course there's not chance it will be used for political gain by the various strains of Peronism and the oppostion. Current (Peronist) President Kirchner will preside, while former Presidents Duhalde (Peronist), Alfonsín (Radical) and Menem (Peronist) will attend.

Perón's battered bod's next stop? Disneyland. Obvio.

Update: The day after we posted this, Larry Rohter of the NYT has a nice profile on the project and the fight put up by the alleged daughter. A favorite bit about the why Perón's supporters say that Holgado couldn't be his daughter: "For years, to undermine the swaggering macho aura Perón had as a dictator, his enemies spread rumors that he was impotent. Mr. Rodríguez Perón tried to modify such claims by saying Perón was sterile because of an accident in 1913, when he was an 18-year-old cadet in the military, that crushed his testicles."