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Like the country, Perón, too, is ailing. Concerned about the condition of his heart, doctors have warned him that the rebirth of his political career could hasten his death. Just as ominous, though, is the problem that Peron faces within his own political movement, which is sharply split between the right and the left. The rightists, reports TIME Buenos Aires Bureau Chief Charles Eisendrath, seem as loyal as ever, willing to follow el Líder virtually wherever he takes them. But the leftists, who include many youths barely born when Perón was ousted by a military coup in 1955, are relying on him to create a "socialist fatherland." They give indications that they may settle for nothing less. "Perón promised youth a revolution," warns Ernesto Giudice, 65, a member of the relatively conservative Communist Party's central committee. "If he doesn't transform society quickly and fundamentally, youth is going to do it—with or without him."
Already the bitter division has tarnished the old dictator's second coming. On the very day he returned, less than three months ago, to live again in Argentina, the factions turned a mammoth welcoming party into a mutual massacre. More than 100 people died and hundreds more were injured as rightist and leftist elements raked each other with gunfire in a huge meadow near Buenos Aires' Ezeiza Airport.
The incident clearly shocked Perón. Shortly afterward, he closed the door of his suburban Buenos Aires home and did not emerge for 23 days. Officially he had the flu, but he may have been more anguished than ill. No doubt Perón was agonizing over whether it was really worthwhile at his age to try again. He decided that it was, and pleased his supporters by agreeing to run formally for the presidency in a new election called for Sept. 23.
At the same time, he displeased many of his followers, particularly the leftists, by choosing Isabelita as his vice-presidential running mate. The nomination of the 42-year-old former cabaret dancer, bolstered by a publicity campaign extolling her virtues, struck some as a crass attempt by Perón to cast her in the image of his late second wife, the mass-adulated Evita.
As posters appeared throughout Argentina hailing Isabelita as "the perfect Peronista" and "Evita's successor," the lady herself tried to look and act like "the little Madonna," as Eva was called. She has dyed her chestnut hair blonde like Evita's, she wears a silver mink coat like Evita's, she is making good-will tours like Evita's. But when Isabel accepted the vice-presidential nomination, an honor that Eva had declined in 1951, angry Peronistas began tearing out the eyes on her posters.