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The Good Companion. By the early autumn of 1945, Perón was taking dead aim on the following February's presidential election. But World War II had just ended; a powerful tide of Argentine democracy suddenly welled up and threatened to swamp him. In the press,_in the street, in the universities, the voices of freedom stilled under the war-long state of siege now spoke up, loud & clear. Perón's reply was to arrest 1,000 leading Argentine liberals, conservatives and intellectuals. In the resulting outburst of public indignation, President Farrell was compelled to arrest Perón and free his opponents. Stripped of his titles, the colonel was carried off to prison on Martin Garcia Island. By all normal standards of Latin American politics, Perón was through.
Then Evita and his friends in the labor movement came to the rescue. Eva Duarte had run away from an impoverished household in rural Junin to seek a career in the Buenos Aires theater. Though at first she wangled only a few small parts in radio and the movies, she got around in café society and made many an influential friend. One night in 1943, she met Juan Perón, then an eligible widower, at a radio party. Before many months, Colonel Perón moved into a new apartment in fashionable Calle Posadas; Eva Duarte had an apartment there, too. Evita's radio salary presently zoomed from a niggardly $35 a month to a whopping $6,000. She suddenly became interested in trade unionism, and worked hard organizing a new Union of Public Entertainers.
The night Perón was arrested, Evita and the union bosses began scheming to free him. The chance came when Perón was brought back to Buenos Aires' military hospital for a lung examination. Next morning, Oct. 17, 1945, some 50,000 trade unionists streamed across the bridge from the packinghouse quarter of Avellaneda. Most of the mob were coatless—a shocking sight in staid Buenos Aires—and some, even worse, were shirtless. They marched to the hospital and to the palace, ominously bellowing, "Pay-ron!Pay-ron!"
The Good Guesser. While the police stood by passively and the army held back, they took control of the city. Toward evening a car fetched Perón from the hospital. Finally, Pern and President Farrell appeared together on the palace balcony. The crowd roared. An afternoon newspaper had printed pictures of the demonstrators sneeringly titled: "The shirtless ones [descamisados] who roam our streets." Now Perón caught up the sneer as a weapon, shouted that he wanted to clasp all such descamisados to his bosom. Ever since, Peronistas have celebrated the day of the descamisados' loyalty. It was Perón's March on Rome. Four days later, Juan and Evita were married in a Secret civil ceremony. She was 26, he 50.