Elizabeth Earle
Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina; Be Political For Me:
Eva Perón’s Politicization of the Social
During the 1940s, Eva “Evita” Perón gained power in the Argentine government
as the wife of President Juan Perón. When people hear the name Evita, most recall a
black and white image of a woman speaking into a microphone, her arms raised. Indeed,
she spent much of her time in this spotlight behind a microphone, first as an actress, and
later as First Lady, delivering political speeches through public address and ratio.
I use Hannah Arendt's notions of the public, the private, and the social to examine
how Evita caused a great change in Argentine politics by politicizing the social realm. In
The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt traces the development of the public and the
private, and the later rise of the social realm. While the private is the realm of the
household, the public is the political realm, and the social occurred when the concerns of
the household moved into the public realm. By shifting politics from force and violence
to speech and persuasion, Evita politicized the social, re-activating what Arendt calls the
bios politikos. Re-activation of the bios politikos, for Arendt, requires emphasis on the
two components of the political sphere: speech and action. As Evita brought the social
into the political and politicized the social, she created a new group of constituents for
Perón comprised of women and poor laborers.
Much of Evita’s power came from what Foucault terms “pastoral power,” power
that derives from a willingness to sacrifice the self for the salvation of the people.
Although this type of power dates back to the early church, for modern politicians such as
Evita, salvation for marginalized groups would not be found in the afterlife, but in the
realm of the political. Evita portrayed herself as champion of the poor and working
classes. Moreover, the people viewed her as a religious figure calling her “Saint Eva”,
Elizabeth Earle
“The Lady of Hope”, and “The Mother of the Innocents.” Congress gave her the title
“Spiritual Leader of the Nation.” Evita harnessed this power of the pastoral in the social
realm and used it to politicize the social.
In this study I use McLuhan’s Understanding Media to analyze the technological
tools Evita used in her activation of the bios politikos: the photograph and the
microphone. For Evita, the photograph symbolized action, and used the power of icon,
gesture, and number to incorporate people into the political. Similarly, the microphone
symbolized speech and voice, transporting the listener and creating a bond between
people. Through her command of the microphone and the photograph, Evita politicized
the social, bringing the speech and action of politics to the social realm and reducing the
force and violence in the political.
This image has become an iconic representation and is symbolic of her activation
of the bios politikos in the Argentine social sphere of the 1940s. Through her use of
pastoral power and the microphone, as seen in the iconic image, Evita effectively
politicized the social realm. In doing so, she reconstituted the political nation of
Argentina to include social groups that had previously been excluded, such as women,
laborers, and the lower class. As she politicized the social realm, Evita became an
integral part of husband Juan Perón’s political success.
Elizabeth Earle
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Foucault, Michel. The Essential Foucault: Selections From The Essential Works of
Foucault, 1954-1984, Edited by Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. New York:
The New Press, 2003.
Fraser, Nicholas and Marysa Navarro. Evita: The Real Life of Eva Peron. New York:
W.W. Norton and Company, 1996.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1994.