MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine will issue bills with the likeness of the iconic Evita Peron

Evita the passionate and articulate speaker revered by the lower classes

Argentina is planning to issue bills bearing the likeness of Evita Duarte to mark the sixtieth anniversary on July 26th of the death of the wife of three times president Juan Domingo Peron, according to the Buenos Aires media.

The new bills are inspired on a 5-Pesos bill designed in 1952 after Evita’s death but later scrapped by the military dictatorship that took power in 1955, according to government sources quoted by the media.

At the Argentine minting house workers managed to hide and save from the military one of the original engravings for the original 5 Peso bill which is now the inspiration for an issue six decades later.

“President Cristina Fernandez thought it was a great idea” said the sources. The Argentine president speeches usually have a picture or an image of Evita behind her and the Ministry of Social Development building has two huge images of Evita, one of them the gentle, soft, caring lady, the other the passionate and articulate speaker.

Several bills to that effect have been presented in congress to print the likeness of Evita, remembered and revered in Argentina as the champion of the poor. It’s not clear yet in which value of bills her face will be engraved.

Evita died of cancer 26 July 1952. Her picture and that of her husband President Peron are found in almost all Argentine government offices.

She was the second wife of Peron (1895/1974), who was president of Argentina in 1946/1955 and again from 1973/74. Evita is buried at the Recoleta Cemetery, the most elegant in Buenos Aires.

Evita who was widely popular among Argentina’s lower classes is known to people around the world thanks to the hit musical “Evita” written by Andrew Lloyd Webster and Tim Rice which was made into a film in 1994 by Alan Parker with Madonna as the first lady.

The face of Evita has appeared in commemorative coins, one in 1997 under President Carlos Menem in honour of the fifty years of the woman’s vote, a bill sponsored by Evita and in 2002 when the half century of her death.