Evita Reappears

oARGENTINA

Thinner and paler than ever after a month's illness, Evita Peron came back last week to perhaps her greatest triumph. The occasion was the Peronistas' Loyalty Day, celebrating the day in 1945 when Juan Peron was sprung from prison and swept back into power on the shoulders of his "shirtless" supporters. This year the day was dedicated to Evita.

Some 100,000 descamisados massed before the palace to pay tribute to "our lady of hope." There was a thunderous roar as she was carried in an armchair, a slight figure in a checked burgundy suit, to Peron's side on the balcony. Just before he spoke, the President decorated her with a special medal for relinquishing the vice-presidential nomination. Then, for the first time that anyone could remember, he clasped his wife in a public embrace. The descamisados howled with pleasure.

His wife, said Peron, is "not only the standard bearer of our movement but its soul and guiding spirit." Rising slowly from her chair, Evita read her reply in a low-pitched voice. She thanked Peron "for having taught me to know you and love you." She had left her bed to come, she said, because of her debt of gratitude "to Peron and to you, the workers--I do not care whether I have to part with pieces of my life to pay it." For two minutes the crowd chanted: "Our lives for Peron."

Then the President, following his six-year custom, proclaimed that the next day would be a holiday. It would be called "St. Evita Day."

Peron, who still might be in trouble with the army, was undoubtedly in need of all the popular election support his ailing wife could win him. She had made her dramatic appearance in defiance of doctors' orders. The official press had already announced that she would soon submit to an operation--the first hint that she was suffering from more than anemia. At week's end it was reported that one of Evita's doctors had flown to New York to fetch the specialist who would perform the operation.

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