María Eva Duarte de Perón (May 7, 1919 – July 26, 1952) was the second wife of President Juan Domingo Perón
(1895–1974) and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is often
referred to as simply Eva Perón, or by the affectionate Spanish language diminutive Evita, which literally
translates into English as "Little Eva".

She was born out of wedlock in rural Argentina in 1919. At the age 15, Eva Duarte made her way to the
nation's capital of Buenos Aires where she pursued a career as a stage, radio, and film actress. Eva met
Colonel Juan Perón in 1944 at a charity event in San Juan. The two were married the following year. In 1946,
Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina. Over the course of the next six years, Eva Perón became
powerful within the Pro-Peronist trade unions, essentially for speaking on behalf of labor rights. She also
ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, and founded and
ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party.

In January 1944, Eva encountered a fast-rising and immensely popular politician named Juan Perón at a fund
raising concert organized to help earthquake victims. Within weeks, she was sharing his apartment. Perón went
on to become Minister of War and Vice President of the Republic, but political unrest at the end of World War
II eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment. Freed in a populist revolt, Perón subsequently married Eva
and was elected President of Argentina with a huge popular mandate.

The poor, in turn, clamored for Eva to assume political office beside her husband, and despite growing
dissent from military and political opponents, she was put forward as the vice-presidential candidate. It
was, however, a goal Eva would never realize; she was subsequently diagnosed with terminal cancer. Renouncing
her political aspirations, Eva Perón fell into a steep and sudden decline, and on July 26, 1952, she died at
the age of 33.

In 1951, Eva Perón accepted the Peronist nomination for the office of Vice President of Argentina. In this
bid she received great support from the Peronist political base, low-income and working class Argentines
referred to as descamisados or "shirtless ones". However, opposition from the nation's military and elite,
coupled with her declining health, ultimately forced her to back down. In 1952, shortly before her death,
Eva Perón was given the official title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation" by the Argentine Congress.

A measure of her enormous appeal among her fellow citizens could be seen in the outpouring of grief that
followed her death. Close to a million Argentineans crowded the streets of Buenos Aires for her funeral
procession, and an estimated three million filed past her casket to pay their last respects. The myth of
"Saint Eva" was kept alive by frequent requests to the Vatican for her canonization. Forty thousand such
appeals were received in the two years following her death.