Day 7! Today, we did a walking tour of Recoleta, exploring the city and learning about the history of the different areas. I found it very interesting that Recoleta has a section of the city in which many British immigrants moved, and there is a large clock tower donated to Argentina by Britain in this area. We then explored the Recoleta Cemetery, where the body of the late First Lady, Evita Perón, lies. Following the cemetery, we took a bus to the Museo Evita, stopping at the Museo Evita Café to have a lunch of empanadas, streak, sweet potatoes, and vegetables. In the museum, we learned about all of Evita Perón’s great accomplishments while being the First Lady of Argentina. She was an actress before marrying Juan Perón, starring in advertisements and movies. Once Juan Perón was voted into office, Evita gained a new role and was able to play an extremely important role in women’s suffrage, as well as raising funds for hospitals and schools through the Eva Perón Foundation. Also, she was from a lower class, so she advocated heavily for the rights and safety of workers in the lower classes. 

The president of the time and Evita’s husband, General Juan Perón, significantly impacted the development of the modern healthcare system by trying to make peace between capital and labor. Perón was not considered to be a Marxist or a liberal: he simply wanted to support workers while simultaneously maintaining capital, wanting both owners and business people working in the economy. Perón wanted to create a country in which there was free trade, growth of the economy, support from the people, no violent revolutions, and no overthrowing of the capital. He introduced the country to free public healthcare, established unions, and put into effect a system in which everything would be shared equally, very similar to the ways of communism. 

Perón became very popular among the people due to his constant advocacy for those in the working class, but he was also considered to be a dictator by others due to his aggressive leadership style. He began the Peronist political party and ideology. Peronism focused on the support of unions, pushing services through unions, cooperation between labor and capital, worker solidarity over individualism, and free healthcare for everyone. The original main goal of Peronism was to support the working-class citizens, but the ideology of Peronism has become much more complicated over time.