More than 14,000 Objects Belonging to Juan and Evita Peron to be Auctioned

BUENOS AIRES.- More than 14,000 objects belonging to the late Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron and his second wife, Evita, are to be auctioned off beginning Monday in order to collect more than $20 million for humanitarian causes.

A book by historian Felix Luna dedicated to the general and corrected throughout by Peron, and a Limoges porcelain jewelry box that was a gift of dancer Josephine Baker, are a couple of the pieces to be auctioned during the coming months via Internet.

President Juan Peron, right, his wife, Eva, and Dr. Hector Campora, left, are shown at the the president's re-election celebration in Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 1, 1952

The auction kicked off Monday with 41 lots, which can be acquired whole or piece by piece, and each week new goods will be added until all the pieces have been put on the block, which will take an estimated three months, the organizer and president of the Peace and Friendship among Peoples Foundation, Mario Rotundo, told Efe on Monday.

Among the pieces to be made available are an infinity of books that belonged to Peron’s personal library, record collections, formal wear, household goods, furniture, gifts received, documents and photographs, among many other objects, many of them associated with Spain “from the many years Peron lived in exile there,” Rotundo said.

Peron (1895-1974), who was president de Argentina from 1946-1955 and again in 1973-1974, called Spain home for 12 of the 17 years that he had to remain outside his country after the military coup that deposed him in 1955.

Outstanding among the Spanish objects are two fans given to Evita, who died in 1952 at the age of 33, by Spanish flamenco singer Miguel de Molina and playwright Jacinto de Benavente.

The objects to be auctioned off are the fruit of an “arduous labor” of recovering the ex-president’s goods.

Although some pieces were donated voluntarily by those who taken possession of them in different countries around the world, getting back many of them entailed taking legal procedures.

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