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Case file s190 · Latin America · 1952
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1952
Eva Perón: Evita (cropped)
Eva Perón. Pinélides Fusco. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
26 July 1952
Place
Unzué Palace, Buenos Aires · Argentina
Field
politics · Politics and government on the timeline
Legal tradition
Argentine civil law (forced heirship) · Civil law
Historical event
1955 coup against Juan Perón; 1976 coup
Religion
Eva Perón: Catholic (recorded as Catholic Church on Wikidata; Argentine Roman Catholics, Catholic feminists, Catholic socialists on Wikipedia)
Member of
Order of Isabella the Catholic‎, Female Peronist Party (Wikidata)
Latin AmericaBodies, bones and burialsSeized by the statePostwarLatin AmericaArgentina

Argentina's military seized Eva Perón's embalmed body and buried it in Milan under a false name

Eva Perón, wife of President Juan Perón, died of cancer at 33. The anatomist Pedro Ara embalmed her body. In 1955 the military overthrew Perón. In November 1955 the new regime seized the body, and intelligence chief Carlos Moori Koenig kept it in his office. In April 1957 it was shipped to Genoa and buried in Milan's Cimitero Maggiore under the name "Maria Maggi de Magistris." On 1 September 1971 it was dug up and delivered to Perón in exile at his villa in Madrid. His third wife, Isabel, brought it back to Argentina in November 1974. After the 1976 coup it was placed in the Duarte family tomb in Recoleta Cemetery under three steel plates. Eva left no notarized will. Her forced heirs under Argentine law were her husband and her mother, Juana Ibarguren. Her estate was jewels, dresses and the royalties from her book La razón de mi vida. In 1958 Ibarguren sued to cancel her consent to a handwritten testament Perón had drawn up, and she won in 1972. In 1975 Isabel paid the Duarte family US$3 million in cash, which they accepted under protest. A set of Eva's jewels stolen in Valencia in 2009 was recovered in Milan in 2011, valued at about €6 million. In 2026 she lies in the Duarte vault in Recoleta.

What the law took from it

Under forced heirship a parent's reserved share cannot be signed away by a spouse's private arrangement, and a court will undo the consent.

Family version vs. the record

Eva's sisters Erminda and Amelia called the final chapter of her book Mi mensaje, "Mi voluntad suprema", apocryphal; a Buenos Aires civil court ruled on it in 2007, final in 2008, but the outcome is not confirmed†.

tiempoar.com.areleconomista.com.ar
Sources
  1. Il PostPress
  2. Deseret NewsPress
  3. eleconomista.com.arPress
  4. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Argentina's military seized Eva Perón's embalmed body and buried it in Milan under a false name,” story s190, https://www.celebrity.estate/eva-peron-1952, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Latin AmericaBodies, bones and burialsSeized by the statePostwarLatin AmericaCivil lawArgentina