The macabre joke that circulated on the street was that Juan Duarte had committed suicide, and what It just had to know who had done itwhich shows the suspicions generated by the death of Eva Perón’s spoiled brother.
The only male of five brothers, where the child was Evita, was born in 1914 in Los Toldos, province of Buenos Aires. Mother Juana Ibarguren took her offspring to the city of Junín, where she opened a pension. Playing billiards in the confectionery July 9 of that town, he became friends with the manager of the Guereño factory, who hired him to be Radical soap trade traveler.
After complying with military service, He moved to the city of Buenos Aires with his sister Evawho was determined to follow the actress’s career. There, Juan, found an environment conducive to his character prone to glasses, women and game.
Both brothers occupied an apartment in Carlos Pellegrini to 1300 and then move to another in Posadas and Ayacucho. when Eva began her relationship with Juan Perón, she asked her brother to leave the next department she occupied. After living a time at the Jousten Hotel and in an apartment on Avenida Córdoba and Sánchez de Bustamante, It was established on a fifth floor of Avenida Callao 1944.
With the advent of Perón to Power, Juan was opened countless possibilities. In 1944, his sister made him name him Mar del Plata Casino inspector And, when Perón assumed the presidency, it was his private secretary. Eva’s warning was always the same: “Port well, Juancito.”
Although he had to attend the president throughout the day, which began early, Juan never put aside his nightlife and his usual pilgrimage for fashion cabarets, as well as relations with show figures. The most publicized were the romances he maintained with Fanny Navarro and with Elina Colomer.
In 1947, he accompanied his sister Eva on her trip through Europe. She exploded when the Spanish Foreign Minister sent her the message that said that her brother and Alberto Dodero (very friend of Perón, in charge of organizing the unofficial part of the tour) had gone to the cuevas of the Sacred Monte, creating problems for custody. She threatened him: “One more whore and turn to Argentina!”
From exercising the public function, its patrimonial growth was notorious. To the department of Callao, we had to add The Santa Marta stayin Laguna del Monte and luxury cars; He handled the import permits of foreign cars, He had interests in the meat business and in the film industry. In a government that monopolized the media, it was impossible for an actress to appear on the radioland or antenna cover without having spoken before with Juan Duarte.
When his sister fell ill, he became aware that his fate was thrown. According to Osvaldo Bertolini, one of his brothers -in -law, Juan had been very impressed by Eva’s disease. In a testimony provided to the journalist Hugo Gambini, he said: “One night we were in his car for the gardens of Palermo and we stopped in the dark, so that no one recognized him. I took an radiography of an envelope and said: ‘Here is what the doctors discovered.’ It seems that there is no remedy. Juancito looked at that radiography with the light of the board, And he began to cry. Some of those ministers who were sworn in. ”
At the time of dying Evita, Perón was approached – to the departure of an act at the Teatro Colón – by actress Malisa Zini, of Peronist militancy, who is living voice He warned him that corrupt people surrounded him. He cited her to speak calmer and arranged for General León Bengoa to start an investigation of the cabinet. “He will go to jail to my own father if he is a thief”announced in a speech that Juan heard while driving. Although Perón did not appoint him, they all inferred that they talked about their brother -in -law. The opposition had already initiated a campaign of complaints of corruption against him, knowing that the recipient was also the president.
All eyes pointed to him and his circle of friends inside Casa Rosada. At the beginning of April 1953 he was raided his office and his safe; The same fate ran its closest collaborators. On day 6 he resigned from his position. The 9 had to declare before the Special commission chaired by Bengoa.
On the night of April 8, His friends went to his department on Callao Avenue. They were Raúl Apold, Héctor Cámpora, Osvaldo Bertolini, Ramón Subiza, Raúl Martgueirat and Jerónimo Remorino. Some noticed him melancholic, others remember him making plans. The truth is that in the morning of 9, when his Japanese butler Tashiro went to take breakfast, He found him kneeling, in underwear, with his head resting on the bed, and with a shot in the right temple. Near, a 38 caliber revolver.
No one had heard the shot, apparently the bullet hole did not correspond to the caliber of the weapon found and the few traces of blood found in the scene did not correspond to a wound of such a nature.
At the light table, there was his farewell Letter:
“My dear General Perón: the evil of some traitors to Perón, to the working people, who is the one who loves you with sincerity, and the enemies of the homeland, I wanted to separate from you; Far from knowing how much he loves me and how loyal I am; To do this they resort to defame me and achieved it; They filled me with shame But they could not separate me from you; From my resignation, you were as friend as ever and this affliction of these days for me, more than paid me the evil that they caused me. I have been honest and nobody can try otherwise. I want it with my soul and say once again than the biggest man I met is Perón; I know about his love for his people and the homeland, I know how no one of his honesty and I move away from this world disgusted by the scoundrelbut happy and sure that his people will never stop wanting him and having been his loyal friend; I fulfilled as Eva Perón, where they gave me the strength. I ask you to take care of my beloved mother and minethat excuse me with them that they want it well. I came with Eva, I go with her, shouting alive Perón, live the homeland, and that God and her people accompany him forever. My last hug for my mother and for you. (Signed) Juan R. Duarte. Sorry for the lyrics, sorry for everything. ” He was 38 years old.
Perón attended the wake, which was held in the department of Elisa, one of the deceased’s sisters. “They killed another son”the mother shouted among cries. Later, the president would comment that “That boy was lost by easy money and women. He had syphilis.”
The radical leader Silvano Santander He had another theory: on his tour of Europe in 1947, Eva Perón would have deposited a significant sum of money, from contributions from Nazis hierarchs that supported Perón. When Eva died, the heirs were the only ones enabled to make those funds, in custody in a bank in Switzerland. In October 1952, Juan Duarte traveled to that country and, on his return, he informed Perón the total of the deposited, which It did not match the number that the then president handled. That would have been the origin of the disagreement that would end his death.
The historian Joseph Page echoed a version published in Time magazine, which argued that Duarte had been killed at the airport when he tried to leave the country.
When Perón was overthrown on September 16, 1955, the police carried out three investigations: a process on torture, the disappearance of a child in the waters of the Tiger and the death of Juan Duarte. This task is quoted to Prospero Germán Fernández Albariños, also known as “Captain Gandhi.” As a school teacher, he had completed until the third year of medicine at the university, worked in the Federal Police and would not have been in healthy judgment. The anti -Peronist press defined it, exaggeratedly, as “The Argentine FBI man”. Gandhi revealed him to prove that Perón had sent to kill his brother -in -law.
An afternoon of November 1955, a police commission was present at the Recoleta cemetery. It was with the mission of taking Duarte’s remains. They would take them to the Chacarita necropolis to do the autopsy.
He made Margueirat, the former head of Ceremonial of Government, to Lagos Guardian and even the Gullo hairdresser, all in detainees. From the evidence he said, He indicated that Duarte had been killed. It was based on the fact that the finger of the right foot was rigid, supported on the surface of the mattress in a forced position, which indicated, always according to Gandhi, that the body had been placed there.
Had he committed suicide? Was he killed? Or had they to give credit to those who said that, in reality, Juan Duarte had been living in another country for a while?
However, the judicial ruling known in 1958 threw through Gandhi’s conclusions. Although it was always suspected that he had been killed -he had to question the authenticity of the farewell letter- the elements with justice oriented towards suicide.
Juan would not have peace. For a while, Captain Gandhi kept Duarte’s head in a box and used to show it in the police department. Even in an interrogation to a suspect, he suggested: “Why don’t you tell Juan and what do you know?”exhibiting the spoils of that somewhat Disco brother who made his sister deny.
