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around BA, or Buenos Aires, is that a porteño , or a native of Buenos Aires, is someone who “dressed French, talked Italian, and thought British.” Her inability to grasp the cultural disparities was a result of her ignorance of certain historical facts that had made a large segment of the population so violently opposed to Juan and Eva Perón. At that time, Buenos Aires was a class-conscious society where social and political acceptance depended on one’s being a member of one of the ten top families. The former first lady came from the lower class, the illegitimate and often neglected child of an impoverished servant and a married man. Not surprisingly, she had spent her entire life striving to be accepted by Argentine society. Madonna, the middle-class girl from Middle America, set out to shock the establishment. If Madonna passed herself off as the “poor girl made good,” Evita obliterated the seedy side of her early life. Some lyrics and phrases in the film conjure up images of the life and times of Madonna, or more precisely, the hardships she has invented for her public. Both she and Evita understood how to seduce and overwhelm their public to win international acclaim and approval.
    According to a well-known writer in Buenos Aires, once Juan and Eva Perón broke down those social boundaries that had created an ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor, they set a new standard of acceptability in which anyone could succeed. “I explained to Madonna,” the writer said, “that because of their climb to the top, they became an enemy of the aristocracy.”
    The writer was amazed when Madonna interpreted the lesson as further proof that she and Evita were heroes of the downtrodden. She was delighted that two people from the “wrong side of the tracks” had “made good” and gone on to take over the country. “She absolutely identified with Eva Perón,” the writer goes on, “because she considered that she had also succeeded against the same odds.” As they were about to part, Madonna thanked the writer for “making things so clear” and left him with the following words: “What you’re really saying is that the Argentine people found out that all you had to be was bigger, bolder, and smarter than the rest to get to the top.” In America, perhaps. In Argentina, never!
    Marikena Monti is an Argentine singer who is often compared to Edith Piaf. She also met Madonna and recalls a conversation they had that left her with the impression that the star had become so obsessed by Evita that she refused to see the subtext of the city, which still included an awareness of a black period in the country’s history. “I tried to explain that we do hideous things to each other here in Argentina,” Monti begins. “We sleep with each other’s husbands and wives, kill each other’s children, and it’s business as usual. And, I tried to tell her within the context of the Perón era and, later on, the tragedy of the Dirty War, when thousands of Argentines simply disappeared. I also tried to explain my pessimism about the economy and the future of the arts under Menem’s regime.”
    According to Monti, she told Madonna that there had once been an important intellectual movement in Buenos Aires, when she would sing about issues and humanity. “With the situation in the country today,” Monti continues, “I told her it was hard for me to sing about the privatization of the phone company.” Madonna’s response was predictable when she replied, “I sing about sex, and that’s always in style whether it’s private or public.”
    Andrés di Tella is an Argentine filmmaker who had won an award, the equivalent of an American Emmy, for his film about left-wing Peronism. At the time Madonna was in Buenos Aires, di Tella was making a film about the early days of Argentine radio and television. “While I was filming my documentary,” di Tella explained, “the people I spoke to in radio who knew Evita went