The President's wife, Dona Maria Eva Duarte de Peron, who is the acknowledged leader of the Left wing of the Peronista movement, returned yesterday from her tour of Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, and Switzerland, and received the most rousing welcome ever accorded to a woman in Argentina. As the river steamer from Montevideo approached the quay, ships in the harbour sounded sirens, loudspeakers announced her arrival, and a crowd estimated at 250,000 mostly workers carrying thousands of portraits of Senora Peron, broke the police cordons to greet her. Special trains had brought thousands of workers from the provinces.
After a welcoming speech from Senor Freire, Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Senora Peron told the crowd that she had seen in Europe desolation, hunger, misery, and anxiety. She had bitter words for domestic enemies and denounced capitalism and oligarchy, declaring that the rich should be poorer and the poor richer. Capitalism and oligarchy had followed her to the old world in an effort to defame her, but infamy, intrigue, and calumny could not stop her because the Peronista movement would triumph even beyond the Argentine frontiers. General and Senora Peron then motored to the Presidential residence through streets lined with cheering crowds.
