Editing Eva Perón (section)

===Mourning===
[[File:CGT Funerales Evita.JPG|thumb|right|Perón's elaborately adorned funeral]]
Immediately after Perón's death, the government suspended all official activities for several days and ordered that all flags be flown at [[half-mast]] for 10 days. Business across the country was put to a halt,  as movies were stopped and patrons were asked to leave restaurants.<ref name=Robson20150710/> Popular grief was overwhelming. The crowd outside of the presidential residence, where Perón died, grew dense, congesting the streets for ten blocks in each direction.

[[File:Funeral de Evita.jpg|thumb|right|Nearly 3 million people attended Evita's funeral in the streets of [[Buenos Aires]].]]

The morning after her death, while Perón's body was being moved to the Ministry of Labor Building, eight people were crushed to death in the throngs. In the following 24 hours, over 2,000 people were treated in city hospitals for injuries sustained in the rush to be near Perón as her body was being transported, and thousands more were treated on the spot.<ref name="Barnes"/>{{page needed|date=October 2015}} For the following two weeks, lines of people stretched for several city blocks, with mourners waiting hours to see Perón's body at the Ministry of Labor.

The streets of Buenos Aires were filled with flowers. Within a day of Perón's death, all flower shops in Buenos Aires had run out of stock. Flowers were flown in from all over the country, and as far away as Chile.<ref name="Barnes"/>{{page needed|date=October 2015}} Despite the fact that Perón never held a political office, she was eventually given a [[state funeral]], usually reserved for a head of state,<ref name="Fraser 164-6">{{harvp|Fraser|Navarro|1996|pp=164–166}}.</ref> along with a full Catholic [[Requiem|Requiem Mass]]. A memorial was held in Helsinki for the [[Argentina at the 1952 Summer Olympics|Argentine]] team to attend during the [[1952 Summer Olympics]] due to Perón's death happening during those games.<ref>{{cite book |url = http://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/OfficialReports/1952/OR1952.pdf |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080411091045/http://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/OfficialReports/1952/OR1952.pdf |archive-date = 11 April 2008 |title = 1952 Summer Olympics official report |page = 91 |access-date = 1 August 2010 }}</ref>

On Saturday, 9 August, the body was transferred to the Congress Building for an additional day of public viewing, and a memorial service was attended by the entire Argentine legislative body. The next day, after a final Mass, the coffin was laid on a [[Limbers and caissons|gun carriage]] pulled by CGT officials. It was followed by [[Juan Peron|Juan Perón]], his cabinet, Eva Perón's family and friends, and the delegates and representatives of the [[Female Peronist Party]]—then workers, nurses and students of the [[Eva Peron Foundation]]. Flowers were thrown from balconies and windows.

There were different interpretations of the popular mourning of Perón's death. Some reporters viewed the mourning as authentic, while others saw a public succumbing to another of the "passion plays" of the Peronist regime. ''Time'' reported that the Peronist government enforced the observance of a daily period of five minutes of mourning following a daily radio announcement.<ref>{{cite news |url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,857294,00.html |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070930064035/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,857294,00.html |url-status = dead |archive-date = 30 September 2007 |magazine = Time |title = In Mourning |date = 11 August 1952 |access-date = 9 November 2006 }}</ref>

Upon her death, the Argentine public was told that Perón was only 30. The discrepancy was meant to dovetail with Perón's earlier tampering with her birth certificate. After becoming the first lady in 1946, Evita had her birth records altered to read that she had been born to married parents, and placed her birth date three years later, making herself younger.<ref name="Fraser" />{{page needed|date=October 2015}}

During Perón's time, children born to unmarried parents did not have the same legal rights as those born to married parents. Biographer Julie M. Taylor, professor of [[anthropology]] at [[Rice University]],<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~anth/people/faculty/people-taylor.htm |title = Rice University: Julie M. Taylor |publisher = Ruf.rice.edu |access-date = 27 January 2011 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090620014534/http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~anth/people/faculty/people-taylor.htm |archive-date = 20 June 2009 }}</ref> has said that Perón was aware of the pain of being born "illegitimate". Taylor speculates that Perón's awareness of this may have influenced her decision to have the law changed so that "illegitimate" children would henceforth be referred to as "natural" children.<ref>{{cite book |title = Eva Perón: Intimate Portrait |publisher = [[Lifetime Television]]. |isbn=157523677X |chapter = Interview with Julie M. Taylor }}</ref>