Arquivo

In the summer of 1909, eighteen-year-old Giovanni Piras left his home in Sardinia to seek his fortune in Argentina. Once arrived, he started working as a farm-labourer. However, his letters became less frequent already from 1912, until they broke off definitively a few years later. But news from Giovanni arrived thanks to the emigrants coming back home: everyone assured that he had made his fortune and was in good health, and that he had not sent letters anymore, because if someone knew he was Italian, he would be in trouble, and even lose his job. The family did not surrender and kept on seeking him, although the news were always the same and too often mysterious. Until during the 50’s, on a Sunday, a nobleman in sent for Giovanni’s sister, Caterina, to show her a picture on the magazine People. As soon as she saw it, the woman burst into tears: in the man portrayed she had recognized her brother. But that man made people call him Juan Domingo Peron, and was the president of Argentina. So that he changed his name. There are many supporters to this thesis, and there is a number of coincidences that make these two figures superimpose. Peron launched many mysterious and winking phrases about his origins (he himself declared he did not exactly know neither where, nor when he was born). In fact, to say that Peron was Italian would still make him a traitor to his country, a foreigner could never become the President of Argentina.