{"id":12082,"date":"2025-12-14T19:54:54","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T23:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/eva-perons-revolutionary-rights-of-the-elderly-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T19:54:54","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T23:54:54","slug":"eva-perons-revolutionary-rights-of-the-elderly-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/eva-perons-revolutionary-rights-of-the-elderly-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Eva Per\u00f3n\u2019s Revolutionary Rights of the Elderly \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

In modern society, Simone de Beauvoir observed in her later years, \u201cit is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life\u201d \u2014 it is something upon which the vast majority of humanity looks upon \u201cwith sorrow and rebellion,\u201d dreading it more than death itself. But her one solution<\/a> to the problem of keeping old age from becoming \u201can absurd parody of our former life\u201d is balanced precariously on the tip of Maslow\u2019s pyramid, entirely depended on the needs below being met. So too with Bertrand Russell\u2019s key to growing old contentedly<\/a> and Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s insistence on the civilizational value of elders<\/a>. The great paradox of modernity is that we are creatures of fraying flesh and brittle bone whose destiny is to diminish in abilities until all is dust, living in a culture equating productivity with the value of personhood, so that the person in the creature is increasingly devalued with the ripening of age. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Eva Per\u00f3n<\/strong> (May 7, 1919\u2013July 26, 1952) was still in her twenties when she set out to change that. <\/p>\n

Growing up in rural Argentina, she had been moved to tears by the elderly man who regularly came to her family home asking for help, \u201chumiliated to the point where the only thing he had left was his humility,\u201d she would later recall. That humiliation, she came to see, was a structural problem, a flaw of the system design. And so, knowing that the most valiant way to complain is to create<\/a>, she set out to redesign the system. <\/p>\n

After researching all past efforts across legislation and philosophy, none of which offered an adequate solution to the problem of ensuring rights she saw as \u201cprofound\u201d and \u201cprimordial\u201d \u2014 \u201cthe Rights of Old Age\u201d \u2014 Evita wrote them herself. She did not know then, nine months before her thirtieth birthday, that she would never live to know old age. <\/p>\n

\"\"
Eva Per\u00f3n by Pin\u00e9lides Arist\u00f3bulo Fusco<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On August 28, 1948, before the eyes of her people, Evita presented to the president \u2014 her husband \u2014 the decalogue she had been working on obsessively, to be included in Argentina\u2019s Constitutional Reform the following year. Addressing the nation, she held the whole world accountable for what she saw as one of the most overlooked social injustices of our civilization:<\/p>\n

\n

The problem of abandoned or dispossessed elderly people lacking the essentials of life has always been a key concern for the governments of all nations. Unfortunately, it has never achieved a definitive resolution\u2026 The issue remains open to all kinds of improvisations, theories, and even undermining born of apathy\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At stake, she insisted, was nothing less than \u201cthe miracle of successfully closing the cycle of human life\u201d \u2014 a miracle that demands of society a \u201ccollaborative, just, humane, and effective\u201d collective will that includes \u201call individuals without exception.\u201d The ten rights she outlined were not just a political statement but a humanistic appeal to \u201call people of goodwill who feel connected to the plight of those who, after contributing their labor and social support, reach old age deprived of the means necessary to continue living with dignity in the common life of humanity.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

These are the ten rights, which I have translated into English from the original 1948 document held in the archives of the Congressional Library of Argentina: <\/p>\n

\n

I. RIGHT TO ASSISTANCE<\/strong>
Every elderly person has the right to fundamental protection, under the auspices and at the expense of their family. In cases of abandonment, it is the State\u2019s responsibility to provide such protection, either directly or through institutions and foundations created, or to be created, for that purpose, without prejudice to the State\u2019s or said institutions\u2019 right to subrogate and demand the corresponding contributions from any non-compliant but solvent relatives.<\/p>\n

II. RIGHT TO HOUSING<\/strong>
The right to hygienic shelter with basic household comforts is inherent to the human condition.<\/p>\n

III. RIGHT TO NOURISHMENT<\/strong>
Healthy nourishment, adequate for each person\u2019s age and physical condition, must be particularly considered.<\/p>\n

IV. RIGHT TO CLOTHING<\/strong>
Decent clothing appropriate to the climate complements the previous right.<\/p>\n

V. RIGHT TO PHYSICAL HEALTH CARE<\/strong>
Care for the physical health of the elderly must be an especial and ongoing concern. <\/p>\n

VI. RIGHT TO MORAL HEALTH CARE<\/strong>
Free exercise of spiritual expression, in accordance with morality and creed, must be ensured.<\/p>\n

VII. RIGHT TO RECREATION<\/strong>
The elderly must be recognized as having the right to enjoy a moderate amount of diversion in order to bear contentedly their awaiting time. <\/p>\n

VIII. RIGHT TO WORK<\/strong>
When the state and conditions permit it, occupation through productive work therapy must be facilitated. This will prevent the decline of the personality.<\/p>\n

IX. RIGHT TO TRANQUILITY<\/strong>
To enjoy tranquility, free from anguish and anxiety, in the final years of life is the heritage of the elderly.<\/p>\n

X. RIGHT TO RESPECT.<\/strong>
The elderly have the right to the respect and consideration of their fellow human beings.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While Evita was ensuring that growing old remains a privilege and not a privation, cells were silently mutating in her body to deny her that privilege. But the decalogue she left behind was nothing less than a revolution. Word of it traveled throughout Latin America, so that when the young Che Guevara passed through Peru on his motorcycle as Evita lay dying at thirty-three, an old indigenous man who spoke no Spanish timidly approached him and, with his son translating, asked for a copy of the famous rights of the elderly in Argentina\u2019s new constitution. Che \u201centhusiastically promised to send him one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rights, however, are not one-time feats but the ongoing responsibility of the society which they serve. Within three years of passing the Constitutional Reform, the widowed Juan Per\u00f3n was overthrown and the military dictatorship that set in overturned his constitutional amendments, cutting out Evita\u2019s decalogue, affirming what we so willingly forget: that progress is not a vector pointing up and up but a sine wave slowly undulating upward through regular dips. John Steinbeck knew it: \u201cAll the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up,\u201d he wrote<\/a> at the peak of WWII. \u201cIt isn\u2019t that the evil thing wins \u2014 it never will \u2014 but that it doesn\u2019t die.\u201d Zadie Smith knows it: \u201cProgress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive,\u201d she wrote<\/a> in the wake of the first Trump election. Evita\u2019s revolution may have been stricken from the Argentine constitution, but the words with which she ended her speech that August day lit a torchlight for the future history of our world:<\/p>\n

\n

Our aspirations seek to be realized even more profoundly, encompassing not only the vulnerable elderly of our society, but all the forgotten of the earth. Justice and solidarity neither recognize nor can recognize borders. They are higher manifestations of the human condition, revealing forms of the divine breath that animates our lives and that seeks to be perfected in the face of eternity\u2026 [I have] the unwavering faith that these same rights we proclaim today, presented before the nations of the world, will serve as inspiration, stir consciences, and one day reach, like a distant inspiration, the white heads of all the vulnerable elderly people of the earth. <\/p>\n

Nothing more.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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