BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - Thousands of Argentines packed the streets of Buenos Aires on Tuesday to pay tribute to former President Juan Peron as his coffin was driven to a new mausoleum for a third burial since his death in 1974.

Onlookers tossed flowers as a military jeep carrying Peron's wooden coffin draped in the baby-blue-and-white Argentine flag made its way through downtown Buenos Aires.

The relocation marked a new chapter in a saga involving Peron's corpse, which has been disinterred, mutilated by thieves who sawed off his hands, and was the focus of a lengthy battle by a woman claiming to be his illegitimate daughter.

Shouts of ``Viva Peron!'' rang out as a motorcade carrying the remains of the leader married to ``Evita'' stopped at the headquarters of the country's biggest labor union en route to a new $1.3 million mausoleum built to house his remains.

The burial, slated for later on Tuesday, will see Peron laid to rest in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Vicente on the grounds of what was once his weekend retreat.

Worried about feverish support among his followers, Argentina's military leaders ordered Peron's coffin removed in the 1970s from the presidential grounds and banished to his family's more modest crypt.

Officials have said they wanted to relocate his remains to a location they say is more befitting one of the country's leading figures.

``I hope we see another patriot like him one day,'' said Americo Armada, 75, as he waited for a glimpse of Peron's coffin.

The burial was to cap a day of ceremonies infused with political symbolism ahead of next year's presidential elections. Decades after Peron's death, the Peronist party remains Argentina's biggest and most influential.

A former army colonel, Peron -- who served as president three times -- was first elected in 1946, a year after he was jailed for leading a military coup. Mass protests by his supporters helped him win freedom.

With his flamboyant wife Eva, popularly known as ``Evita,'' at his side, Peron nationalized railroads and utilities and expanded worker benefits that made him a hero to working-class Argentines.

But he was also criticized as authoritarian, and amid economic turmoil, he was toppled in a military coup in 1955, three years after Evita died.

Argentine officials had been working for years to relocate Peron but faced legal obstacles, including a challenge from a woman who for more than a decade has been trying to prove she is his only child.

An agreement allowing forensic experts to extract samples from his body for possible DNA testing last week allowed the move to go forward.

After spending 18 years in exile in Spain, Peron returned to Argentina in 1971 and was elected president two years later before dying in office. His third wife, Isabel, succeeded him before being overthrown by the military in 1976.

In 1987, robbers broke into the crypt and used an electric saw to slice off his hands in a case never solved and what many still call one of the country's great mysteries.


Violent Protests Mar Reburial of Peron


SAN VICENTE, Argentina (AP) -- The body of Argentine strongman Juan Domingo Peron arrived at a new mausoleum for his reburial Tuesday, greeted by the cheers but also a violent scene as rival groups hurled rocks at one another.

As Peron's cortege traveled from downtown Buenos Aires to the new mausoleum at his former weekend estate, thousands of weeping admirers tossed carnations and confetti.

Many in the crowd at the rural mausoleum, while awaiting the caravan, scattered and at least two men were seen bleeding after the first burst of violence. Scores of riot police swarmed the estate, repulsing groups of attackers with rubber bullets and tear gas.

The violence was apparently sparked by members of rival factions of the Peronist party angry about not being able to gain entrance to the ceremony, according to local TV and newspaper reports.

Authorities, however, had no immediate confirmation on the motives for the battles or the groups involved.

Televised footage showed rival bands tossing rocks at one another on the outskirts of the event as a larger, peaceful crowd elsewhere on Peron's former estate attempted to go forward with the reburial ceremony.

The independent television network TodosNoticias captured the mid-afternoon violence and showed one man with what appeared to be a handgun in a small group of men. The televised footage showed his gun recoiling four times in a matter of seconds, smoke rising from the barrel.

One police officer was reported wounded by gunfire, independent news agency Diarios y Noticias reported, citing unnamed police officials. Other local media reported several injuries from flying rocks and debris.

Some men outside the estate, shirtless, unleashed a fusillade of rocks and sticks against the stout wooden entrance gate before Peron's body arrived. The violence lasted several minutes before groups inside put ladders up against the brick walls of the estate and lobbed rocks back in defense.

''This was supposed to be a fiesta, a historic day. Instead it is a great shame,'' said one woman fleeing with her family. Others left in cars with windows shattered by rocks.

Removed from the Peron family's relatively humble crypt at the Chacarita cemetery, Peron's body was borne in a flag-draped coffin topped by a military cap and saber in an hourslong procession led by guards on horseback to a new $1.1 million mausoleum outside the capital. Authorities closed a major highway ahead of the sunset reburial -- Peron's third since his death in 1974.

''We are paying homage to our Peronist party, to the political party of our grandfathers and our fathers!'' said 24-year-old Daniel Ferreri.

Peron dominated Argentine politics like no other 20th-century leader with his glamorous wife Evita at his side, cultivating an enormous working-class following by redirecting agricultural wealth to legions of urban poor through projects to build schools, hospitals and homes. Peron was elected president three times and died in office at age 78 in 1974.

Relatives of the late Eva Peron, or Evita, who died from cancer in 1952 at age 33, have opposed moving her coffin from her family's tomb in the Recoleta cemetery in downtown Buenos Aires to lie beside her husband.

On Tuesday, hundreds of labor activists waved large photographs of the Perons and banners reading ''Peron, Immortal! Evita, Immortal!'' as Peron's coffin was taken to a midday tribute at a union hall.

Nonetheless, the ceremonies underscored how the movement that bears Peron's name has suffered deep fissures since his death: former presidents Carlos Menem and Eduardo Duhalde, rivals of current President Nestor Kirchner, and all Peronists, said they would not take part. Local media reported Kirchner later canceled plans to attend.

Supporters say Peron deserves a resting place befitting a national hero, a place more grand than the crowded urban cemetery where grave robbers broke in and stole his hands in 1987.

Workers on Monday tore open his crypt to remove the heavy metal coffin horizontally and avoid further damage to his corpse, said Alejandro Rodriguez Peron, a nephew.

Peron's body will now rest in a marble sarcophagus set in a lofty, modern atrium at the estate, named ''Oct. 17'' after the date in 1945 when Peron -- then a vice president and secretary of war -- was released amid massive protests after opponents in the military threw him in jail for allegedly plotting a coup. Peron was elected president months later.

An authoritarian leader who also had enemies, Peron radically reshaped Argentina's economic and political life by nationalizing railroads and other industries to bankroll state programs for the working classes.

The young, blonde Evita became a national icon, and after her death, her body lay in state in Congress for weeks as hundreds of thousands of mourners thronged to her coffin's open viewing.

When military leaders overthrew Juan Peron in 1955, they were apparently so worried about a death cult that they secretly moved Evita's body to an unmarked grave in Italy. In 1971 it was delivered to Juan Peron's home in exile in Spain.

Peron returned to Argentina soon after and ruled briefly until his death. He was succeeded by his third wife, Isabel, who brought Evita's body to rest by his in the presidential residence in Buenos Aires. But after she too was ousted in a 1976 coup, the military quietly dispatched both bodies to their families' respective crypts.

Hated the musical. Webber can kiss my ass. :p

Apparently commemoration of the dead is a national fetish in Argentina. After Peron was ousted in 1955, the embalmed corpse of Eva became persona non grata, too, because it would become a shrine for recently outlawed Peronistas. Her corpse was moved around by the military in a crate marked "Radio Equipment." Sometimes the crate was stored in a truck parked in the street, sometimes in some unlucky soldier's home--without the soldier being told what was inside. Then it simply disappeared. The sawing off of Peron's hands is yet another macabre chapter. Ugh!

Didnt they cut of Evita's head at some point?

No.
The embalming and interment of Eva Peron were among the most elaborate examples of official necrophilia ever recorded. Not even Egyptian Pharoahs were treated the way she was.
Peron had arranged, even before her death, to engage a Spanish medical professor, Pedro Ara, to oversee the embalming. His work was delayed by the incredible outpouring of affection for Eva--two million Argentinians filed past her casket over several days. Finally, Ara demanded that the processions stop so he could do his work before she disintegrated. Apparently he worked on her corpse for a year, but his art triumphed in the end. Though her casket moved around in dubious circumstances (that I cited earlier), Peron--in exile in Madrid--many years later finally got the casket, opened it, and found her almost perfectly preserved, with her head intact. It's a really grim story. :rolleyes: