Isabelita: Per

In The Meaning of My Life, her effusive 1951 autobiography, Eva Peron declared: "He [Peron] taught me my first steps and everything from then on."

Maria ("Isabelita") Martinez de Peron, 42, has obviously learned more steps than did her predecessor. Evita's hopes of becoming Vice President in 1951 were dashed by a determinedly male-chauvinist military. This time round, with an overwhelming election victory for both Perons, no such opposition is anticipated. Barring the total collapse of order in Argentina, Isabelita will become her country's first female Vice President on inauguration day, Oct. 12.

Electing a woman Vice President in male-dominated Argentina was no easy task. Indeed, when the Justicialist convention nominated Peron and his third wife last August, many Argentines reacted with incredulity and anger. Isabelita broke down in tears when she accepted her party's vice-presidential nomination, but the weeping was a deceptive sign of weakness. In fact, she seems to be every bit as tough and ambitious as Peron himself.

A petite and well-preserved blonde, Isabelita was born to a middle-class family in the impoverished Argentine province of La Rioja. After leaving home in her early 20s, she joined a troupe of touring folk dancers. She met the exiled Peron in Panama City in 1956 while she was performing in a nightclub and married him five years later in Madrid.

Isabelita soon became Peron's most effective voice in exile, carrying his commands to Justicialists throughout Argentina. In 1971, when it seemed that warring factions would destroy the movement, Peron, in the words of chess-conscious Argentines, "moved his queen." Isabelita was dispatched to Buenos Aires, where she reminded her countrymen that "Peron is the only Peronist presidential candidate."

Her toughest challenge came last August: she had to mollify the many elements within the Justicialist movement who had only reluctantly acquiesced in her nomination. At first they had rea son to regret their choice. In her initial campaign appearances, she often looked as if she had been laminated in plastic immediately after leaving her coiffeur.

Noting her dyed blonde hair (it had once been chestnut brown), many Argentines complained that she intentionally made herself up to look like Evita. Others simply found her cold. "If Eva Peron was passion compressed," grumbled one Peronist, "Isabel is an icebox."

Isabelita made up for her lack of warmth with poise and words carefully calculated to soothe rather than rouse.

She visited children's hospitals, kissing crippled babies in front of the TV cameras. She flew over the flood-ravaged pampas in order to dramatize the need for relief. During the campaign she made an eight-stop tour of the north. She even managed to enlist the support of her most vocal enemies, the party's left-wing youth. They organized a huge crowd for her at Buenos Aires' Aeroparque airport, which significantly cheered both Peron and Isabelita. In all, it was precisely the kind of stumping Evita made famous among the descamisados (shirtless ones), who loved her as much for her queenly air as for the hard cash she bestowed on public projects.

Isabelita has prudently remained silent on her own political opinions and ambitions, limiting herself to loyal praise of "mi general." Her foes fear she will use the vice presidency to consolidate and expand her power. The major stumbling blocks are the left-leaning Peronist youth, who are wary of her rightist views, and the military. They accepted her candidacy only after reaching a "gentlemen's agreement" with Peron.

Should the 77-year-old strongman die or become incapacitated during his four-year term, it was agreed, Isabelita would also resign immediately and new elections would be called to preclude a monarchy-like succession en familia. If and when Isabella's own presidential candidacy becomes an issue, however, the Vice President's detractors may well find themselves facing an opponent too powerful to be dislodged.

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