Argentina fights to keep history off auction block

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mariorBy Juan Forero for The Washington Post

BUENOS AIRES - Like a devoted curator, Mario Rotundo affectionately recounts the history of each of the objects in his musty apartment as if they were museum pieces, from the jazz LPs to a book some two centuries old to the size-9 wingtips neatly lined up in a row.

The faded knickknacks look as if they could have belonged to Rotundo's father. But the elegant dinner jacket, the dusty typewriter, the Yashica-D camera and the silk bed robe have a far more novelistic history - they were once owned by the iconic strongman Juan Peron and his beloved wife, Eva.

The 1950s-era ruling couple, whose populist speeches and ambitious social programs endeared them to the masses, still have a cultlike following here. That makes their personal effects patrimony of the nation, Argentine historians say, worthy of being honored in the same way the Smithsonian Institution reveres Abraham Lincoln's top hat.

But the bric-a-brac in Apartment H on busy Carlos Pellegrini Street in the heart of Buenos Aires belongs not to Argentina but to Rotundo, a 60-year-old former aide to Peron. And despite legal attempts to stop him, .. Read full article


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