The Wild Reed’s 2024 Queer Appreciation series continues with a tribute to Paco Jamandreu (1925-1995), the Argentine fashion designer who was not only Eva “Evita” Perón’s stylist but a trusted friend and confidant to the controversial Argentine First Lady.
Jamandreu made his debut as a movie costume designer in 1942, working for leading lady Zully Moreno in the film Historia de crímenes (“Crime Story”). He followed that with designing for El muerto falta a la cita (“The Dead One Missed the Appointment”), released in 1944, and then for 1947’s El misterioso Tío Silas (“The Mysterious Uncle Silas”). Jamandreu, who admitted his homosexuality to his father at age 15, became known among friends and clients alike not only for his talent, but also for his candor.
Jamandreu began his friendship with Eva Duarte before she married populist leader Juan Perón in 1945. Their relationship was initially of a business nature, and Jamandreu began a long series of clothing designs for the actress (right) and, later, First Lady (below). According to Susanne Ramírez de Arellano, Jamandreu “widened Evita’s options by styling her in different dresses. Some were glamour adorned with glitter, feathers, and aigrettes. Other styles played on exaggerating her femininity.” Jamandreu also introduced Evita to the great fashion houses of Europe and, allegedly, was responsible for convincing her to go a darker blond. In time he became her confidant . . . and she became his.
The following dialogue and screenshots from Juan Carlos Desanzo’s 1996 film Eva Perón: The True Story beautifully captures the special relationship that developed between Evita and Paco, whom Evita often referred to as “Paquito.” It was a relationship that ended with Evita’s death from cervical cancer on July 26, 1952 – seventy-two years ago today. Another reason, then, to share Evita and Paco’s story on this day.
Evita: Come, sit beside me. . . . I needed to see you and to be with someone who really likes me. You’re one of the few. They’re saying that I’m sick, Paco. I know what they’re afraid of . . . that I’ll be vice-president. They know I bring along the unions, the workers and the poor. Neither the military nor the Church nor the Establishment like that. . . . There’s just one week until August 22 [and the election]. What shall I wear? Something Dior?
Paco: Dior was for the President’s wife. Now, comrade Evita has to wear a suit, a very simple suit, Madam.
Evita: Say, Paquito, can you see me as Vice-President?
Paco: I see you . . . up at the top, Madam.
Evita: And the poor?
Paco: They see you at the top too. The poor and I want you to be vice-president. . . . You know what? The poor and us fags always agree. They are all doomed. They get nothing but scorn and hatred from the Establishment’s machos. As do the fags. Being poor and homosexual is exactly the same thing, Madam.
Evita: You know, you’re right, Paquito. It’s the same for me. They say I’m a whore. They scrutinize my past to dig up dirt. . . . They will not forgive anything. “That actress . . . That soldier’s mistress . . . That social climber.” In Argentina, in the year of 1935, I was an illegitimate child, from the provinces. I was poor, and a woman to top it all of.
Paco: If you had obeyed the powerful people in the country, no one would bring up your past. But you raised up the humble, and that is unforgivable. [Your detractors] are wretched, Madam. They answer your passion with filthy gossip. . . . You know what? We share the same fate. To be a fag, poor, or Eva Perón, in this merciless country, is one and the same.
Following is how Wikipediadocuments Paco’s life after his friend Evita’s death.
Following a relative absence from Argentine cinema credits during the 1950s, Jamandreu became more active as film fashion designer during the 1960s, when he worked on six films. Between 1969 and 1995, he retired from designing clothes and focused on acting. He debuted as an actor in the 1980 film Una Viuda descocada (“A Shameless Widow”). In 1986, he acted in Soy paciente (“I’m Patient”), but that film was never released as its producers were unable to finish it.
In 1996, Jamandreu’s last work as a film costume designer was shown in Argentine theaters when Amor de otoño was released. Jamandreu had been working on this production when he died from a heart attack on March 9, 1995.
Above: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives a standing ovation from the majority of lawmakers while speaking to a joint meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol yesterday, July 24, 2024. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Palestinian human rights attorney and Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat says it best . . .
[The number of times members of Congress broke into enthusiastic applause for Netanyahu] was probably the most disturbing [aspect of events yesterday] because for those of us who have followed this for 292 days now, we have understood the blatant lies that Israel has said, that all of its apologists have made, [and we watch now as] U.S. Congress jubilantly, jubilantly cheer on, scramble over one another in order to cheer for, essentially, what is a war on children. When Netanyahu says they want to finish the job, the job is annihilation. It is extermination. It is genocide. . . . And the U.S. Congress is applauding this jubilantly, at one point breaking out into a chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Right now those chants at home echo an entitlement to kill, echo an entitlement to plunder, to destroy lives that are not seen or deemed worthy, and where racism and colonialism is not a dog whistle but is on full display.
So, for those who are concerned about saving their democracy at home, I want to tell them that there is no democracy to save that manifests itself in ongoing genocide in this way.
. . . Shame, shame, shame on the Democratic Party for allowing a president, [one] they didn’t trust to enter into a debate or to make a comment without misnaming world leaders, to make policy on the lives of Palestinians and their futures for 292 days. They are more worried about the optics in this election than they are about the lives of Palestinians, which indicates very well that they are deriving their power from the slaughter of Palestinians, that this machine is functioning on those campaign donations, on those weapons manufacturers, on those Islamophobic institutions who are fomenting this, so that 67% of the Democratic base cannot be represented adequately by their leadership.
My second reaction to [the events in Washington, D.C. yesterday] is salute, salute to the protesters who continue to risk their bodies, who risk their reputation, who risked time and being attacked by police and police brutality. They are the kernels. They are the seed now that can grow, that can ripen into something worth living for in the future. This does not bode well for our future. This is what’s on offer for the rest of the world as we see climate catastrophe being imposed upon us, where the only thing on offer is that only a few shall live. And the model that Israel is creating here is that the racist supremacists, that the colonialists, that they will live and that others must die. And we see in these protesters an alternate future, one that screams we have safety in solidarity, one that says that it is all of us or none of us.
I’ve long respected and appreciated the informed perspective of Phyllis Bennis – author, scholar, and director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Indeed, she’s one of my “go-to” people for information and insights on both U.S. foreign policy and its implications both here and abroad and issues pertaining to the Middle East.
This past Monday, Bennis was interviewed by Janine Jackson of FAIR’s CounterSpin program on Israel's war on Palestinians. Following are excerpts.
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We are now looking at almost 10 months of genocide . .. [with] a ceasefire remain[ing] out of reach. . . . We hear President Biden now saying, “We need a ceasefire. We want a ceasefire.” But he keeps on transferring weapons [to Israel], including the 500-pound bombs. . . . [H]e is sending the weapons. And then he says, “I’m the guy that did more for the Palestinian community than anybody.” What kind of hypocrisy are we hearing here?
. . . The international community, as it likes to be called – meaning the United Nations, the international courts, all of those institutions – have failed. In the main, they haven’t failed primarily for lack of trying. They certainly have not tried hard enough. But they have tried.
The problem is they have been undermined every step of the way by their most powerful member, which happens to be the government of the United States. We should not forget what Dr. King taught us, that the greatest purveyor of violence in the world is our own government. He said that in 1967 at Riverside Church. I will say it again, today, so many years later. That has not changed.
We do see, in the International Court of Justice, in the Hague, the extraordinary impact of South Africa’s initiative to challenge Israel directly, state to state, to say that Israel is violating the international convention against genocide. And after several weeks, on an expedited basis, the court came out and said, yes, this is plausibly genocide. And while it will take some time, usually months or years to make a complete and final determination, we are hereby ordering a set of things, that they ordered Israel to do, to make sure that the potential for genocide – or the actual genocide, they were leaving themselves that little wiggle room – but to make sure that that stopped, and they gave explicit orders, which Israel, again, simply ignored.
And what’s different this time . . . is that the international covenant against genocide, unlike most parts of international law that are very complicated, very hard to understand and really only apply very narrowly, the Genocide Convention specifically holds accountable every country that is a signatory, a party, to that convention. That includes the United States, ironically enough, includes Israel. But it says that every country who has signed on to that treaty has the obligation to make sure that it doesn’t get violated.
That was the basis for South Africa charging Israel with violating the covenant. But it also goes to every other country, including our own. So the Biden administration, aside from its active enabling of the genocide, is doubly responsible here, because it has an explicit, affirmative obligation to do everything in its power to stop the possibility of these attacks turning into genocide, or to stop them if they are indeed already genocide.
And the U.S. answer to that requirement is to keep sending the weapons: 14,000 of these giant 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 of the smaller 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, a thousand bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 airdropped, small-diameter bombs, and more and more and more.
. . . [Recently] there was an [Israeli] attack on, supposedly, one of the military leaders of Hamas, Mohamed Deif – that attack killed more than 90 Palestinian civilians, wounded more than 300. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true that Israel thought that Muhammad Deif was there. It is illegal to deliberately, knowingly, kill 90 civilians and injure 300 more because you think a military leader might be present. They don’t even allege that he was fighting at the time. That is completely illegal.
It’s illegal to attack hospitals. The fact that there may have been a command center in a tunnel below does not make it legal to destroy a hospital. It does not make it legal to destroy the headquarters of UNRWA, the only humanitarian organization with the capacity to actually get desperately needed humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
None of these Israeli claims about “well, we have no choice” – the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas of the world, and it has been fenced off, walled off, and surrounded by soldiers. It’s the definition of a siege.
I think that many people believe, there’s this claim, that the occupation of Gaza ended in 2005, when the settlers and the soldiers were pulled out. That’s not true, because the definition of occupation in international law is not the presence of settler colonies, physically, or the presence of soldiers on the territory. It’s about control. And by building the wall, and having that wall surrounded by soldiers, Israel remains occupying the Gaza Strip. So you have an entire generation of people who have grown up in the Gaza Strip, because it has been besieged now for 17 years, who have never been outside that tiny strip of land, have been physically walled off like a siege of ancient times, and that was the condition in which this war is being fought.
Hamas has violated international law in a number of ways, in terms of its attacks using missiles that cannot be targeted against military targets. But the notion that there somehow is this choice of Hamas fighters to fight in the open, as if there is massive open space inside the Gaza Strip, this most crowded strip of territory in the world, it boggles the imagination. To anybody who’s ever seen Gaza, this notion that this is somehow a legitimate excuse, that, “Oh, well, it’s too crowded. We had no choice but to destroy all the infrastructure, all the buildings, the water treatment, the hospitals, all the universities, every museum, 70% of the schools.” This is a constant violation of international law, in which our own government and our tax money and our Congress and our president are directly and deeply implicated.
. . . [W]e can never give up hope. What has been extraordinary in this 10 months has been to see the rising of an incredible, powerful, broad movement of human solidarity with the Palestinian population of Gaza. People who never really gave much thought to the Israel/Palestine question, to Palestinian lives, to Israeli occupation, suddenly – and, certainly, part of it is because of the media, social media and mainstream media, have had no choice, as you said earlier, Janine, but to portray the horror of this genocide. And people have responded as human beings, which is an amazing thing. It doesn’t happen all the time.
So we have to have hope in that. We have to know that we have managed to rebuild the definition of ceasefire, so that when we call for a ceasefire, and I’ve got to say the message discipline of this broad and largely unaccountable movement has been pretty extraordinary. Everybody is sticking to the demand: We need a ceasefire now. At the same time, we have managed to transform the understanding of, what does a ceasefire mean? It’s not just, stop firing for a few minutes while you exchange some hostages and then go back to war. It means a permanent stop to the firing. It means access, real access, to massive amounts of immediate humanitarian aid. And it means stop sending weapons.
So when we demand a ceasefire of the Biden administration, we’re demanding all those things. Unfortunately, when President Biden says, “We need a ceasefire,” he’s only talking about part of one of those three things. And he’s undermining the others by continuing to send the weapons. So that’s what we have to focus on. The hope is, we have more people supporting the rights of Palestinians to life, among other things; it’s huge, and the responsibility that comes with that hope is to keep up the demand for an immediate ceasefire, with all that that requires.
Image: A dove flies over the debris of houses destroyed by Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip – October 11, 2023. (Photo: Reuters)
Thanks to my friend Ben, I was alerted this afternoon to progressive Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson’s appearance earlier today on ABC News Live.
As a supporter of Marianne’s candidacy, I’m very happy to see her being interviewed by a mainstream media outlet. It’s a solid 10-minute interview, one in which Marianne raises a number of informed and insightful points. I hope there will be many more appearances by this Cassandra of U.S. politics, as we sorely need her wisdom and clarity.
UPDATE: In addition to her appearance today on ABC News Live, Marianne was also a guest on Fox News’ Your World With Neil Cavuto. Following is the resulting 6-minute interview.
Following are some YouTube comments on Marianne’s media appearances today.
• I just signed a petition as a delegate for the DNC to nominate Marianne Williamson for President of the United States.
• Marianne is speaking for the people. The process by which we choose a candidate has been removed from our hands. I would love to see a respectful discussion and debates. How can we create a peaceful and prosperous future for everyone without it? Thank you for this respectful interview. We are not lemmings, and it’s up to us to hold politicians accountable for the needs of every American.
• Marianne Williamson is as sharp as nails and is the fearless truth-teller that we need in Office.
• Go Marianne! I already voted overseas for her because I believe she is for the greatest good of all Americans and the world.
• Nice to see Marianne Williamson respected and so warmly welcomed by ABC Live. It’s about time.
• Thank you, ABC. Let’s continue with a full democratic process. Let’s hear from all the candidates. Kamala Harris said she would earn this nomination. Then let there be open debates. Thank you for amplifying Marianne Williamson’s voice in this moment.
•I don’t know if Marianne Williamson will ever receive the gratitude from America that she deserves, but she is a patriot, and she is fighting for working people. I thank her, and am grateful.
• This last Democratic primary was a joke. Still, Marianne won more votes than expected.
• Thank you, Marianne, for explaining how our democracy is supposed to work and that now is a wonderful opportunity for all Americans to see a range of candidates presenting and debating solutions to the problems we face as a nation and in the world.
• So grateful to you, Marianne, for continuing to stand up for democracy and for the many people who are not being served by our corporatist government.
•She is right. Somebody needs to speak to what people are concerned about: healthcare, clean food and water, education, housing, fair wages, everyday concerns of the people.
• Marianne Williamson has vision, heart, and is incredibly articulate. No wonder the establishment doesn’t want her to be heard or debated!
• Marianne has never given up on democracy or the American people, despite being ignored and dismissed by the political elite. She is guided by higher principles than just the political theatre that is currently going on, and now I think her time has come. She has been proven right time and time again and is usually the first person to lay down her position on important issues while the others just sweep things under the rug. She has proven herself to be a committed, strong, intelligent, wise, determined, gracious, respectful, honourable, and compassionate person with the drive and courage to lead and restore a government that works for the PEOPLE.
• Is America ready for Marianne? I hope so. It would be really exiting to see what difference she would make.
Earlier today United States President Joe Biden announced that he has exited the 2024 presidential race. ReportsThe Hill:
[Biden’s announcement marks] a stunning end to a 50-year-long political career that culminated in caving to pressure from fellow Democrats to end his bid for reelection, which never fully recovered from an abysmal debate performance on June 27. Biden, 81, announced Sunday he will no longer seek another four years in office after his physical and mental acuity were called into question following a prime-time debate in which he struggled to finish sentences, gave confused looks and fumbled through his answers.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to social media. . . . He later endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party’s nominee in November.
In the hours after Biden’s announcement, I noticed that a number of friends were posting memes on Facebook featuring a photograph of Harris with the words, “I’m with her,” as if she already had the nomination.
I felt compelled to respond to this meme by sharing the following:
I’m with whomever secures the nomination at the convention. I strongly believe that this is not the time to “anoint” or “coronate” one particular candidate. Let the democratic process play out, as messy and chaotic as it may initially be. I trust that the end result will be the strongest candidate to both defeat Trump and lead the country forward for the next four years.
I also felt people’s temperature rising (mine included) at the clear and rapid establishment of two camps – one that wishes just to allow Harris to become the nominee on the word of Biden and the fact that she’s the vice president, and another that sees an open, transparent, and democratic primary as being the way to discern the strongest candidate. Obviously, I’m in the second “camp.”
And so, it seems, is Vice President Harris. For later this afternoon she released a statement in which she said that she is looking forward to “earning and winning the nomination.” To my mind, this implies an open convention, perhaps even a blitz mini-primary, though, realistically, I fear the time for that may have past due to the dithering of Biden to steo aside. Still, overall, I find her words heartening.
If there is an open convention I look forward to a range of Democratic candidates making their case for why they should be the nominee – among them my preferred candidate, the progressive Marianne Williamson, who released the following five-and-a-half-minute video earlier today.
I hope others also “throw their hat in the ring,” as they say, including Pete Buttigieg, Gretchen Witmer, Gavin Newsom, Dean Phillps, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear and, of course, Kamala Harris. There is so much talent and leadership out there. I hope the Democratic National Convention is opened up so that such leadership can shine forth, inspiring not just Democrats but the American people at large.
This was my prayer at the Prayer Tree this afternoon. In particular, I really hope Marianne Williamson’s voice and message is included as she is the sole progressive candidate currently in the race. She (along with Rep. Dean Phillips) was treated atrociously during the Democratic primaries, if you could even call them that. Indeed, the idea that the 2024 primaries were in any way democratic is a joke and a sham. And the fact that so few don’t know this speaks to two things: (i) how well the DNC and its media lapdogs suppressed the democratic process, and (ii) how little attention most people pay to the shenanigans of the DNC. The oft-heard contention that Biden “won” the primaries as if they were a fair competition is proof of this.
And as my friend Ben says:
The DNC manipulated the process. Some state primaries were flat out cancelled, and there were lawsuits because of it. Biden didn’t participate in the two primary debates. CNN and MSNBC gave insignificant coverage to the primary. Shouldn’t Biden have been focusing on energizing the 2020 coalition that got him elected? And if he was afraid to debate his Democratic opponents, maybe he shouldn’t even have been a candidate. There were some really stupid decisions that got us here, and they should be revisted.
Well, hopefully at the Democrats’ open convention in Chicago next month, things will not only be revisted but rectified, a process that will include hearing from Marianne. Moving forward, that is what I want to focus on, advocate for, and work toward. And it may mean travelling to Chicago to support Marianne, just as my friend Kate and I travelled to New Hampshire in January to work with her and her campaign.
I close with words from Marianne Williamson herself. First is a statement she released in response to today’s news of President Biden’s exiting from the presidential race. Second is an excerpt from a statement she issued yesterday calling for Biden to step aside and for an open convention.
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I want to take a moment to express my gratitude and respect to President Biden. He reached what had to have been an extremely difficult decision, but he did what is best for his party and his country. Clearly in his heart he shares the goal of the many millions of Americans who wish to see Democrats defeat Donald Trump in November.
The nomination of a new Democratic candidate must be opened to a genuinely democratic process at an open convention. No one should simply be anointed to the position of nominee; all candidates must be heard and their agendas explored. Our party’s basic first principle is democracy. We cannot save our democracy without practicing it ourselves.
I look forward to taking my message to the American people, and convincing Democratic delegates, that I am the best candidate to take us to victory in November. Donald Trump has broken the mold, and we must break it too. He has introduced an age of political theatre that cannot be successfully countered by a status quo politician, however good they might be, for we are living in a different kind of moment.
We will inspire the American people with a compelling vision of their improved material conditions should they elect Democrats in November. My proposed policy prescriptions dismantle the matrix of corporate tyranny that now limits the economic opportunities of a majority of Americans.The Democratic party must recommit to our most important first principle: an unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States.
We will not bend to the economic royalists who have ripped apart America’s social safety net and caused such suffering to so many people. We will reform the economy. We will save the planet. And we will wage peace.
That is my message, and with it we will win.
– Marianne Williamson July 21, 2024
– Image: Molly Matalon
(The New York Times)
Do we need a Democrat to beat Donald Trump? Oh YES! But the soul of the Democratic party does not lie with the Democratic Party machine. I am an FEC registered qualified candidate. I am on the ballot. And despite a media blacklisting of my campaign and the most absurd kinds of character assassination, I received half a million votes in the primary. The only reason I was painted as an “unserious” candidate is because those who did the painting know how serious I am.
My platform would be considered moderate in any other advanced democracy. It includes plans that are supported by a majority of both Republicans as well as Democrats – such as Medicare for All, and tuition-free college and tech school. It speaks to the need for fundamental economic reform to address the extraordinary anxiety among 39 percent of Americans who are skipping meals to pay their rent and 25 percent of Americans who carry medical debt. It speaks to unrigging our economy, and our need for an Economic Bill of Rights. It speaks to the horrors of the addicted and the unjustly imprisoned. It speaks to the needs of our children and the toxicity of our food supply. It speaks to the climate emergency and to our need to wage peace.
I hope my supporters – as well as those who do not necessarily support my agenda yet support the practice of democracy itself, and do not agree with political parties should have the right to obstruct it or manipulate it – will join me in insisting that I have the right to be in any open convention contest going forward. Any debates. Any Town Halls. Any contention whatsoever.
No, I’m not politics as usual. But that is the point.
Neither is Donald Trump . . . which is why I’m the one to beat him.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
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