August 31, 1951 — Radio address, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Compañeros: I want to tell the people of Argentina my definitive and irrevocable decision to decline the honor that the workers and the people of my country wished to honor me with at the historic Cabildo Abierto [Open Town Council] on August 22. It was the same wonderful evening, which my eyes and my heart will never forget, that I realized I should not change my place in the fight for the Perónist movement by taking up any other position. Since that time, after that dialogue between my heart and my people, I have pondered long and hard in the solitude of my conscience and I have reflected calmly. I committed to myself and to my own conscience an everlasting vote filed with the Board of the Perónist Party and in the prescence of our supreme commander, General Perón. Now I want the people of Argentina to know the reasons, made by myself, for my unwavering resignation. Firstly and placing these words under the invocation of my pride as an Argentine and Perónist woman, and of love for the Perónist cause, of my country and of my people, I declare that this decision stems from the deepest recesses of my conscience and that is why it is totally free and has all the strength as being my final will. In this moment I call upon the memory of October 17, 1945. Because on that unforgettable date, I cast my own vote from then on as being final and irreversible, and because of this I placed myself to be permanently and entirely dedicated to the services of the descamisados, who are the poor and the workers. I had an almost infinitive debt to settle with them who had reconquered Perón for the country and for me. I believe that I have done everything in my power to justify my vote and to meet my debt. I did not have then, nor do I have right now, more than one ambition, only one, great personal ambition: That my people may say, when this wonderful chapter of history is written and surely dedicated to Perón, that at the side of Perón, there was a woman who was dedicated to bringing to the President, the hopes of the people. Hopes that which later, Perón would convert into beautiful realities. And this woman, the people lovingly called Evita — nothing more than this, Evita.