El Brujo

On June 29, 1987, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the tomb of the late president, Juan Domingo Perón, was desecrated by a mysterious group calling itself “Hermes IAI and the 13," which led some to link the act to Perón’s former minister, known for his involvement with occult groups and mystical practices. This episode brings you a story of political intrigue, violent upheaval, and the occultist who took control of Argentina’s leaders: the story of José López Rega.

Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben with original music by Purple Planet.

Episode sources

Chapters

• 0:00 Pre-roll
• 0:08 Intro
• 2:27 Juan Perón
• 8:12 José López Rega
• 13:31 Isabel Perón
• 19:17 Conclusion
• 22:18 Outro

Transcript

Pre-roll
You’re listening to Enchanted, a podcast on the history of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. I’m Corinne Wieben.

Intro
On June 29, 1987, in Buenos Aires, the tomb of the late president of Argentina, Juan Domingo Perón, was desecrated. The perpetrators broke into the vault, opened the coffin, and cut off the former president’s hands. They also stole symbolic objects, including a saber, a cap, an Argentine flag, and a framed poem written by his widow, Isabel. Shortly after, the head of the Peronist Party and a union leader received ransom letters signed by a mysterious group calling itself “Hermes IAI and the 13.” The group demanded $8 million for the return of the hands and other stolen objects. To prove authenticity, they enclosed Isabel Perón’s poem, torn into two pieces. Despite this, no further contact was ever made. Complicating the investigation further was a string of untimely and violent deaths of people involved in the case, including the first magistrate, the head of the Federal Police, the cemetery caretaker, and a regular visitor to Perón’s grave. Today, the mystery still remains unsolved.

The case generated a wide range of theories, reflecting Argentina’s turbulent political climate in the late 1980s. One theory centered on the group’s name and the occult references to Hermes Trismegistus and the number thirteen, which led some to link the act to José López Rega, Perón’s former minister known for his involvement with occult groups and mystical practices. In this episode, I bring you a story of political intrigue, violent upheaval, and the occultist who took control of Argentina’s leaders: the story of José López Rega.

Act 1: Juan Perón
Juan Perón’s government, while authoritarian and corporatist, focused its rhetoric on expanding the power of women and workers. Both groups were traditionally disenfranchised in Argentine politics, yet Perón made them the symbolic heart of his movement. His second wife, Eva Perón, known affectionately as Evita, became the face of this promise, embodying the fusion of state power and popular devotion. In this way, Perón’s presidency cast itself as revolutionary, even while maintaining a rigidly hierarchical order.

The fall of this regime in 1955 marked the beginning of a long exile. Ousted by the “Liberating Revolution” and forced to seek refuge in Spain, Perón became both a distant figure and an enduring myth. His absence did not diminish his influence. Instead, it allowed him to be remade in the political imagination of Argentina’s fractured society. In the intervening years, Peronism became less a doctrine than a contested symbol.

By the 1960s, young Argentines—too young to recall Perón’s first presidency—embraced Peronism as a vehicle for anti-imperialist and social justice struggles. For them, the movement was not bound by memories of Perón’s corporatist state but infused with the global spirit of decolonization and revolutionary activism. Historical revisionism, which rejected liberal heroes while glorifying Perón, became mainstream and offered youth a framework linking their activism to a long national struggle. This essentialist worldview fostered a belief that they were defenders of Argentina’s “true nation” against foreign and elite enemies. In the idealism of these youth, Perón was reborn as a messianic figure, uniting Argentina’s destiny with the struggle against imperialism.

At the same time, another interpretation of Peronism emerged. The Peronist right, or “orthodox” Peronists, positioned themselves as guardians of order rather than revolution. Defining themselves as anti-Communist defenders of Perón’s “true doctrine,” they envisioned Argentina as a Catholic nation under siege. They embraced exclusionary nationalism, imagining the nation threatened by Marxism, Jews, liberals, and foreign influence. Anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories flourished. For these factions, Argentina’s redemption lay not in radical transformation but in the purification of the national body. Their alignment with Perón’s third wife, Isabel, and with labor unions produced new forms of violent politics, ultimately manifesting in the paramilitary groups that coalesced into the Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance).

Perón himself, from his villa in Madrid, did little to resolve these contradictions. He cultivated the image of a statesman who could unify left and right, but in practice, he exploited the divisions of his movement. He courted both sides, cynically encouraging violence as a political tool. For his supporters, the promise of his return became a national obsession. Argentina epitomized this longing with the slogan “Perón Returns,” a phrase that carried tones of prophecy as much as politics.

When the moment finally arrived in 1973, after eighteen years in exile, Perón’s return was celebrated as a messianic restoration. His delegate, Héctor Cámpora, briefly held the presidency, pardoned guerrillas, and restored ties with socialist states, embodying the revolutionary hopes of the Peronist left. Yet even in this brief interlude, the fault lines were apparent. When Perón himself returned, unity unraveled almost immediately.

The tragic culmination of these tensions occurred at Ezeiza airport. There, Perón’s advisor José López Rega—a mystic, fascist sympathizer, and future leader of the paramilitary AAA—engineered a massacre that journalist and social critic A. M. Gittlitz has dubbed, “the perfect moment to begin the violent sorcery of destroying the left.” The killings at Ezeiza laid bare the impossibility of reconciling Peronism’s two visions: for the base, Perón symbolized social justice and anti-imperialism; for Rega and the right, he was a vessel for authoritarian nationalism.

The return of Perón thus revealed not unity but disintegration. What had been imagined as the restoration of Argentina’s “true nation” instead became the prelude to the violence that would engulf the country throughout the 1970s. The paradox of Peronism—empowerment that relied on authoritarian control, inclusion that bred exclusion—was never resolved.

Act 2: José López Rega
José López Rega, once a minor police corporal and esoteric enthusiast, rose to become Argentina’s most powerful man in the 1970s. When Juan Perón returned to power in 1973, he rewarded Rega with the post of Minister of Social Welfare. From this unassuming ministry, López Rega constructed a vast apparatus of influence. Through political maneuvering, including his son-in-law’s provisional presidency, he gained direct access to both Perón and his wife Isabel, who would later assume the presidency herself.

Nicknamed “Lopecito,” López Rega’s real power emerged after Juan Perón’s death in 1974. Isabel Perón, overwhelmed by the presidency she inherited, became increasingly dependent on him. Acting as both political strategist and spiritual guide, López Rega controlled state funds and wielded influence that far outstripped his official position.

But López Rega was not merely a political manipulator. He styled himself as a mystic, obsessed with astrology, occultism, and mystical lodges, notably Umbanda and Anael Lodges. He fabricated stories about his education and his supposed musical ambitions, claiming he had once aspired to sing as a tenor at the Teatro Colón. He also spread tales of special connections with both of Perón’s wives, Eva and Isabel, cultivating an aura that was part charlatan, part menace.

His occult ambitions were not confined to private rituals. In 1962, he published Esoteric Astrology, where he claimed divine inspiration, writing:

“I have not sworn to SHUT UP before anyone and on the contrary, my mission is to serve HUMANITY in full open face! I have already clearly stated that nothing of what I have written is mine, since MY FREE SOUL AND MY CRITICAL CONSCIENCE dictate to me that, the patrimony that I have received from GOD is like a donation that the FATHER wishes to be shared among all his CHILDREN components of all CREATION! Keeping secrets and hiding them from the world's knowledge, always leads to give an exaggerated power to certain persons or groups, who as simple human beings are liable to fall into fault and appropriate them for their own benefit, forgetting their BROTHERS! My eyes have the sad and painful faculty of getting lost in the PLANS and in the dimensions of the TIMES; past, present and future; but my mouth can only mention it in parables incomprehensible to human language, and I have been able to verify how many lies slip through our own lips when the occasion presents itself…”

This florid proclamation of cosmic mission revealed the mindset of a man who would soon conflate mystical visions with political authority.

Once he became connected to Juan Perón, the relationship between the two men bordered on the surreal. According to one account, in 1973, López Rega met with the exiled Juan Perón in Madrid and insisted, “I am a 33rd degree Grand Master Mason. I am Mohammed, Moses, Buddha and Christ. You, at this moment, are having the great privilege of talking to an exceptional man.” Performing a gesture in front of the astonished Perón, he added, “That's it. Now, all your static energies will be converted into dynamic powers. You will also have the power.”

Yet his power was never solely mystical. López Rega negotiated shady grain-for-oil deals with Libya and was accused of taking massive commissions, intertwining corruption with international politics. He also backed an economic shock plan, which triggered devastating devaluation of the currency, tariff hikes, and spiraling inflation. Here, too, mysticism and politics fused: the sorcerer of Isabel Perón proved himself an architect of economic chaos.

By the mid-1970s, José López Rega had become the embodiment of Argentina’s descent into violence and paranoia. He cloaked his power in spiritual language, speaking of cosmic truths while orchestrating death squads. He transformed the Ministry of Social Welfare into a hub of terror. His story, at once grotesque and tragic, reveals how Argentina’s political crisis gave rise to a man who declared himself both prophet and executioner and who, for a time, was believed.

Act 3: Isabel Perón
But how did López Rega go from being a minor police corporal and self-proclaimed sorcerer to the spiritual advisor of the president of Argentina? Isabel Perón, Argentina’s first female president and the third wife of Juan Perón, was an unlikely heir to the turbulent political legacy of her husband. Elevated from dancer to First Lady, and eventually to head of state, Isabel embodied the contradictions of a nation torn between populist devotion and authoritarian violence. Beneath the familiar story of political succession lies a stranger tale: her deep entanglement with occult practices, mysticism, and esoteric advisors.

From the start, Isabel distinguished herself from her famous predecessor, Eva Perón. Eva had wielded charisma and political savvy, galvanizing workers and women with fiery speeches. Isabel, in contrast, sought guidance not from politics but from the world of spirits. During Juan Perón’s years in exile, Isabel became involved in mystical lodges, where she encountered López Rega. Known as Brother Daniel in occult circles, López Rega promised spiritual protection and cosmic insight. Isabel brought him into her inner circle and, eventually, into her husband’s.

López Rega played a central role in Isabel’s life. He became her spiritual guide, a man whose rituals and prophecies shaped the decisions of the future president. He claimed to manipulate cosmic energies, boasted of divine inspiration, and assured Isabel of her own mystical significance. After Juan Perón’s death in 1974, when Isabel took power, López Rega attempted even more extravagant rituals, including occult “spirit transfer” ceremonies with Eva Perón’s corpse, designed to channel the saint-like aura of Evita into Isabel and bolster her tenuous legitimacy.

But Isabel did not become a second Evita. Instead, she became a puppet, as López Rega and his allies plundered the economy. Backed by state funds, the Triple A unleashed targeted assassinations and terror against leftists, union leaders, politicians, intellectuals, and artists. Nearly 2,000 people fell victim to the death squads before the military seized power. The violence sparked widespread unrest; general strikes paralyzed the country, and by 1976, the military launched a coup that installed Argentina’s bloodiest dictatorship. The junta framed itself as defender of the “true Argentina,” even as it presided over systematic repression, torture, and forced disappearances. Victim estimates range widely, from 6,000 to 40,000, but all accounts agree on the unprecedented brutality, including sadistic torture techniques. About 30,000 Argentines were disappeared, their absence becoming both a personal trauma and a national wound.

Isabel Perón’s presidency, then, was not merely a failed interlude between Perón’s populism and military dictatorship. It was the bridge that carried Argentina from mystical politics into state terror. Her occultism cannot be dismissed as eccentricity; it was a framework that allowed López Rega to mask violence with cosmic language and terror with prophecy. This blending of mysticism and politics also shaped how violence was remembered. Peronism had long relied on the imagery of martyrdom: Eva Perón was portrayed as the martyr of labor, her early death sanctifying the cause of the workers. Later, Peronist militants killed in the 1950s and 1970s were remembered as martyrs as well.

As Maria Soledad Catoggio has argued in her 2013 essay, “The Consecration of Political Suffering: Martyrs, Heroes and Victims in Argentine Political Culture,” the religious figure of the martyr—originally a Christian category—was gradually secularized and politicized in Argentina. Religious agents themselves redefined martyrdom in order to commemorate victims of political violence, particularly during and after the last military dictatorship. The concept of martyrdom bridged religion and politics, allowing the figures of victim and hero to coexist in public memory.

In this light, Isabel Perón’s occultism and López Rega’s rituals appear not merely bizarre but tragically significant. They were attempts to claim a sacred aura for a regime that instead became a prelude to mass violence. Isabel, the would-be sorceress president, presided over the transformation of Argentina’s political culture into one where mysticism, nationalism, and terror merged and where martyrdom became both a political weapon and, in the wake of dictatorship, a language of collective mourning.

Conclusion
José López Rega epitomized the fusion of occultism, political power, and state terror in Argentina. He was a man who climbed from obscurity through esoteric charisma and manipulation, becoming a sinister architect of political terror in Argentina’s 1970s, whose legacy is inseparably tied to the violence of the Triple A. His self-styling as “El Brujo,” the sorcerer, dramatized the strange blending of occult performance with statecraft. 

By 1975, however, López Rega’s power had begun to unravel. Facing union resistance, military hostility, and public outrage, he fled Argentina under Isabel Perón’s protection. In exile, he drifted across continents to Brazil, Spain, the Bahamas, Switzerland, and finally Miami. Despite the trappings of exile, evidence continued to link him to Triple A atrocities.

In 1986, justice seemed within reach when the FBI arrested him in Miami after the Argentine government requested extradition. López Rega was returned to Argentina and imprisoned, facing charges of homicide, kidnapping, and embezzlement. Yet history’s reckoning with him remained incomplete. Diabetic, nearly blind, and awaiting trial, he died in 1989 at age seventy-two. He was never convicted.

His final wish, as unsettling as the man himself, reveals the persistence of his esoteric self-fashioning. Before dying, he asked that his ashes be scattered at sea so his spirit could return “to the astral universe.” Even in death, López Rega clung to the mystical identity that had once concealed his role in orchestrating terror.

The story of López Rega is not simply that of one man’s rise and fall, but of the dangerous alchemy between myth and power. His life reminds us how the performance of spiritual authority can mask violence, and how the language of transcendence can serve the machinery of terror. His legacy endures as testimony: a warning of what emerges when esotericism and politics unite in the service of fear.

Outro
If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to Enchanted wherever you listen. This episode was produced by me with original music by Purple Planet. You can find them at purple dash planet dot com. If you want to learn more about the history of José López Rega, be sure to check out the sources link in the show notes. Special thanks to Enchanted’s Patreon patrons for supporting the production of this and every episode. If you want to support Enchanted, please  visit patreon dot com slash enchantedpodcast. If you’re looking for a way to support the show that won’t cost you anything, you can always give Enchanted: The History of Magic & Witchcraft a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Audible, or wherever you listen and recommend it to your friends. You can get in touch with me via email at enchantedpodcast at gmail dot com or follow on Bluesky at enchantedpodcast. As always, for more information and special features, visit enchantedpodcast dot net. I’m Corinne Wieben. Thank you for listening and stay enchanted.