By KAITLIN QUISTGAARD "Santa Evita," by Tomás Eloy Martínez (Knopf) "Eva Perón," by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz (St. Martin's) "In My Own Words: Evita" attributed to Evita Perón, translated by Laura Dail (The New Press). until recently I lived in a country made of myths, a land where the fantastical is commonplace and both sides of the coin are simultaneously, hypocritically, impossibly face up. In Argentina, the democratically elected president rules by decree; Latin American culture is hailed as European; and history is indistinguishable from fiction. Even truth has a short-term memory there. In the midst of this confusion, I discovered Evita. She, too, was double-sided, contradictory, an icon of illusion — and initially, I thought, unknowable. The posters of Eva María Duarte de Perón still rolled out by the Perónist Party were strangely bereft of slogans or political campaigning. They offered no clue as to who she was — and is — or what she stands for. Evita's admirers have traded memories for legend, and their melodramatic reminiscences about her "spiritual leadership" required a healthier dose of conviction than I could muster. Nor did Evita's adversaries offer any help. They simply ignored her, in an attempt to excise her from the national memory. That was insufficient: Whatever the truth about this woman is or was, I knew she had to be found out. And in the shadow of her images, lining the streets of Buenos Aires like ghosts from a past that refuses to die, I began to understand her. Next: Obscene affluence, third world poverty and addictive charm