Amalita Fortabat would be 100 years old: power, stormy loves and a fortune of 1,800 million dollars

Since she had the same name as her mother, they always called her Amalita. A diminutive that she would turn into legend.

“Amalita”, María Amalia Sara Lacroze or “La Dama de Cemento”, as she would be known over the years, was born in a mansion located on Rodríguez Peña and Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear streets, in the heart of Buenos Aires. Her parents, married ten years before her birth, were the doctor Alberto Daniel Lacroze Gowland and Amalia Reyes .

She owns a lot of style and an almost perfect body, Ella Amalita ended up becoming the icon of the upper class of the moment. Added to this was having been born into a family of prosapia. Her great-great-uncle was Uruguayan President Manuel Oribe ; her great-uncles, Julio Alberto and Federico Lacroze , were responsible for the installation of several horse-drawn tram lines in the city of Buenos; her paternal grandfather, Juan Alejandro Lacroze , was a member of the Argentine Medical Association and founder of the Institute of Traumatology and Radiology; her father, Alberto Lacroze , was a member of the board of directors of Hospital Fernández and Hospital de Clínicas and was a professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

Amalita carried in her DNA much more than beauty. In her veins circulated power, conviction, pioneering spirit, style and the desire to lead the way. Thus it was that she became a friend of presidents, director of the National Fund for the Arts, plenipotentiary ambassador of Argentina, media owner, businesswoman, leader and creator of the Fundación del Teatro Colón and a foundation with her name, which she donated to charitable organizations in Argentina more than 40 million dollars.

Philanthropist, patron and art collector, in 2008 she founded the Fortabat Museum on dock 4 in Puerto Madero. There is her private art collection that contains more than 400 works from Andy Warhol and Dalí through Pedro Fígari, Raúl Soldi, Antonio Berni, Guillermo Roux and Quinquela Martín.

But let's go back to her childhood to explain the path in the life of the Argentine woman, perhaps the most powerful, who would be 100 years old today.

Gypsy prediction and marriage

When she was only one year old, the family moved to Paris for a time . She began to babble French and English before Spanish.

In Buenos Aires, she went to primary school at the Onesimo Leguizamón Higher School for Girls and secondary school at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, which was run by nuns. She had two younger brothers: Alberto Juan "Bebe" who was born in 1928 and Sara Josefina born in 1924. At the age of 14, a gypsy woman predicted: “You will marry a maharajah” . So it would be.

Amalita was greedy for everything. She pretended to be a doctor like her father, but her wish did not prosper. Her family was shocked at the thought of her having to study the naked bodies of dead men in the morgue. She had to content herself with learning nursing and practicing, sporadically, at a women's hospital.

She was presented in society, that's how it was then among families of rank, in 1939. She immediately stood out. She was different from the rest. She had personality and did not shy away from challenges. Already two years later, after many published photos of her, she had become an icon of high society.

In September 1942, she married Hernán de Lafuente , who was a lawyer. The glorious ceremony was reflected by the media of the time. They spent a long honeymoon in the United States , and two years later they became parents. María Inés would be her only daughter and she would have three grandchildren.

Things did not work out for the couple and they ended up facing a divorce that ended in 1947.

Speak in the ear… of love

Amalita and Alfredo Fortabat (originally from Azul and owner of the Loma Negra cement factory, which was the largest cement factory in Latin America) had met at a charity evening at the Teatro Colón before Amalita married Hernán de Lafuente.

Fortabat was shocked by this elegant and intelligent 19-year-old girl.

With 49 years and abundant resources he managed to impress her. He invited Hernán and his girlfriend Amalita to his San Jacinto ranch. Two couples, nothing unusual.

But he's already on fire with desire. During those evenings he managed to touch Amalita's hands while she offered him chocolate-dipped cherries. And maybe a few more things we don't know. Alfredo was clever and his wife, Elisa Corti Maderna, did not notice the flirtation.

Another day, Jorge Saint, a friend of Alfredo, invited Amalita and Hernán to sail on the Pichi Hue, Fortabat's impressive yacht. Behind the invitation, of course, was Alfredo's desire to be with Amalita again. Fortabat was already playing on the passion board.

The beautiful young woman did not miss the opportunity to invite the powerful businessman to her wedding with Hernán.

He will admit, years later, "I couldn't bear to go."

But he sent his girlfriend a gold bracelet from one of the most exclusive jewelry stores in Buenos Aires as a gift .

The powerful do not usually accept that fate tells them "no". And, while the Lafuente-Lacroze couple enjoyed a long vacation in Europe in 1947, the millionaire King of Cement followed their trail.

She met them, "by chance", at a wonderful party in Paris. During the dance he invited Amalita to do it. Nothing weird. Dancing in Paris with the woman of his dreams. Alfredo would not let the opportunity pass. In the middle of the somersaults and protected by the music, he confessed his love for her.

-I am in love with you. I want to marry you.

But we barely know each other...

-Important things don't need more.

I can't leave my daughter. She wouldn't survive...

That would have been the dialogue that outlined what was to come. What else was said no one knows. The cards were already on the table.

Shortly after, Amalita's divorce with de Lafuente would come. And, of course, Elisa Corti Maderna's Fortabat. Disgusted, upon learning of the affair, Elisa went straight to a lawyer. She wanted to seize the common property. She could not. Her husband had made a transfer of shares and had left her out of the game.

The romance unleashed a stir in society at the time.

Amalita and Alfredo continued with their story.

They wanted to get married, but they couldn't. They were divorced.

In any case, they took advantage of each trip to renew their vows and get married as it was: in Uruguay, in Las Vegas, in San Francisco, in Los Angeles and in Mexico.

Finally, in 1954, during Perón's second term, the National Congress approved a short-lived law that allowed divorcees to remarry. Fortabat and Lacroze were married in June 1955 and were the sixth divorced Argentine couple to remarry.

Amalita had always been characterized by being advanced. They went on their honeymoon to Uruguay, Paraguay, the United States, Greece and Egypt.

Her husband admired her and often repeated to her, touching her forehead with a finger: "What I like most about you is here."

Impossible a better compliment.

the life of the mighty

The couple lives on the road. He rubs shoulders with those who pull the strings in the world of power and entertainment. Ali Khan and Rita Hayworth, Nelson Rockefeller, King Farouk… presidents and millionaires, stars and exotic characters. They climb elephants and tame camels in the desert, they taste lobster and whatever they want. All whims are allowed. A dream existence. Meanwhile, Alfredo covers her with gifts... Cartier handbags exclusively designed for her, incunabulary jewels. In Kenya, under a napkin, Amalita finds a gold, diamond and emerald bracelet in the shape of a lion's head.

He, very funny, justifies the gift by saying:

-As you cannot take a live lion, I give you this memory.

But they also work a lot and their tastes clash. Amalita does not tolerate her 4711 German cologne, nor the excessive talc that Alfredo puts on her shoes or the aroma of the strong cigarettes that she smokes. She, too, can't stand her dressing up in old clothes. Alfredo does not pay much attention to him in this. Indeed, not everything was roses in the couple. During her marriage , the greatest crisis would have a name and surname: José María Alfaro Polanco, who was the ambassador of Spain. It is said that once Amalita got on a private plane ready to elope with him , but that a call from Alfredo would have made her give up. She would have told him: “The jewels you took are replicas, my dear. The real ones are with me” . She was not willing to be left with nothing.

The heiress of the gray empire

During the years that she was by Fortabat's side, she also dedicated herself to learning. In Olavarría, where the company was located, she took charge of the nursery school for the children of the employees. She equipped it and personally took care of the sixty boys who attended.

Already in the 60's she gave her opinion about the factory, the future of the industry and she suggested actions to be taken. Alfred listened to her.

It was at her request that her husband donated her property in the area, in 1963, to found the National School of Technical Education No. 1 Luciano Fortabat.

On January 10, 1976, Alfredo Fortabat, aged 81, died due to a stroke. Amalita, at 55 years old, became the owner of one of the largest fortunes in the country. She inherited among other things: 160,000 hectares with 170,000 head of cattle; a 400-acre farm in Middleburg, Virginia; five cement companies; a duplex on Avenida del Libertador; a house in San Isidro; a mansion in Mar del Plata; the building where the Loma Negra headquarters were located in Buenos Aires; a duplex in the Pierre Hotel in New York; a Lear Jet aircraft; a Beechcraft 90 aircraft; a Hughes 500 helicopter; a boat; a fleet of cars; a large number of works of art; a radio and a cattle artificial insemination plant. In addition, an amount of money that nobody knows.

The funny thing is that Amalita could have stood with her arms crossed. Delegate everything. Dedicate yourself to enjoy. She did the opposite. She took over the management of the company and, in just 36 months, she tripled the assets of the company founded in 1926.

Forbes magazine would not overlook the fact that a woman in Argentina had reached a fortune estimated at 1,800 million dollars.

Crises and controversies

She mourned for five months. Amalita was a beautiful and extremely wealthy widow. Although she did not remarry, some of her romances transpired. She was related to the actors Juan José Camero (the one from Nazareno Cruz y el Lobo) and Alberto de Mendoza and to the singer Palito Ortega . In recent years, she with retired Colonel Luis Prémoli .

None of this prevented her from getting up at seven in the morning and working well into the night. After all, it was the life she had chosen and she had some 5,000 employees in charge.

She cheered for everything. She even to continue buying companies and factories. She had become the most influential woman in the country. That always kept her on the edge of controversy, in her relationship with the governments of the day and looking for tax benefits or ways to overcome the different crises that she was facing in the industry.

Questioned or not, she never stopped.

Amalita made time for everything. To help schools, hospitals, benefit the construction of houses, grant scholarships, raise funds for students, finance canteens, create a pediatric center... In 1980 Andy Warhol drew her with her characteristic colors. Amalita tended more and more to art and culture. She created the Fortabat prizes for sculpture, painting and literature. In 1988, her foundation received the Konex de Brillante award for her work.

From the floods to the White House

Amalita could take off an elegant taffeta dress to command a flood evacuation operation. That happened in the '80s during the tremendous floods in Olavarría. She organized the rescues and housed the people even in her own San Jacinto ranch. Her protective instinct towards those around her was very strong.

In 1985, she was invited by US President Ronald Reagan to a dinner of honor at the White House. She sat at the table with Argentine President Raúl Alfonsín and tennis player Guillermo Vilas.

That same year she was interviewed for the North American magazine Vanity Fair, by the journalist Bob Colacello. The author of the report defined her as a woman of character and remarked that, while other women spoke with decorators, she discussed Latin America's debt to David Rockefeller. She was one of those who sat at the table with those who defined the course of the planet. She to him she said: “I am a worker, not a dilettante. I am not contemplative. I don't know how to relax. (...) I am like a missile tied to the ground and when they let me go I shoot out (... ) But a woman who works is a woman who also takes care of the house and pays attention to whether the champagne is cold or if the air conditioning is on. I have a double job. I am president of companies of the foundation and, also, I am a mother, grandmother, aunt…”.

At the end of that report she confessed that she was never going to retire. She just wasn't in her plans.

A dirty book?

Generating a stir was not something that bothered him. If she wanted to say something she said it. In 1996, she was annoyed with the prize that the jury of the Ella Fortabat Foundation wanted to give to Federico Andahazi's novel, The Anatomist. There, the story of the doctor who discovered the clitoris was told. Amalita, without mincing words, said that the work was "obscene and pornographic." At 75 years old, she intended to cancel the award. The writer attended the controversy almost without understanding how he had ended up facing the most powerful woman in Argentina. Regardless, Andahazi got the check for $15,000. The book was published by Planeta and, later, the North American publisher Doubleday contracted the rights in English paying 200,000 dollars. The first edition of the 8,000-copy book sold out in 24 hours.

readings and tears

In 1987 Amalita had met Governor Carlos Menem and they had become close friends.

When he was its president, Menem appointed her president of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Politics, art, the media... everything came together when she bought 51 percent of the shares of the newspaper La Prensa. An amusing anecdote shows her involved in everything. When boxer Carlos Monzón died in January 1995, she told the director: “How do you think of dedicating ten pages to Monzón's death? Let's see, tell me, then, when he dies, how many pages are you going to publish in La Prensa? . A short time later, she got tired of losing money and sold the newspaper. When she died in 2012, the paper media was already immersed in an unprecedented crisis , faced with the advent of the digital world. Amalita would no longer witness this.

In the '90s she focused on culture. She created the Teatro Colón Foundation, was president of the General San Martín Municipal Theater Foundation, was a member of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, collaborated with the National Museum of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Decorative Art, the Mozarteum Argentino and the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. Where the culture was, she was.

In 1999, the American magazine Forbes placed her third on its list of Argentine fortunes.

Amalita handled things her way. She was moved by the news that she read every morning. And, when it seemed necessary to her, she donated money for those causes that aroused her sensitivity. In 2000, she cried over breakfast when she read about the case of Hyre Jasharaj, a 14-year-old girl from Albania who had lost her arm in a mine explosion. She decided to finance her expensive surgery. She also made the largest private donation ($500,000) to the United Nations World Food Program for Kosovar refugees. That was Amalita.

Sell, the only way out

The enormous indebtedness that her company had due to different crises, led her to be on December 19, 2001, in the Casa Rosada, when President Fernando De la Rúa presented his resignation. She had met with him to discuss the debt.

On December 9, 2003, Clarín published that the government of Néstor Kirchner planned to change the profile of the National Endowment for the Arts. Lacroze resigned from him as soon as he found out. The painter Nicolás García Uriburu sent a readers' letter to the newspaper La Nación where he said that Amalita had dedicated her life to helping whoever needed it and that “Rather than asking for his resignation, we should pay tribute to him.”

Fines, complaints, taxes... The company was complicated. Amalita had already sold about twenty works at Sotheby's to raise funds. The 61 million dollars would not have been enough.

In 2005, as a consequence of that 2001 crisis, Amalita, at the age of 84, ended up selling Loma Negra to the Brazilian group Camargo Correa for 1,025 million dollars.

That same year, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University distinguished her for "her great vision of her."

One of lime, another of sand. Amalita knew well the rules of the game she was in.

life is not eternal

Her health had begun to stumble past the age of 73. In 1994, she had an intestinal obstruction and the painful displacement of two lumbar vertebrae. In May 1999, she broke her left hip . A little later, she underwent another hip operation in the United States. In the year 2000 she surprised her with pneumonia and severe anemia. Her back pain meant that she had to resort to a cane and a wheelchair. For someone independent like her, this was martyrdom. In 2008, a thrombosis ended up causing a heart problem. Her 90th birthday, in August 2011, was celebrated in a very different way than all the previous ones. In private and with only 30 very close guests.

Her body took its toll and there was no party mood.

There are those who say that she already had the beginning of senile dementia.

At 6 in the morning of February 18, 2012, Amalita died in her apartment on the 12th floor on Avenida del Libertador, in the City of Buenos Aires.

The powerful lady who liked to wear red lipstick and look flawless; the tempestuous mistress who liked to drink champagne; the businesswoman who took a nap in the middle of a busy day and who, at night, fainted as soon as she rested her head on her pillow; her protective mother and grandmother; the "politics" that she could sit down with world leaders without feeling less; the woman of the millionaire whims and the moved benefactress… was gone.

A century ago, on August 15, 1921, an Argentine legend was born. That legend that today rests in his vault at the Recoleta Cemetery.

Life flies.

But she didn't waste a single second.

KEEP READING:

Power, politics and glamour: the story of Amalita Fortabat in 22 photos The fleeting revolution of Loma Negra de Olavarría, the Amalita Fortabat team that made history 10 jewels and 10 curious stories from the Fortabat Collection