Roberto Arias

Roberto E. Arias (1918-1989) (known as Tito) was a Panamanian international lawyer, diplomat and journalist who was the husband of Dame Margot Fonteyn. Arias was from a Panamanian political dynasty, members of which had reached the Presidency four times; amongst them was his own father, Harmodio Arias.

Arias was educated at Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, and at St. John's College, Cambridge. From 1942-1946 he edited his family's newspaper.

In 1955, Arias married the great English ballerina Margot Fonteyn, after divorcing his first wife, with whom he had three children. After his marriage, Arias was appointed Envoy to Great Britain by his uncle, the dictator of Panama. In 1959 he and Dame Margot were charged with attempted gun-smuggling from their yacht off the coast of Panama and he was accused of fomenting a revolt against Ernesto de la Guardia Jr., who was then President. She was immediately deported to England; he took refuge in the Brazilian Embassy for two months before being given safe conduct out of the country. Eventually the charges were dropped and, after a governmental change, the couple were permitted to return to Panama.

In May 1964 he was elected to the National Assembly, his first venture into active politics. Two months later he was shot in an argument with a friend and former political associate, Alberto Jimenez, on a street corner in a suburb of Panama City. It was widely rumored that the the shooting was a result of an affair that Arias was having with Jimenez's wife. Arias was treated for 18 months in British hospitals and spent the rest of his life as a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair. One of the reasons Fonteyn continued to dance so late in life was to pay for Arias's enormous medical bills. Colette Clark, a close friend who worked with Fonteyn on Royal Academy of Dancing galas, said:

People said it was such a tragedy, his being shot. Of course it wasn't a tragedy, because she got what she wanted. Someone to look after and love and lavish with all the devotion and strength of her marvelous character.

During Fonteyn's absence from Panama on tour as a ballerina, a socialite named Anabella Vallarino would move into the house as his shadow wife and move out again before Fonteyn's return. On the day of Tito's death in 1989 Vallarino committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of chlorine and the two were buried on the same day.

References

* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE3DC1F39F930A15752C1A96F948260 Obituary, New York Times]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/books/review/05BENTLEY.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&oref=slogin Review of Meredith Daneman's biography "Margot Fonteyn"]