Memories and mixed emotions in a visit to the Falklands War former scene.
“Tras su manto de neblina no las hemos de olvidar, las Malvinas, argentinas, clama el viento y ruge el mar…”
(“Behind their mist’s cloak, we won’t have to forget them, the Malvinas are Argentinians… that’s what the wind cries out and the sea roars” – Fragment of lyrics from an Argentinian march sung during the Falklands War in 1982).
The march comes from the past, along with other infant memories, mixed with distant children voices and blurred images of white school smocks.
It was 1982 and I was in second grade. I hardly could read and write, but I knew there was a war, and that it meant “people-killing-other-people”, fighting for some reason. The teacher had explained that we should not be afraid for us, because the war was in Malvinas, two islands in the South of the Atlantic Ocean, near the Argentinian coast but faraway from our Buenos Aires. “But we have to support our soldiers who had gone there to fight”, she said, “showing our respect, singing the march and painting the islands map with the colors of our nation”.
So there I was, getting my light-blue and white color pencils scratching my notebook.
When you’re a kid, everything is simple: there is the good people, and there is the bad people. And I’ve been taught that we were the good ones.
At home, me and my little brother watched the TV news as if we were watching an action movie, there was no difference. We were not worried: at the end, the good always win, or so they say. So I wasn’t scared of the bloody uniforms of the soldiers or the sound of the bombs. My Dad was too old to go to the war, my brother too young, so I was relaxed. I even used to sing with joy: “las Malvinas, argentinas, clama el viento y ruge el mar…”
Image by author
It’s been twenty five years from that war and today I can hear the wind crying out and the sea roaring, now live. But I’m not sure what are they saying this time. And if they say something, it’s probably in English, which is the official language in the islands since United Kingdom runs their government.
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