Sacred Source of Legitimation of the Malvinas War Heroes

1In this work, we refer to this episode as the Malvinas War (not the Falkland Islands War) since the relatives of the fallen Argentines refer to in this way. At the government level in Argentina, the Foreign Ministry tends to refer to it as the “Southern Atlantic Conflict,” since the word “war” has very specific connotations in international law, with its own requirements and consequences. On the other hand, the conflict extended beyond the Malvinas Islands to the South Georgia and South Sandwich islands and the surrounding seas (data provided by Guillermo R. Rossi, minister plenipotentiary, Malvinas and Southern Atlantic Department, Argentine Ministry of Foreign Relations, International Trade and Worship). 2As during the first six months of the post-war the Argentine government did not take care of bringing the fallen to mainland Argentina, the English proceeded to exhume the remains of the Argentine soldiers in each of the battlefields and concentrated them in the cemetery located in Darwin, Isla Soledad. The physical identification of the soldiers and their final transfer to this cemetery was conducted by the British Colonel Geoffrey Cardozo, who systematized all the information about the activities carried out regarding the handling of the bodies. As not all the Argentine soldiers had the identification medal, those who did not have any identifying element were buried in tombs with the legend "Argentine soldier only known by God". 3On May 2, 1982, the ARA General Belgrano cruiser was sunk after an attack by a British nuclear submarine, the HMS Conqueror, killing 323 men aboard (Bonzo, 1992). Argentine society reacted with anger to the episode, as the attack occurred outside the war area established by the British government around the islands. For more on the way in which active, retired and discharged navy servicemen signified this episode, see Guber, 2008. 4In the case of the ARA General Belgrano cruiser, some of the bodies were recovered and returned to the families. These soldiers are buried in private cemeteries. Prisoners were subjected to interrogation and torture; the vast majority was later murdered and their bodies disappeared5. Similarly, the dictatorship imposed silence about the war after its defeat and Argentine society came to identify both the war and the islands with the military government, producing an antiMalvinas sentiment in the war’s aftermath [1]. In this regard, the Argentine government was blamed not only for the torture and death of thousands of desaparecidos, but also for the death of the young fallen soldiers; as in the case of the disappeared, the dictatorship provided no information on the whereabouts or the cause of death of the young men who lost their lives during the war6.