Falklands, a gust of wind

Like a gust of wind from Patagonia, when this date arrives, the memories bring me back to days experienced with such intensity in the fall of 1982. It brings me back once more to the deepest feelings and memories of this part of my life . The Falklands have made us eternal in each of us. Not only because of the experience of the war, but of what happened after the return, which resulted in the birth of a new fight within each of the soldiers who fought on the islands. But it also helps us to badyze the present full of contradictions.

In those days and after 37 years, the Argentine State and the International Red Cross (IRC), with the participation of the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), have succeeded in identifying the bodies of fallen comrades in battle who were buried without a name. in the middle of the loneliness of Darwin's cemetery. See pictures of close relatives of loved ones' crosses of great emotion these days of commemoration and reflection on this war.

The tomb identification project began 11 years ago, at the initiative of veterans organizations such as the Malvinas Islands' former Fighting Center. Plata, accompanied by leaders such as Judge Alejo Ramos Padilla and promoted by the decision of the President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Then, on April 2 of the same year, following the Falklands monument in Ushuaia, the then head of state announced that she had asked the International Red Cross to collaborate with her so that the NN have been identified. One year later, 91 parents had already accepted the corresponding DNA studies. Coincidentally, the British government has been slow to provide humanitarian aid. With the change of government, Britain accepted this claim and the two countries finally agreed to start the tasks on December 20, 2016.

In the meantime, I remember the attacks on Adolfo Pérez Esquivel; Nora Cortiñas, mother of Plaza de Mayo; ex-combatants and other human rights representatives on their return from a trip to the islands as part of the campaign to give their comrades a name and a first name. Between cries and insults, they were attacked, accusing them of selling countries, traitors and sepoys, without justification. This initiative to travel to the Malvinas, the Provincial Commission of Remembrance, has also not been mentioned in recent days.

In any case, the recent trip of the parents is a realized dream and a caress to the life. He has closed an unfinished topic and it is a necessary meeting with this important part of his stories.

But the struggle for sovereignty is continuous and this forces us to go forward with the Malouine issue, despite the fact that the government of Mauricio Macri, with its foreign policy of delivery only desmalvinizes, the agreement signed on September 13, 2016 between Susana Malcorra, former Argentine chancellor and Alan Duncan, vice-chancellor of the British hide-and-seek, only sought to meet the demands of the British Crown on issues such as resource exploitation , fishing, hydrocarbons or air flights, without any benefit for the Argentine people. Do you not insist over and over again on the just claim of sovereignty that our country has had since 1833 and which is subject to the colonial possession of Britain?

The government of Mauricio Macri seems to defend only the possibility of doing business with the United Kingdom, gives up this monopoly to the British interests and forgets to maintain its demand before the international authorities. But, in law and in history, the defense of sovereignty is a state issue that overcomes the temporal and political fluctuations of the country.

The discussion on island sovereignty was again placed "under an umbrella" as provided for in UN Resolution 2065 for more than 50 years. The foreign policy of our country is returning to the search for carnal relations with Britain, hiding the right claim and forgetting the international support it had until recently. While the United Kingdom's representative to our country, Mark Kent, is an experienced diplomat who works hard to "flank" Argentina and the region.

It is in this order that the British Embbady sponsored, at the Sheraton Hotel in December 2018, the Fopea Awards for the alleged investigation into "independent" journalism in Argentina, where, by action or omission, there was no reference to the closure of many media and the 3,500 dismissed journalists. While the United Kingdom "Falklaniza", Mauricio Macri's government acts with complicity by facilitating, with impunity, the British advance on our southern maritime territory and the riches of our sea and our southern soil.

On our territory, the base of Mount Pleasant remains with nearly 2,000 soldiers who keep and control with their armament, their planes, their ships and their nuclear submarine our southern sea and the bioceanic pbadages. With total premeditation, they look south, claiming to control all the riches of our waters and the Antarctic territory.

The Malvinas are a place of belonging for the Argentine people and live in every corner of my country. We see it when the islands appear in the form of t-shirts, tattoos, walls, flags, football fans, monuments, unions and schools. Today, I think back to the contradictions of our history, to a war waged by a decadent civil-military dictatorship that has resorted to a legitimate claim and the constant temptation to make the truth disappear for those who prefer to ignore or silence this which has happened to us. we sometimes take it to an individual plan or a conservative model. But a society will never be right if it does not exercise its memory, if one does not think and reformulate one's membership, which requires a daily task. In the end, Malvinas is a huge story of love written with the heart that leads to our own history as a nation.

* Journalist, professor at the UNLP School of Journalism and Social Communication and conscription veteran at the Malvinas.