"Malvinas: death after death", by Federico Andahazi

April 2, 2019

The new column of Federico Andahazi for "I give my word".

Last March, a fact came to soothe the pain of over 30 years. I am referring to the journey of 250 relatives who traveled to place the tombstones with the name and surname of fallen soldiers in Malvinas, who had until 2018 the sad legend "An Argentine soldier only known to God" . This year, another smaller group of 65 family members traveled to pay tribute to their 22 deceased parents in the Falklands.

We are all moved by this fundamental and indispensable act of justice, which is to be able to cry a grave, in the certainty that there is the person we love so much. The death in these circumstances is tragic, but the years of indifference and the weight of the NN have done the rest so that these loved ones can not close a duel that had to be filled with honors and recognitions for these young people Soldiers, Too Young, Boys, 18 year old boys, although Aldo Rico and other energetic ones disturbed the term: they were boys. I belong to this generation. I was a boy and those who died were kids like me: friends, clbadmates and school. Defenseless boys who have left the south of the world never to return. And this fact makes everything much more tragic.

Veterans and their families were victims of two very complicated psychological processes by the terrible and sinister management that led to the murderous dictatorship that took power in the republic. The post-traumatic stress of ex-combatants and, on the other hand, the enormous difficulty of the relatives to put an end to the process of mourning. As a society, we repress defeat and claim that it did not happen to us.

The war was the atrocious whim of a cruel dictatorship that had led the country to a social disaster and a military defeat. But inside this war that should never have existed, there has been the death of child victims of a madness that many have celebrated as it s & # 39; 39, was acting from a football match.

The democracy that went to war did not give these veterans the place they deserved. The vast majority have suffered and suffer from post-traumatic stress. 649 Argentines died in the war. But there have been other deaths, perhaps avoidable: there are no official statistics but the badociations speak of more than 400 veterans who have committed suicide since the end of the war. Can they understand the magnitude of the disaster? The number of men who could not stand the experiences suffered almost reached the number of dead.

What happened to those 400 men who chose to commit suicide? What are the hundreds and hundreds of veterans still following psychiatric treatment trying to get out of it anyway? I am encouraged to say that recognizing the identity of these fallen soldiers will also bring some peace to our ex-combatants.

I imagine that one of these ex-combatants, 37 years later, reads in the newspapers the name of a trench partner who has never known anything else. We already know where he is. His elderly mother was able to bring him a flower, a letter, a rosary.

A few days ago, Jorge "Beto" Altieri received the helmet that he used to Malvinas. Thanks to this helmet, he saved his life. He is broken by splinters and stained with his own blood. It was auctioned in London for $ 13,000. An Argentine businessman bought it and gave it back to him. Altieri cried like a boy holding his helmet in his arms. Can you imagine the emotional fibers that touch this object in the hands of Altieri?

Objects, tombstones, memory, crying on a grave bearing its own name: the weight of symbols to be able to treat tragedies is very important.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a serious, complex and disabling condition that requires treatment by specialist physicians and mental health professionals.

War is perhaps the most telling reason for post-traumatic stress. In the figures on veterans suicides, a cut is checked 14 times more than the average of the population. Another type of dramatic event can also give rise to this disorder. For example, badual abuse, torture, domestic violence, attacks and major disasters, among others.

These are events in which the victim felt that his death was imminent, saw people die by his side or experienced extreme and justified terror. Time does not cure the symptoms: the years go by and these patients wake up in the middle of unbearable nightmares. They experience terrifying flashbacks, such as images and intrusive sensations that they can not control or torment. This generates anxiety, depression and enormous difficulties to carry out a personal project in the long term. Emotional instability and anxiety.

Deplorable suicides occur in the most severe forms of depression, which speak of the lack of treatment of such abominable experiences and, often, the abandonment of society.
In the dissociative reactions presented by some more committed patients, the person (to put it simply) divorces reality, reacts and acts by reliving the traumatic event, disconnected from the present and fixed in this catastrophic past. They usually have problems with sleep, hyperactivity, difficulty concentrating, impulsiveness, a tendency to self-destruct, detachment, hypervigilance, among other conditions.

These are the people we should care about most, to whom society should have given all the tools necessary to overcome this hellish experience. We remain in debt.
Friday at the psychodrome, we will continue to talk about post-traumatic stress and grief that could be treated by the family and friends of Falklands that have been identified. For now, we are closing here and using this column as a tribute and acknowledgment to this group so unseen and unfairly forgotten that it is our often heroic victim of the Falklands war.

"Macri, Cristina and El Rey: the last words", by Federico Andahazi