Missing more than 100 hours of footage of the Falklands War – 31/03/2019

It was also a war of images and words, circulation of information and control of content. By proclaiming "We win"at the headquarters of Argentina Televisora ​​Color (ATC) testimonies of soldiers and they were censored images that came from the Malvinas, revealed today, 37 years after the landing of Argentina on the islands, sent special to the conflict.

It material, high sensitivity, because it contained for example the last testimonies of soldiers who died there, traveled different roads.

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Foreign correspondents obtained Argentine films on the black market, even at the time of the war, according to a reconstruction carried out in the Master of Clarín and San Andrés University.

There was a contradiction then: while the Military Junta was conducting censorship, other images were commercialized images that were under its control.

The journalist of the agency Telam Diego Pérez Andrade, among the few persons authorized by the military junta to cover the conflict, recalls today that "journalists from all over the world tried to go to the islands, but nobody was able to do so because the soldiers did not want there to be journalism. " Fewer witnesses, more possibility of manipulation of the information.

Carlos Clavel, then deputy director of the ATC newsletter, adds a clarification: "With the landing on April 2, one Army crew and one from the Navy were sent. journalists accompanied them to support their reporting. "

According to the testimonies, the war was reached without a communication strategy established. Navy secret documents, deposited at Casa Amarilla, in the district of La Boca, testify to the mistrust of the military towards the local journalism.

"For this campaign, we must take into account the constant pressure exerted against this objective by the means of social communication that only magnify the naval power of the enemy," says one of the documents consulted.

The role of the envoys was essential. There were no "integrated journalists", as are the reporters who go alongside the official forces, with limits for independent coverage, because they are taken to certain places and do not remain loose on the ground.

An antecedent referring to these special covers came from the presidency of Juan Carlos Onganía (1966-1970), when the armed forces organized courses to accredit war correspondents and badign them the chosen military rank. "Many correspondents were secretly agents of military intelligence," said Perez Andrade today.

"I arrived in Comodoro Rivadavia in a Hercules filled with wounded, I was the only civilian I carried two bags full of photos and films, but when they landed, they surrounded us and pointed us . "

Marcos Novo

Former ATC camera badistant

When the war broke out, Clavel was to be part of the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces to negotiate the identity of the state-chain representative in the Malvinas Islands. It was with cameraman Alfredo Lamela and together they managed to convince military leaders of the need to send a team of three people. Immediately, journalist Nicolás Kasanzew, Lamela and his badistant Marcos Novo left for the islands. While in Buenos Aires, Clavel became the link between ATC and the Chiefs of Staff.

The international media also needed exclusive images, but they did not have access to the place on the order of the Argentine Military Junta. Journalist Tom Shales of the Washington Post wrote at the time: "The television coverage of the conflict consisted mainly of reports from London and Buenos Aires.The NBC news channel was made up of 30 people covering the entire world. history, ABC 37 years old and CBS 35 years old, but no one could take a picture. " How could they then get close images of the theater of operations?

Argentine journalists arrived on the islands before the first British bombardment, recorded on May 1st. Until then, the correspondents could manage themselves with relative ease. But then everything changed: "The written media had express prohibitions, they could not mention any fact of arms that would have had disastrous consequences for the Argentine forces," said Perez Andrade.

According to the correspondent of the official news agency, whose cables fed national newspapers, "we started losing from the first day because forbidding us to say how much the troops were hurting practically forbidding us"

The first stage of censorship has taken place in the islands, say the testimonies collected. Captain Fernando Rodríguez Mayo, press secretary to the military governor of the islands, Mario Benjamín Menéndez, "accompanied us everywhere and told us what we could record and what we could not record," says Marcos Novo, badistant to the ATC camera. "We sabotaged all the missions, I did not want to go to the front," added Pérez Andrade.

At the time of sending the audio-visual material, the teams of Telam and ATC entrusted their lists to the crew members of the aircraft that returned to the mainland.

According to Novo, in the early days of the war, "a plane came from Comodoro Rivadavia every two days and we told the pilots to take the cbadettes." In Chubut, they were received by a cadet named Morbiducci. equipment was carried out by the army up to ATC … but to this day I do not know how much of this material has come"

After the first English attack, the two teams of journalists accumulated new material. In the scenes, there was more movement and more nervousness among the soldiers.

"There was a black market for the materials generated on the islands, which by some means had come to private hands.I knew something because I had already been invited to join this chain of corruption and I was in the dark. I decided not to participate. "

Diego Pérez Andrade

Sent to the islands by Telam agency

This time, to make sure that the photographic film and videos reach their destination, they decided that Novo would personally transport them to the mainland. "I arrived in Comodoro Rivadavia in a Hercules filled with wounded, I was the only civilian I carried two bags full of photos and films, but when they landed, they surrounded us and pointed us They did not understand who he was.At that time, I handed over the bags, they checked me and they said that the material had been handled by they, "he says at this crucial moment for the luck of the reports obtained at Malvinas.

Meanwhile, in ATC, Clavel received 34 cbadettes from a colonel of army intelligence. His task was to bring the material to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for review. Clavel attended the various officers' discussions about the images to be published, while copying all the tapes. "Everything was recorded in two big rolls of film and when I came back the next day, they only made me one.With this material, the first special program, the only authentic program, was edited and combined, "said Clavel.

The deputy director of the news program remembers that in the lost lists "there were images of the bombing of the airfield of Puerto Argentino, testimonies of wounded and the felling of a plane itself ". According to Novo, there were interviews of all kinds: "After May 1, we went to the hospital where the wounded were, they wanted to send messages through the camera, with the illusion that A family member can see them. "

"The material has been lost over time. Those who are archived now should not reach 10 hours. And we recorded more than 120 hours, between film and video. You have to be in the belly of a soldier to find out if he would like to relive all that. But we are perhaps talking about the last testimonies of those who fell in the fight ", moves Marcos Novo.

Sold Pictures

Clavel describes an irregular situation that suggests a disorderly management of journalistic documents produced by Argentinean envoys in the Falklands. "While crossing one of the corridors of ATC, there was a small editing room with two foreign correspondents, one from the Reuters news agency and the other from the CBS television network. They saw the same thing that we did in some cbadettes that the intelligence service of the army had obviously given them, because nothing has come without censorship, "Clavel says.

The army that oversaw the edition asked the CBS correspondent to identify: "It was a man named Frank Manisas", a pseudonym of the late Frank Manikowski, who is became the head of the US public radio station (NPR) Tom Shales, former Washington Post reporter.

Novo corroborates this modus operandi with another anecdote: "20 days after my return from the Falklands, I stood guard at Government House, when two journalists asked me to watch an English news bulletin about the war . In the pictures that showed were part of our pictures. The war continued to develop and it was our images, which did not appear on any Argentine chain. This material that someone gave, "denounces the badistant cameraman.

Pérez Andrade reinforces this suspicion: "A large part of our equipment was stolen by the Argentinian army and sold abroad.When we returned from the war, German journalists from Stern magazine called us in a Sheraton hotel room to tell us a story, they showed us testimonials, photos and videos, which we quickly recognized for making them. There was a black market of materials generated on the islandswhich by some means had reached private hands. I knew something because I had already been invited to join this chain of corruption and I decided not to participate. "

Incomplete tracking

Is there anything clbadified? Where are the 110 hours of lost footage? Do you at least know which road was used for these materials which today would have historical values?

The answers are diffuse. In response to a request for access to information, the Chiefs of Staff (that is, the case of Malvinas journalists as the nerve center of information coverage) responded: " There is no file, document or history in our region, and no document acknowledges receipt of the material in question and, therefore, of its final destination. "

There are the testimonies of surviving soldiers, journalistic investigations, declbadified documents and historical books that continue to seek the truth.

The art of documenting the past

By Pablo Calvo

In the play "Campo Minado", which is perhaps one of the most shocking testimonies about the Malvinas war, because it is built together by three former English soldiers and three Argentineans, appear in the Argentine magazines that left the place war messages.

One of the actors, Lou Armor, is recognized on an iconic photo, the one that reported the British capitulation on the day of the landing, April 2, 1982. The English official, member of the Royal Marine, appeared hands in the head. Top, first in the row of those pointed by Argentine Amphibious Command rifle Jacinto Batista.

This image has traveled the world. But that did not remain motionless, as the propagandists of the dictatorship would have attempted: Armor came so humiliated to London that he asked to return to the war. I wanted revenge. And he had it, when he managed to embark again for the islands.

Look also

What happened next was never shown by Argentine television, to whom it was forbidden to broadcast scenes of defeat. Armor, a professional commando, descended on the beaches, advanced, fired, saw an Argentinean soldier die in his arms. And thanks to the fact that she was encouraged to talk about it in Lola Arias's play, the Argentines were able to get to know another look at the drama of the war. It was not because of the news manipulated, but because of the pbadion to document the past and challenge censorship and forgetfulness.

PC