More than 40 years have passed since Malvinas War and Argentines of a certain age have their own memory of that tragedy. Some may remember their prayers that brothers and sons would not be sent to war, or feel a tinge of shame at cheering Galtieri on a May Plaza packed; the exiles may recall their astonishment upon learning of the crowd shower received by the dictator. Many shudder at the thought of the deaths, the hunger, the cold and the mistreatment of their own superiors suffered by the ill-equipped conscripts. Some prefer not to remember anything and others may evoke the misinformation spread by the military. 649 Argentines died during the 74 days that the armed confrontation lasted.
Those who returned from the war came back changed, marked forever. some brought Photoswhich will be exhibited in the space of ArtexArt from its inauguration, with the presence of some veterans, on November 5. “The ex-combatants took them [a las fotos] and they kept them without receiving sufficient notion that this could serve for history”, emphasizes the sociologist Silvia Pérez Fernández in the illuminating texts in the room. However, “the camera was a desired object when going to Falklands. If she didn’t have her own, she was asked from a relative”.
moving display
“Malvinas. Yes, I was there” is an initiative of photojournalists Martin Felipe and Diego Sandstede, promoters of the photographic archive “Malvinas, Memory of Waiting”. Started in 2017, the archive project is an extraordinary ongoing investigation that even adds the voices of the protagonists. He is devoted to the search for images scattered throughout the country, taken by the then soldiers in the Malvinas or on their way to them.
The photographers Felipe and Sandstede are the curators of the exhibition that presents 320 photographs, on the ground floor and the first floor. In the images are those who returned and some who stayed forever on the Islands. They are photos taken in 1982 during the war, by 20-year-old soldiers, who today are in their 60s. The precious material is completed with a necessary compilation of current testimonies from the protagonists. “Of each testimony there is an audiovisual record for the archive; With fragments of this material, a compact documentary was made”, which can be seen on the second floor of ArtexArte.
The curators point out that most of these images, drawn from 28 sets of records, were never shown in public. “Photographs and testimonials they make up a moving tandem: there is the intact field kitchen that will be destroyed in a bombardment, the laborious fire at the foot of a trench, the clumsy weapons wielded, the horizons of rock and aridity. The companions. The cause that persists against all odds. Also here, in the statement that gives this exhibition its name: ‘Yes, I was there’”.
The five photos published on these pages are just indications of the richness of the material displayed in various formats (12 x 19 cm, 30 x 40 cm, 80 x 80 cm). From left to right, the first corresponds to the album of Néstor Sau from La Plata, class 62, who this year participated again in La Plata in the “March of the Torches”, which commemorates the fallen soldiers of that city and runs 13 km, similar to the distance he walked with his group from the airport to their destination in Malvinas. Also class 62, Alejandro Liebana recorded the approach to the islands from the air with a camera that he bought with a colleague in Río Gallegos. His mother says “that an Alejandro went to the Malvinas and another returned.”
Another class 62 conscript, the veteran Hugo Lineira, -who in his current Facebook photo wears a T-shirt with a photo of the Islands with the caption: “Las Malvinas son argentinas”- is the one who keeps the photo of the deck of the Cabo San Antonio ship. He, along with other soldiers lying there, are without a cabin and are waiting to be found. They participated in the landing on April 2. “(…) Seeing the Argentine flag wave there on the mast. It was very impressive,” he says. The photo shows the soldiers on the way, relaxed, smiling. But it is that, as ex-combatant Martín Borba (above right) affirms – in charge of the Development Society and the González Catán Museum that honors the fallen heroes in the war conflict – many left as if they were going on an adventure. He is proud to have defended the country, but “it never crossed my mind that we were going to go to war.”
Hector Urbieta (lower right), was just 18 years old when the war broke out. He was stationed there with a logistics support unit; he never thought he would go into combat. “I was also one of the Argentines who rejoiced at the event.” (…) Without imagining that in a few days he was going to be in a war”.
All images are important. Are there too many photos displayed? Perhaps, but these are historical images of the soul of a few survivors, which also pay tribute to the young soldiers who did not return and reiterate the claim for the sovereignty of the Falklands. The rooms are spacious, the spectators are free to make their own way; Unmissable is the compact documentary with excerpts from interviews with 25 ex-combatants.
Image gallery
