From Campo de Mayo to Malvinas, and Back: The Falklands/Malvinas War from the Perspective of Argentine Veterans Accused of Crimes Against Humanity

Abstract

Four decades after the Falklands/Malvinas War and Argentina’s return to democracy, this article explores the ways in which veterans accused of crimes against humanity remember the conflict. Before confronting the British in the South Atlantic in 1982, the Argentine military had been involved in operations of counterinsurgency and illegal repression at home. Since 2005, hundreds of former officers — including veterans of the Malvinas War — have been accused and convicted for the crimes of the 1970s. This article focuses on the narrative of ‘Malvinas’ shared by former comandos (special forces) in the prison where they are detained in the present. It questions the content of ethnographic interviews with these veterans, and the context in which they were produced, to revisit the link between the violence of the 1970s and the Malvinas War from the perspective of the military involved in both scenarios. In so doing, the article deals with some unsolved issues of memorialization in post-war and post-authoritarian Argentina.