Yesterday commemorated in Plaza Malvinas on Veterans and Fallen Day in the Malvinas War. There we interviewed three former combatants who are members of the CECIM.
Fighting misinformation
The CECIM (Malvinas Islands Ex-Combatants Center) »It arises from the work we did in the area of human rights and the search for the truth.
As soon as we returned from the war, we began to demonstrate against the events that had occurred, while a social process took place where the Argentine population adhered to that construction of truth regarding what happened during the dictatorship.», he tells us Ernesto AlonsoSecretary of DD. HH. of the CECIM and member of the Provincial Commission for Memory.
Ernesto refers to the torture and crimes committed by the Armed Forces towards the Argentine army itself in 1982: »A case was initiated where human rights violations are investigated. There are more than 200 reported events, more than 200 military personnel charged, 11 files that are in the Supreme Court of Justice, a case that we took to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and which was granted admissibility. We are waiting for those three courtiers (referring to judges Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Ricardo Lorenzetti) decide that our people know the truth about what happened in the Malvinas».
»All dictatorial governments, fascist governments – starting with the dictatorship – have had and have death projects for the youth. There was never a life project. The dictatorship offered young people death», declares Ernesto.
»There is a people that has always fought historically and that has won all the battles until now. We were able to defeat the dictatorship. It was the dictatorship who was defeated in the Malvinas, it was not our people»
Recoil and adjustment
Regarding the current situation, Ernesto maintains that »We have a very unfavorable scenario in terms of loss of sovereignty, unfortunately due to the policies that were being carried out in the government of Javier Miley.
Argentine society is suffering from this distancing from the defense of sovereign policies, because For us, repressing retirees, defunding public education, defunding the scientific and technological system, trying to destroy glaciers, is going against sovereignty..
This political model is for devastate Argentina. «They think that Argentina is a wasteland, where there are no people, and they plan to leave the 45 million Argentines outside to keep all the goods.»
For his part, the president of CECIM Rodolfo Carrizo He relates that for him »It was unthinkable that he was going to go to war. I thought we were going to make the reservation for those who were going to the Malvinas, but in reality I had to go.
War is a horrorit is not pretty at all, it generates fear, anguish. It is traumatic, and suddenly you lose companions from one moment to the next, they are very painful things.
With the vast majority of us being 18 years old, it implies a very strong effort to recover, to try to survive and to some extent transform yourself into a resilient person from something that is so painful», reflects Rodolfo.
He also told us about his trips back to Malvinas: »It is a beautiful island, today sadly militarized with a very strong intervention by the United Kingdom throughout its territory, both satellite and military.
They are really ugly things to see, but also to reflect: why have the British been there for 193 years, have that settlement and do not want to leave? Because there are all the riches that beings need to live, both drinking water and food and becomes central to the life of any society.
You don’t defend what you don’t know
It seems to me that we must defend the Malvinas first with our best weapon, which is the knowledge. We have to work a lot on that, explain the legal reasons, the historical reasons, but also the geopolitical and geostrategic reasons that the Malvinas Islands have to understand that there is geoeconomic reasons that give meaning to us understanding that the Malvinas are Argentine», says Carrizo.
Likewise, the former combatant Hugo Robert He emphasized emphatically that April 2 is not only a date of tribute for giving one’s life: »That life, why did they give it? So that they can put a flower on it? No. They gave it in defense of this idea of sovereignty that is today more in discussion than everthat this government bastardizes.
Unfortunately, this and Macri’s government bastardized it by thinking that sovereignty is a business space, business that is not for us either because the big businesses in the Malvinas are for the big people in the world, not even for the big people in Argentina.».
The tools that the Argentine people have, as the black Carrizo said today in his speech, is to be increasingly wiser and provide more tools to science and research in the South Atlantic, because What they come for is through the South Atlantic, through Antarctica, they do not come through the Islands», warns Hugo.
Regarding his return to Malvinas, for Hugo to return »It’s not easy, because your head fills with memories, memory sometimes betrays you emotionally. You can’t stop shuddering thinking that there the kids who stayed in your head gave their lives..
It’s that feeling of re-entering your school with all the memories that entails. Well, returning to the Malvinas is that and it hurts. To me particularly It hurts my soul because there are those kids who remained in my memory at 18 years old.. I always remember Rolando Pacholzuc, my trench companion, who was wounded and died a few days later. I carry it with me every day.
Once again it is necessary to listen to those voices that experienced firsthand the horrors of a war led by a dictatorial government, because as a famous phrase says, those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it.
