A Forgotten War (Part I)

South Atlantic, 1982: A Forgotten War (Part I)
Author(s): Andrew Graham-Yooll

Source: The Antioch Review , Fall, 2007, Vol. 65, No. 4, South Atlantic's Forgotten War
(Fall, 2007), pp. 598-617
Published by: Antioch Review Inc.
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South Atlantic, 1982:
A Forgotten War (Part I)
BY ANDREW GRAHAM- YOOLL
JL he first day of this story was the second, of April 1982, when Ar-
gentina landed special troops on the British-owned Falkland Island
which Argentina calls "las islas Malvinas," far away in the South A
lantic. Some people thought this tale began in January 1833, when
the Royal Navy's HMS Clio* s commander forcibly took control of
the Falklands from the governor appointed by Buenos Aires; whic
claimed the rocks as an inheritance from Spain. Previously, in 177
Samuel Johnson had warned the English against the futility of allo
ing vexation to progress to war with Spain for the islands, in Thoughts
of the Late Transactions Respecting Falklands Islands. Captain Joh
Byron (Foulweather Jack), grandfather of poet George, should
blamed for some of the islands' attraction, on delivering ca. 1764
set of delicate and charming sketches and maps of the settlement o
East Falkland when he took possession of the Falklands in the nam
of George III (1738-1820), king of England.
Start at the end; it helps to shorten a long story. By 1982, the
Malvinas Islands dispute was wearying, boring. There was no w
that three months of surrealism in the form of war in the South Atlanti
could end such an extended account, or make the islands worthwhil
April 1982. Buenos Aires was euphoric. Never had Argentina gaine
territory in conflict or diplomatic dispute. Argentina had not had a war
since 1870. Ever since Spanish colonial rule Argentina had lost land
to its neighbors. In the city's shops there were school text illustratio
that recalled 1806 and 1807, when Buenos Aires créoles under t
rule of Castille had defeated two British expeditions to the River Pl

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South Atlantic, 1982: A Forgotten War (Part 1) 599
colonies. The British invader had been vanquished by a miscellany of

home-made missiles that included stones, pots of boiling fat, sacks
full of excreta, and bundles of blazing hay, dropped onto the troops
of His Majesty, by small dark people on the roofs of the fortress-like
houses of the colony. Britain remembered that defeat as a minor event
in the Napoleonic wars.
In April 1982, Argentina had been seven years under its bloodiest
dictatorship in a century. Now, under General Leopoldo Fortunato Gal-
tieri, nobody thought of the horrors committed by the military leaders.
"Recovering" the Malvinas was the nation's cause, nothing else mat-
tered. The previously censored voice of Mercedes Sosa- Argentina's
leading folk singer who had been exiled in Spain- filled the record
shops and the streets. So did the once-banned voice of the Catalan
singer- writer Joan Manuel Serrât ("A man in my street says he has a
friend who met a man who told him that he remembered one day when
he had been happy"). Their voices reverberated along the city's main
pedestrian way. Tom Stoppard's Travesties (1974) played four nights a
week to full houses in a small theatre in La Boca- which is more Ital-
ian than the rest of italianized Buenos Aires. The Spanish translation
by playwright Julio Ardiles Gray (1922) of Molière 's Le bourgeois
gentilhomme drew large audiences, and British film maker David Putt-
nam's Chariots of Fire, complete with the strains of "God Save the
King" as the hero wins the gold medal at the 1924 Olympics, played
to enthusiastic sports and cinema fanciers. German director Jeanine
Meerapfel's film Malou was showing. It is the story of a woman in
pursuit of her own identity who follows her French mother, married
to a German Jew, from Berlin to Buenos Aires where her parents had
fled from the Nazis. Buenos Aires again took its best-known leading
role, of place of refuge and torment. Silvina Bullrich (1915-90), the
Argentine novelist, wrote to the daily La Prensa to ask why Argentina
had to occupy the Malvinas if most of Patagonia had to be settled. In
a café she spoke in English loudly, indifferent to the listening locals,
whose ready acceptance of official anti-British propaganda had made
Britons in Buenos Aires drop their English to a whisper or switch to
rather comical, and at times heavily accented Spanish.
The triumphalist euphoria had a harshness that was beyond rejoic-
ing. There was a clamour for war over the islands.
They might as well have one.
One government slogan on the radio, broadcast along with the
usual admonitions about paying taxes and vaccinating dogs, said a

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600 The Antioch Review
country achieved maturity only through war. How did they know?
Britain, too, had been longing for a good fight since humiliation
at Suez. The British Task Force sailed for Ascension Island, the only
landfall in an eight-thousand-mile progress to the Falklands. La Tâch-
er (British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), the Task Force, and
this most boring of disputes might do for South America what pub-
lishers, artists, and guerrillas had not: help the British rediscover the
continent.
The smart-looking Argentine defense minister, whose hair oil had
a sheen to match the polished desk, announced to the press that Argen-
tina would make the islands impregnable. He gave no detail, nobody
did, and spoke with the useless precision of the verbally flatulent,
which made him sound very authoritative. Television crews needed
footage like that.
Cameramen were at the two main doors to the foreign ministry,
the San Martin palace. It had been built as a town house in 1909 in the
French style of a vast petit hotel, when Buenos Aires was the Paris of
South America, for the wealthy Anchorena family. The TV crews were
so tired of waiting they talked about the Fuckland crisis.
When General Alexander Haig, U.S. secretary of state, veteran of
the Korean and Vietnam wars, was sent by President Reagan to spend
Easter in Buenos Aires as a mediator, he was welcomed by crowds of
men, in sweatshirts and pyjamas, and women with aprons over their
skirts, who gathered late in the autumn evening all along the speedway
from the airport. The people cheered Mr. Haig and the United States.
They thought he had come as a friend, to help. Haig told Argentina's
military chiefs that if there was shooting the United States would take
Britain's side. The people who welcomed him were not told.
On Saturday, 10 April, a crowd filled the Plaza de Mayo, in front of

Government House, to show General Haig the strength of popular
feeling. As if a United States secretary of state could understand the
idea of cash-less populism- he probably thought the square was filled
with cowboys and Indians. People cheered the military government's
decision to occupy the Falkland Islands. There was a need to rejoice,
mixed with apprehension. Did they want war? Surely not; the banners
called for peace. Did they think that humiliation could be inflicted on
a foreign power without retaliation? Certainly; other banners stated
the need to fight.

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People had come to the Plaza de Mayo from all over the city and
suburbs. Some walked behind their union banners, some in a column
behind an Argentine flag, some on their own, and some in the na-
tive costumes of the countries of their immigrant parents. There were
the national dresses of the immigrants from the Baltic countries, and
there were old uniforms out of the trunks of immigrant Croats. They
wanted to show that support for Argentina's cause came from beyond
the borders.
Many people carried signs, some in English, for the benefit of
foreign television cameras: "We are people of peace / Death to Mar-
garet's army." Another said: "Goodbye Queen / God save Argentina."
The more severe nationalists had written: "English, pirates, Masons,
infidels, go home." And some jumped and chanted: "No cabe duda
I no cabe duda I la reina de Inglaterra I es la reina mâs boluda"
("There is no doubt / There is no doubt / The Queen of England / Is the
biggest jerk of all").
Journalists enjoyed the excitement. The world's press had been
given the freedom of Government House. From the roof, where a heli-
copter waited should General Haig wish to depart to his tennis match
at the U.S. Embassy, journalists had the optimum security agents'
view of the people below. The North American reporters were con-
vinced that a war would help them write like Ernest Hemingway. All
correspondents would write a packet into their expenses.
General Galtieri, who had seized office in December, looked de-
lighted. He, too, enjoyed his view of the crowd: from the balcony of
Government House the people seemed to be cheering him. There was
nobody about who could see the tragic comedy in this. The group of
journalists on the roof grew in number. They wore intense looks and
spoke in deep voices, filled with urgency, forecasting tragedy.
Galtieri enjoyed the attention. The year before, in 1981, he had
been in Washington twice, feted as the defender of a new democracy,
and thanked for Argentina's supply of expert torturers, "military advi-
sors" to the right-wing governments of Central America. The previous
year he had been sure that he had the support of the "stupid Yanks"
for an island adventure. He, like La Tâcher, needed a war. He had to
bury the memory of his murders; his crimes against thousands- the
missing now mourned as dead- would be forgotten, if he could win
this one. How else but by war could Argentina overcome the crimes
of the past?

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* * *
Bumper stickers ridiculed La Tâcher. A Band-Aid covere

in one; another showed her being buggered by Galtieri.
showed the Argentine blue and white colors raised abov
Jack. Radio broadcasts were sprinkled to excess with jin
the Malvinas. The text of the March of the Malvinas wa
to journalists in Government House. A jingle, which sta
on Argentina / Come on and win," punctuated what pass
reels, which were a recitation of statements of adherence
forces. The military had to show they had the country with
Record shops blared the exciting gallop of Maurice R
ro, suddenly made popular by Claude Lelouch in his film
autres, now showing, which starred another Argentine s
ballet dancer Jorge Donn (1947-92), trained by Maurice
audience shouted some epithet during the World War II
the United States decided to assist Britain. Argentina now
the victim of that alliance.
The newspapers brought from London by some of the nearly three
hundred journalists in Buenos Aires to cover "the war," showed that
the British public was being led to believe that Argentines spent their
days gesticulating at photo and television cameras. It was not easy to
know what the British public thought of a conflict for a possession
they had not been aware existed. "Fleet Street" had to first discover
where the islands were- no easy matter as most European atlases put
South America at the back, and very small, and the Falklands at the
end of South America: a carbuncle on the toe of the continent. In-
formation on London's official expectations was as limited as it was
in Buenos Aires. In Argentina the news was withheld by decree, in
Britain by the terms of the Official Secrets Act, which was legislation
intended to prevent the public from knowing anything. Whitehall did
not really care what the Russians or the Argentine navy knew, as long
as Britons did not know.
The war was far from Buenos Aires. The invasion of the Falk-
lands-Malvinas was still celebrated like a World Cup, a festive event
with which to fill newspaper columns with speculation while it was
too early to worry about the final in the fixtures.
People talked of nothing but the Malvinas; they hung about in the
streets in the lingering warm weather. Around the newspaper kiosks
in the city small groups of people gathered to read the headlines of

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The New York Times and The Financial Times. Brazilian newspapers
such as O Globo or Jornal do Brasil, or O Estado de Sao Paulo were
searched for genuine news. Occasionally there was the Chilean El
Mercurio, but Chile was not seen as an ally, it was too openly pro-
British. And there were all the Uruguayan papers; but Argentines
believed that Uruguayans just invented the news because the papers
could not afford news agency fees. In Buenos Aires, as in every other
Latin American capital, censorship made people certain that only the
foreign papers carried sound information and the best rumors about
the military.
The Argentine papers quoted Paul Groussac (1848-1939), a
French immigrant, historian, traveler, and critic, who wrote in 1910
and to the delight of generations that the Malvinas should belong to
Buenos Aires. Groussac had died long ago, and so, it seemed, had all
the other voices that might have best advised Argentina. Argentina's
great man of letters, Jorge Luis Borges, who once wrote that "Defeat
has a dignity that victory lacks," had travelled to New Orleans. Others
were abroad or cowed, by the noise of triumphalism, into acquies-
cence with the government.
The military government renamed Port Stanley, the islands' capi-
tal, Puerto Argentino, to affirm the right to be there.
Restaurants in Buenos Aires emptied early. The partial blackout, im-

posed to save fuel, required by the armed forces' chiefs -to impress
the feeling of a "war situation"- and the growing economic squeeze,
made the night inhospitable. Theatres closed early. The plays, like the
foreign films, were the only entertainment that did not mention the
Malvinas. La Senorita de Tacna, by the Peruvian novelist Mario Var-
gas Llosa, played each night to full houses. What remained of that
play in the mind of most audiences was the beautiful nude scene by
the actress Katja Alemann- a relative of the economy minister- who
played a temptress in an old man's memories. Vargas Llosa's most re-
cent novel, The War of the End of the World (1981), was selling well,
perhaps because people confused it with a little war at the end of the
world. The book, which only lightly fictionalized the life and crusade
of a nineteenth-century religious man in the dry open plains of north-
ern Brazil, had an avid local readership. R. B. Cunninghame Graham
wrote A Brazilian Mystic, the life and miracles of Antonio Conselheiro
(1920), a biography of the holy man who led a rebellion in Canudos,

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Brazil, probably based on the book Os Sertoes (1905) by the Brazilian

author and social historian Euclydes da Cunha.
Conselheiro had entered history just as he might have entered a
lunatic asylum. The same would someday be said of General "Leo"
Galtieri.
In Buenos Aires people were under the impression that South
Georgia Island- an old whaling station, which had been formally
seized on 2 April, immediately after the occupation of Port Stanley-
would soon be recaptured by Britain. British pride would then have
been satisfied and negotiations on the future of the Falkland Islands
could begin in earnest. It sounded like a chapter in a textbook on how
to understand military history. Everybody was an expert in something
military these days.
It was not easy to reconcile feelings. In 1976, after the military
coup and the wave of murders by the government, thousands of Ar-
gentines departed into the ignominy, and the privileges, of exile. They
joined the Latin American diaspora caused by military mania- coups
in Brazil in 1964, Peru in 1968, Chile in 1973, Uruguay in 1973, Bo-
livia every month, and so on. Now the exiles were returning, a curtain
was descending on the killings of the past. The exiles were having
the time of their lives: they came from countries with strong curren-
cies. The Falklands-Malvinas invasion had become an amnesty of the
damned. At the annual book fair in Buenos Aires, in April, where mid-
dle-class families flocked, but did not buy, volumes by the Colombian
author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Uruguayans Mario Benedetti,
Juan Carlos Onetti, Eduardo Galeano, and all the other forbidden gen-
erators of genius, were displayed by the publishers. By the entrance
to the fair a large sign above a round canvas enclosure called on the
public to donate books for the future schools in Malvinas. People in
the neighborhood cleaned out their trunk rooms and attics, and found a
repository that would save old paperbacks, and their consciences. The
military would probably burn the pile. It was said, without evidence,
of course, that the military enjoyed a blaze of culture when burning
books.
The returning exiles became tacit supporters of the military rulers
who had caused the "disappearances" and deaths of twenty thousand
men and women. By leaving and returning now, exiles became incom-
plete as nationals to judge, condone, hide, or expose the past. Roque
Dalton (1935-75), the Salvadoran poet, wrote of the survivors in El
Salvador as being "half dead." Returning exiles are the half living, a

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chunk is missing from their lives. They lacked six years of local per-
ception. Returnees argued that absence and distance had given them
the maturity that leaving home gave men and women. But they had
lost the intuitive capacity to recognize situations as did those who had
stayed in the family. In their rush to get home now, they would lose
what little perception they had, and their self-respect: there was no
justification for coming home, except that it was easy to do, and con-
venient to the military.
When we were at school, boys and girls sometimes asked, "If
Britain went to war with Argentina, what side would you be on?" But
it was such a silly question that we ignored it. "Yes, but if-?" they
insisted. There was no need to answer.
For twelve weeks, from the start of April to the close of June
1982, my colleagues- fellow correspondents in Buenos Aires for all
the world's press- often asked, "Which side do you want to win?"
"Scotland, in the World Cup . . .?" That evasion did not last for long.
Scotland was thrashed in the 1982 soccer cup. So was Argentina.
It was not an easy time for Anglo-Argentines, those descended
from British expatriates. In what mind could they recall on 24 May
that at every English, Irish, and Scots school in Argentina they had
once marked Empire Day- which Argentines respected- and on the
following morning celebrated Argentina's national day with equal fer-
vor?
A way of life was threatened.
Sentiment knotted the Anglo-Argentine gut to Buenos Aires, or
Patagonia, with a fastness that equally tied to London, Liverpool, or
Leith. Friends said that there were two tried tests to determine a man's
land and language. "What tongue do you count in? Which do you use
for simple arithmetic?" English and Spanish. "And which language
do you make love in?" English and Spanish; the love for my well-
beloved needed all of both. Our fantasies were in Britain- mine in
Edinburgh- our life was in Argentina where our parents had found the
richest soil in the world; where Italian immigrants had given Spanish a
metallic tone, but had weakened the heritage of Hispanic culture. But
within that mix there was an enormous cultural wealth.
It was a different matter to know where our roots were. That schiz-
oid aspect was not exclusive to Anglo- Argentines. In a society that had
shown concern for the bureaucracy of state more than for assimilation
into nationhood, everybody had a bit of them that belonged elsewhere,
nobody was altogether here. Argentina was, still is, a land of voluntary

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exiles, expatriates and displaced persons who tried to understand the

generosity of the young state and wanted to break with the avarice of
the old world.
Once, the whole place seemed to have been managed by the Eng-
lish-from the Andean railway tunnel to meat packers on the River
Plate- and farmed by Scots, working in harmony with the Irish as
cheap labor. The Welsh had tried to carve a corner out of northern
Patagonia in which to preserve their customs and life-style.
* * *
The Café de la Paix, a fashionable bar near the Recol

was full. There was no apprehension of war. There w
in the air, but it was not caused by malaise. The edito
des Francophones was furious with the British. His f
fered under the English through the ages. He came
French family whose seat at Velay, the Chateau of M
by Charlemagne on his return from Spain in 778, had
Wellington in 1814. "So you see-"
"What?"
"The British are always attacking everything and everybody. . . ."
Buenos Aires, the Pearl of the Plate in the tango lyrics, smelled of
dampness. There was always a fresh damp odor that came from the
river in the air outdoors; the old damp came thick and musty from
inside the houses. Some days the air was saturated with the smell of
flesh and blood, the pong of the polluted river mixed with that of the
packing houses on the south side. The meat-packing plants had been
closed for years, since 1974, by the slump in the trade with Europe
and industrial transformation. Britain had suspended Argentine meat
imports a decade before. After nearly a century of cattle slaughter the
stench remained.
At the office of the joint chiefs of staff, in the Defense Ministry,

a long queue of men and some women waited on the sidewalk of the
Paseo Colon to volunteer for service in the Malvinas Islands. There
was something pathetic about the sight of a band of volunteers, their
spirits buoyed by the prospect of great deeds, or a job at least. They
were being ill-treated by the indifference of their leaders who wished
only to flaunt their numbers for political impression. People waited

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for hours, in the moral and physical ignominy that all bureaucracies
impose. Two women at the ministry recorded their sidewalk watch.
Teachers wanted to impart knowledge of the Spanish language and
of Argentina's censored history, bricklayers wanted a job, pensioners
wanted to fight. Then they went home, or to work if they had any, with
the pride of their patriotism.
The committee of the British Community Council in the Argen-
tine Republic had wondered about its role, apart from keeping a low
profile, which was the best line after total silence. One century and a
half of commercial pursuit was threatened by an upheaval more dis-
tasteful than the announcement of war in September 1939. That had
been a good show, this was a tragedy. People spoke as if Buenos Aires
was Singapore in the weeks before the colony's fall to the Japanese
in February 1942. There had been nothing to shake them so severely
since the nationalization of the British utilities in Argentina in 1948.
The British Community Council had sent a telegram to Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher (7 April 1982):
On behalf of the British Community Council, which centralizes the cultural, phi-
lanthropy, and charitable activities of native-born Britons and people of British de-
scent living in Argentina, who number in excess of 100,000 people, we respectfully
wish to point out that we do not feel that our situation has been fully considered or
taken into account in the difficult problem which has arisen between Argentina and
Great Britain.
Argentina has always shown every consideration towards the British community
allowing it to run its own schools, churches, hospitals, old people's homes, etc. In ad-
dition, members of the British community have integrated themselves into all aspects
of Argentine life, playing a prominent role especially in business and agricultural
circles.
In spite of the difficult moments we are living through the president of the repub-
lic has continued to emphasize that the community and its institutions will be safe-
guarded, and no animosity has been shown towards the community by the population
as a whole.
We therefore strongly urge you to seek a peaceful solution to this situation and
give due consideration to the strong British presence in Argentina and the size of the
community living here.
Then the Association of British and British-Descended Farmers in

Argentina, a society nobody knew existed, said it "represents the inter-
ests of farmers of British nationality or British blood and culture." Its
committee, with such names as Pendril Cunningham, Alistair Hender-
son, Stephen Kennard, Murray Stallard, Timothy Lough, Robin Wil-
lans (they sounded like the members of an English school's old boys

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club), sent a telegram to Mrs. Thatcher (12 April 1982):
We, Britons' sons of Britons farming in Argentina, wish to inform Her Majesty's
Government that for years, and in some cases generations, we have lived and worked
happily under Argentine governments of differing political persuasions. We have led
our traditional, British way of life without any hindrance and our experience has led
us to believe that the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands have nothing to lose and
much to gain by coming under Argentine sovereignty.
We believe that an attempt to regain the Islands by force would cause an irrevo-
cable end to the Islanders' way of life and offer no prospect for a secure and peaceful
future. It would create damage out of all proportion to the value of the islands not only
in Argentina but in the whole of Latin America.
From the British community in Argentina 2,280 men volunteered and were ac-
cepted for service by Britain in the Second World War and 204 died on Britain's
behalf. We, their survivors and descendants, urge Her Majesty's government to ab-
stain from the use of force and negotiate the necessary conditions for the Islanders to
continue working in peace and tranquillity as indeed 17,000 British subjects already
do in Argentina.
If they had been less friendly to the governments of all the uni-
formed despots they would not now have a tyrant to deal with. But it
seemed churlish to point this out now; nobody wanted to talk about the
desaparecidos, only about the islands, and not much about the island-
ers, whose way of life had already been ruined by invasion.
Then an Anglican bishop, Richard Cutts, the Archbishop of Can-
terbury's Episcopal Representative to the Islands, head of the Emer-
gency Committee of the British community in Argentina offered "to
lead a delegation to the Malvinas to reassure the Islanders about the
sympathy existing towards them in Argentina, and to allay fears they
may have about the outcome of the present situation." The bishop's
committee sent Mrs. Thatcher the telegram of 12 April 1982.
Never before had the members of the British Community in Bue-
nos Aires been collectively in such difficult circumstances. Well, not
in living memory, of course. A cutting from the London Times of Fri-
day, 24 October 1845, showed that there had been a precedent. It was
a letter to the Earl of Aberdeen, foreign secretary, from "Merchants,
farmers, artisans, and other British subjects residing in the city and
province of Buenos Ayres, in the Argentine Confederation" who said:
... a notice having been posted in this city, and verbal messages sent to the country
districts offering to those who did not consider themselves and families secure under
the protection of this Government the means of embarkation, as in consequence of the
refusal of the Argentine Government to withdraw its forces from the Banda Oriental

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[Uruguay], and interruption of diplomatie intercourse was expected to take place be-
tween this country and Great Britain, on or before the 13th of July next, after which
period the civil protection hitherto dispensed to us by Her Majesty's Government
would cease as the British Minister Plenipotentiary would embark on that day.
We have deemed it just and expedient to bring before your Lordship our peculiar
case, in the hope that the prayer of our petition will be attended to, and, as British
subjects, our residence in this country may be peaceful, and that each may be enabled
to attend with security to his lawful affairs. . . .
Some of us have resided for a great number of years, and to all the most ample,
generous, and efficient protection has been afforded. . . . The privileges we have in
commerce, pastoral or agricultural pursuits, inland navigation, or any other branch of
industry we may please to adopt, place us on a better footing than the natives them-
selves, since we enjoy all their best rights without any of their serious burdens. . . .
Your petitioners cannot but deplore the armed intervention of Her Majesty's Gov-
ernment in the disputes or political differences of these states, particularly so, as such
step has apparently been taken without due consideration of the large interest belong-
ing to the British subjects in this country, and the utter impossibility of their being
realized for an indefinite period, from the depreciation of the currency and consequent
suspension of trade, both which arise from the adoption of the measures we have
already cited.
The language of the two appeals was so similar that they could
have been parodies. The Times of 1845 called the appellants rene-
gades and said they were led by Thomas George Love, publisher of
the newspaper The British Packet and Argentine News, founded in
1826. The occasion then was the start of the Anglo-French hostilities
in the River Plate to force Buenos Aires to end the war with Paraguay
and allow international shipping to sail up the Parana River. That dis-
pute lasted five years.
In London in 1982, The Times said in an editorial, "We are all
Falklanders now." In Buenos Aires the British community had the
Buenos Aires Herald, which had adopted a pro-government stance in
its criticism of the British prime minister and her Task Force. The
paper had suffered a ban on its distribution for being printed in the
English language. The ban was the patriotic decision by the newspa-
per distributors. Hence, the Herald had chosen the safest course as the
most pragmatic.
* * *
Summer lingered into April in an oppressive atmospher

the dampness from the River Plate. It killed asthmatics, a
cockroaches. But as of 13 April 1982 there was no weath

140.12f:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
Office no longer supplied the local press with the forecast for "security
reasons."
By the third week in April the foreign minister, not without smug-
ness in the knowledge that Argentina had become a center of world at-
tention, reported that more than five hundred journalists from all over
the world had sought accreditation.
Two-thirds of them had chosen the Sheraton Hotel. At US $100
a night it would be the only winner of the war. Oh, yes, and the pros-
titutes who worked the Sheraton, at a hundred dollars a night. For
three months the women had regular clean sheets, showers, and a good
breakfast. It was good enough to forsake their local customers until
after the emergency.
The remote realism of the South Atlantic seized the Sheraton Ho-
tel. Hyper-realism in place of history was ordinary every-day in Bue-
nos Aires. For Europe it was impossible to understand. Everybody
was trying to be so sensible that the extremes of logic escaped them.
In the hotel, the joint chiefs of staff opened a press room to give re-
porters a twenty-four-hour service of tea, coffee, maté, and iced water.
There were teletypes with the local news agencies, free photocopying
facilities, pretty young women who volunteered their free time for the
Fatherland to arrange interviews that never took place. Maps of the
Mai vinas- free to correspondents- and of Antarctica decorated the
wall. In front of one map stood a flagpole with the Argentine flag and
a desk at which a naval officer sat each evening to read the official
communiqués and to brief the foreign press in a kindly and patient
voice. The briefings at the Sheraton Hotel were introduced to give the
television networks the impression that they were covering a war that
was being fought thousands of miles away. Near the hotel British and
North American journalists were picked up (and released) by free-
lance security agents with uncertain political motives. Norwegian and
French newsmen were deported. The foreign press fed on its own ru-
mors and stories. There was one rumor, made from a passing remark at
the foreign ministry, that all would be expelled as soon as the shooting
started. The idea of expulsion became a comfort more than a threat.
Deportation might be the only way some editors could agree to trans-
fers. But the order never came; the Argentine government wanted the
journalists to stay. British correspondents spoke of "us" and "them,"
as in, "Are we winning?" identifying with Queen and Country in a
style that had become obsolete with the Vietnam War. Journalists from
the United States left to chase human rights stories and came back

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covered in an aura of goodness. The islands war was incomprehen-

sible to them. Argentine reporters assured the circus of foreigners that
some of their best friends were British; and the terrible thing about the
cliché was that it was true. Irish journalists looked at home with the
nuances of Argentina. Everybody agreed with the North Americans
that if things got moving it really could be a "lovely little war," which
is what the U.S. had said about the Spanish- American War in 1898.
Two radio stations, Mitre and Del Plata, began to broadcast reports
by a "London radio service." The programs sounded independent,
but there was an unmistakable emphasis on events in Britain. The an-
nouncer had an Argentine accent, and the unidentified producer was a
German-born British citizen. The service was a gift from the British
Central Office of Information. The COI was not identified. British in-
filtration was efficient.
Totting up exorbitant expenses became a matter for competition
among journalists. One Californian woman planned to buy a cottage
in Ireland with the proceeds of her war; somebody else was going on
a special holiday; another was determined to put in a new kitchen at
home in north London, when the conflict was over. The record for ex-
penses (upward of £20,000 in three months) was held by a man called
Ross Benson, from the London Daily Express. North American jour-
nalists complained that United States employers demanded expense
accounts submitted in local currency. This had to be abandoned as
inflation grew. The millions of pesos in which business was transacted
overflowed the screen on pocket calculators.
Outside the Sheraton Hotel, on one of the hotel's tennis courts, the
"Fleet Street" task force, with allied and enemy contingents, met twice
a week to play football. Time was kept by the English clock tower,
in what had been Plaza Britânica, renamed Air Force Square. Along
with many British-associated landmarks, the Plaza had lost its name.
The Chelsea Pub became the Ché Bar; the London Grill, famous for its
oyster bar, was demoted to plain Grill. Beneath the clock tower, built
in 1911, still stood a statue of George Canning, English statesman,
foreign secretary, prime minister.
Away from the "British" square, beyond the elegant boutiques on
Avenida Santa Fé and the airline offices and travel agents that offered
P&0 cruises in the Mediterranean- SS Canberra, SS Uganda, QE2,
temporarily turned into troop carriers in the South Atlantic- was the
British Embassy.
In the large kitchen of the empty residence, Amit Roy, an Indian

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reporter for the London Daily Mail, assisted by two interpreters, two
cooks, and two waiters, made curry for twenty-four. Since diplomatic
relations had been broken it was now the British Interests Section of
the Swiss Embassy. Jimmy Burns, of the London Financial Times,
played tennis on the embassy court, and his wife slept on the lawn and
dreamed that she was in an English garden. How vacant the embassy
felt, so removed now from the big garden parties. David Joy, Brit-
ish diplomat turned Swiss employee, and his wife could not fill the
building as friends of yore fled British company. Consular officials
who remained to clean up felt that breaking diplomatic relations gave
the satisfaction of a job well done. It was the pleasure of shredding
files. Nobody would ever ask for them. Just as the last of the embassy
telephones was to be unplugged, two calls came through. One was
from a Buenos Aires second-hand car dealer offering to buy all cars
with diplomatic registration. The other call was from London, to ad-
vise personnel that they would be allowed two three-minute telephone
calls each week from their wives, courtesy of the British government.
Three U.S. dollars would be deducted each month from their wages
as a contribution to the subsistence pay for their wives and children
resident in the United Kingdom.
Peace failed. Nobody wanted it, even though every official said they
did. Now perhaps there would be a war and no need to write color sto-
ries. Real war stories could be written on the reality happening some-
where else.
General Alexander Haig was annoyed at the failure of his Wash-
ington-London-Buenos Aires shuttle diplomacy. The United States
secretary of state sweated through a tennis match at the ambassador's
residence- watched but not applauded by the occupants of surround-
ing tall buildings in which window space was rented to newspaper
photographers. Haig warned Argentina that it faced war for its temer-
ity to invade the colony. He told his interlocutors, the armed forces
commanders and the foreign ministry's Edwardian-looking gentle-
men that Argentina did not know war. If they thought that the "dirty
war"- the mauling of guerrillas and their friends between 1974 and
1978- was more than a witch hunt they were mistaken. Haig called
the "dirty war" a "turkey shoot."
General Alexander Haig left Buenos Aires on 19 April, with noth-

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ing. In Washington he resigned on 25 June.
On 23 April the BBC World Service reiterated a broadcast that all Brit-
ons who had nothing to do in Argentina should get out. A few journal-
ists decided to take a holiday in Montevideo, across the River Plate.
Now that the British Task Force is approaching the area of the Falkland Islands,
a period of increasing tension and risk could lie ahead which should be taken into ac-
count by all British citizens remaining in Argentina. Those who have not so far acted
upon earlier warnings are asked to consider again whether they should take an early
opportunity of leaving the country by normal commercial means.
If necessary, advice can be obtained from the British Interests Section of the Swiss
Embassy, which is located in the former British embassy building in Buenos Aires.
It was impossible to think that such a conflict could take place.

War between Britain and Germany seemed reasonable, war between
Argentina and Chile seemed possible, but war between Britain and
Argentina seemed unreal.
A few packed their bags. They were the privileged class of short
term residents, contract staff. They did not have much to pack. Their
wives and children moved across the River Plate to Uruguay- where
property rentals had begun to rise- for a company -paid holiday. The
others, forty thousand or more Anglo-Argentines, only a fraction of
them registered as Britons at the Consulate, showed no intention of
leaving. They had too much to pack. Their memories were too many,
their way of life too special to fit any packing case. For the older and
more established residents, Argentina was home. England held noth-
ing but questions for them now. They preferred the Britain of parents'
memories, the unreal home of the past. The government ordered audi-
tors into all British companies in Argentina. But not even that could
force an exodus of long-established Britons. Auditors could be talked
to, cheated, bribed.
British journalists were ordered to leave Patagonia on 27 April.
The prohibition suddenly made a journey south all the more com-
pelling, not to break a rule, but to revisit places that were part of per-
sonal history.
The train out of Plaza Constitution fled the southern suburban
sprawl of shanties, factories, and the small businesses of the strug-
gling lower middle class. As it sped over level-crossings the rows of
rush-hour buses stared up at the railway, their interiors crowded with

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workers going home. The small factories were left behind, tall apart-
ment blocks and tiny flat-roofed houses began to fill with lights. Men
and women placed chairs out on the pavements, to sit and watch the
evening go by. Boys played football in the empty streets.
My great-grandfather worked on the construction of this railway
line when it was called the Great Southern Railway; it was renamed
the General Roca Line after nationalization by General Juan Peron in
1948. The train increased my sense of belonging. It was a feeling of
going home- but the sentiment was fraud because home had always
been somewhere else. The Pullman coach was half empty. A dozen
navy officers listened to popular music on a portable radio- broad-
casts of songs in English were forbidden on all stations as a sign of
repudiation against Britain and the United States. The officers awaited
the sudden switch to a patriotic march that would precede another
communiqué of the joint chiefs of staff. The naval officers were young,
on their way to Puerto Belgrano, Argentina's biggest naval base, south
of Bahia Blanca, the last stop for the train.
Their conversation was about the conflict. Nobody talked about
anything else. They discussed what would happen if there were shoot-
ing. They also wondered, with a certain excitement in their voices,
where they would be posted. One man, in a group of four, said that
he hated Ingleses for holding the Malvinas for so long. He wanted
nothing better than the opportunity to fight them. It was the hatred of
braggadocio- or of shallow indoctrination. He sounded as if he were
on a film set.
"I think I would kill an Ingles if I saw one standing here. Wouldn't
you like to kill an InglésT he asked of his mates.
The steward came through shouting the first sitting in the dining
car and went on through to the sleeper carriages. Late gray evening
blackened into night over the empty land outside. The lights that made
pin-pricks in the dark became fewer as the train sped south into Bue-
nos Aires province.
The sky paled as we reached Bahfa Blanca.
* * *
Troops were everywhere. Bahfa Blanca was the center

for Patagonia. A woman at a bus stop said she had see
back of a truck travelling south who were crying. Sh
had sent boys from the north unprepared for southern

140.122.127.100 on Sun, 10 Apr 2022 08:56:21 UTC
The plane from Bahîa Blanca to Trelew, in Chubut, took passen-

gers over the trail of W. H. Hudson in Idle Days inPatagonia (1893).
They would not be interested if told.
The number of troops in "Little Wales" increased with each mile
moved south into Patagonia. Jornada, the Trelew newspaper, said the
Welsh were with Argentina. But there was apprehension when the
Second Battalion Parachute Regiment of Welsh Guards sailed from
England. There was a certain discomfort in Chubut. However much
the prospect of war was opposed by the Patagonian Welsh, however
strongly they supported Argentina, a little piece of them was on the
British Task Force, and that was not pleasant. The Malvinas landing
had tested feelings. At the chapel, and at the barn-like building of the
Saint David Society, it was decided that the Malvinas were Argenti-
na's. It was important that the Welsh said so; they had helped to give
much of Patagonia an education.
Shelves in the homes of the Chubut Welsh had become ever more
populated by the papers and books of academe: the microscopic so-
cial, political, and historical studies of the Welsh of Patagonia. Here
was the social historian's dream: the possibility of working on a com-
plete package, the colony from its origins in 1865, to the present day,
its struggles, contacts with the Tehuelche and Pehuelche Indians, as-
similation, language, religion and farming. Put all that together and a
student had a Ph.D. Some of the language of the Welsh had entered
that of the native Indians. Beggars asked for bara (bread), as in "un
poco bara, por favor, " using both the unfamiliar Spanish and Welsh, or
even "dame dau tarw"- "give me (Spanish) two potatoes (Welsh)."
The bus for the town of Gaiman, in the valley, drove straight into
Cardiganshire, passed houses with stone walls and sash windows in
front of the old Chubut Intermediate School, which had educated chil-
dren in Welsh. Tea at Dolavon brought the sight of working water
wheels in the irrigation ditches of one century before. With a large pot
of tea in the front room of an old house, overlooking a garden gone
wild, there was a variety of home-made cakes. From a back room came
Dylan Thomas's voice, booming out A Child's Christmas in Wales, on
a record posted from Cardiff months before but just received.
Buenos Aires imposed more military restrictions on news reporting

and threatened to arrest editors and staff who might try to test such
orders.

140.122.127.100 on Sun, 10 Apr 2022 08:56:21 UTC
All information and news from abroad, whatever its source or form, and all infor-
mation related to aspects which pertain to the development of military operations and
national security will be subject to control by the Joint Chiefs of Staff before publica-
tion by the news media, whether oral, written or televised. (29 April 1982)
In London, the page-bottom strap of The Sun read "Death of the

Argy sub," and a reader wrote to complain that it should be spelled
Argie because his name was Argy and he did not like to be mentioned
every day. The photograph showed Argentina's Guppy Class subma-
rine Santa Fe, sunk during the British recovery of South Georgia. The
papers in Buenos Aires said that the battle for South Georgia was still
being fought. But the captain who had commanded the defense of
Grytviken, South Georgia, Captain Alfredo Astiz, and who had earned
his promotion by the torture and death of the "disappeared," had sur-
rendered long before. It was a tactical surrender, said the officer at the
joint chiefs of staff, in the Sheraton Hotel. Argentina could not defend
South Georgia and had used Grytviken to distract British attention.
In London, La Tâcher sang "Rejoice rejoice" after she was in-
formed of the recapture of South Georgia. "Be pleased to inform Her
Majesty that the Red Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack on South
Georgia. God Save the Queen," said British Defense Secretary John
Nott, then suffering from depression and having come out of tempo-
rary hiding.
The captain-tormentor on South Georgia was unable to command
anything but an instrument of torture. "Commander of the Electric
Prod," people called Astiz, a man with French-Basque and Scandi-
navian ancestry. The "Blond Angel of Death" he was called by his
victims. To the end, he was a nasty piece of work. He had mined the
football field at Grytviken after he had surrendered, so as to cause
maximum damage to captain Nicholas Barker's landing party from
HMS Endurance. The one hundred and fifty Argentine troops under
Astiz's orders and the thirty-nine scrap metal workers whose presence
on South Georgia had precipitated the conflict returned to Buenos Ai-
res in mid-May. They had been well treated by their British captors but
English food was abominable. They were ordered to say no more.
The cruiser, Brooklyn Class, ARA Belgrano, was sunk by a Brit-
ish torpedo: three hundred and sixty dead. The navy first reported it
hit and listing, to avoid public reaction. By then it was sunk. The com-
mander, Captain Bonzo, an unfortunate name to have in any propa-
ganda war, held a press conference at the Sheraton Hotel and called

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South Atlantic, 1982: A Forgotten War (Part 7)617
the sinking a crime against humanity. But he talked for too long, so the
television networks of the world said it was difficult to extract good
quotes and dropped his dramatic story.
"Gotcha!" shone the headline in The Sun in London on 3 May. Oh,
when would it be eclipsed? The only real crime of the "popular" press
is that it is predictable in its desperation to be smart, which becomes
tedious. The forced cleverness of the English "pops" rang out as punch
lines of provincial comedians. The people who thought that the Bel-
grano disaster was terrible cried with big tears. Then HMS Sheffield
was sunk by a French Exocet missile and people laughed and said how
good the Argentine pilots were; they must have trained in the traffic on
the streets of Buenos Aires.
Without information the defense correspondents analyzed events
in detailed jargon and unabashedly filled column inches and air space
with perishable nonsense. And in the following article or broadcast,
they corrected all they had said before.
The euphoria vanished into anxiety and the pessimism of an esca-
lating conflict. With the General Belgrano- named after a nineteenth-
century soldier of the independence wars- and HMS Sheffield sunk,
the hope for a peace deal, proposed by Peru, went to the bottom of the
Atlantic. Everybody described Peru's as the last civilized answer to
the dispute.
(to be continued in the Winter 2008 issue)

140.122.127.100 on Sun, 10 Apr 2022 08:56:21 UTC

A Forgotten War (Part I)

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A Forgotten War (Part I)

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South Atlantic, 1982: A Forgotten War (Part I)

Author(s): Andrew Graham-Yooll

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40284454

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colonies. The British invader had been vanquished by a miscellany of

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On Saturday, 10 April, a crowd filled the Plaza de Mayo, in front of

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Bumper stickers ridiculed La Tâcher. A Band-Aid covere

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Restaurants in Buenos Aires emptied early. The partial blackout, im-

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Brazil, probably based on the book Os Sertoes (1905) by the Brazilian

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exiles, expatriates and displaced persons who tried to understand the

The Café de la Paix, a fashionable bar near the Recol

At the office of the joint chiefs of staff, in the Defense Ministry,

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Then the Association of British and British-Descended Farmers in

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club), sent a telegram to Mrs. Thatcher (12 April 1982):

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Summer lingered into April in an oppressive atmospher

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covered in an aura of goodness. The islands war was incomprehen-

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ing. In Washington he resigned on 25 June.

It was impossible to think that such a conflict could take place.

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Troops were everywhere. Bahfa Blanca was the center

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The plane from Bahîa Blanca to Trelew, in Chubut, took passen-

Buenos Aires imposed more military restrictions on news reporting

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In London, the page-bottom strap of The Sun read "Death of the

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(to be continued in the Winter 2008 issue)

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