The Land that Lost Its Heroes: How Argentina Lost the Falklands War
Extract
"Of the several rallies that took place during the war one
in particular seemed to bring ritual to a climax. On 10 April, 1982,
the US administration's Alexander Haig was preparing to make
his way to the Argentine presidential palace to present the first
serious peace proposals along the one mile route leading to it from
the Foreign Ministry's Palacio de San Martin. As he came out
on to the street and began motoring across the city he found that
most of the route and the whole of the Plaza de Mayo was
garlanded with loudspeakers. The sound being relayed was a mixture
of martial
music, slogans about unity and war, and an insistent rallying call
to all Sargentines of whatever political, social or religious background
to demonstrate their patriotic spirit to Mr (General) Haig. The square
was packed – most news reports agreed that there were nearly
300,000 people, the biggest demonstration since the days of Peron.
British and American flags were burnt and their ashes merged in a
sea of blue and white- the Argentine national colours. Inside the
crowd some groups tentatively voiced their disrespect for the military
regime, but for most of the time they were drowned by a collective
chant of 'Argentina, Argentina, Argentina'. The suppression
of individuality was matched in its intensity by the eradication
of cultural identity. There could have been no better symbol of this
than one poster held up by a Japanese immigrant, 'We have Japanese
faces, but we have Argentine hearts.'"
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