Mon, Jan 22, 2007 page7

• Argentina: after Falklands defeat, outcasts at home

  AFTERMATH REMAINS A quarter of a century after the conflict, teens forced to fight remain haunted by the memory and are struggling to live

  • THE OBSERVER
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  As the train pulls into the central station of Buenos Aires, Jose is still walking down the aisle hawking a clutch of goods. An olive-green jacket, a patch with an Argentinian flag on his right arm and a silhouette of the Malvinas Islands signal he is one of the many veterans of the Falklands war supplementing their meager pensions. What he sells is patriotism -- small calendars and stickers bearing the slogan: "The Malvinas were, are and always will be Argentinian."

  But he tells a story of betrayal, of himself and 15,000 other veterans of the 1982 war with Britain. In a voice made automatic by repetition, he says: "A little help please, I am a veteran of the Malvinas, I have been repeatedly denied jobs simply for being a veteran, my pension is not always enough, I have been forgotten by my country for a long time." He has been saying it for 25 years. It is a story repeated by most veterans.

  Things have improved, but very late. The most important change came in 1991, when some veterans finally began to receive pensions. The next milestone was the election in 2003 of Nestor Kirchner. He became President on the back of promises on human rights, and increased the pension so the veterans felt able to pull down the green tents they had pitched in front of the government building on the Plaza de Mayo, protesting at lack of compensation and healthcare on the same spot where thousands congregated in April 1982 to cheer the capture of the Malvinas.

  But the difficulty of winning a pension is, veterans argue, evidence of neglect which goes back to the war itself. General Leopoldo Galtieri, "in his quest to stay in power, had no qualms in sending brave 18-year-old conscripts, with no military training whatever, into a war," says Norberto Santos, one of those 18-year-olds and now a member of the Center for Ex-Combatants Islas Malvinas.

  The troops had to endure shortages of ammunition, food, and clothing and suffered from cold, abuse and humiliation by their superiors.

  For Santos the war ended when a bomb blew off his left arm. A comrade, thinking he was dying, shot him to end his suffering. Instead, he prolonged it. The neglect continued despite the UK's victory, the fall of Galtieri and the re-establishment of democracy.

  One example was the pensions, but the state paid little attention to veterans' health or post-traumatic stress.

  Jose says he was unable to find ordinary work because he was a veteran and Santos believes his experiences bear out such claims. He tried to find a job at the municipality of La Plata, his home town, but when he said he was a war veteran he was rejected. A few months later he told another interviewer he had lost his arm in a motorbike accident. He got the job.

  Veterans believe that discrimination explains other unusual experiences. Santos married and had three children, but after a few years the couple divorced. His ex-wife told the judge that he was a Falklands veteran and Santos was denied the right even to see his children.

  "I still wander around the courthouse asking what my punishment is for having been on the Malvinas, asking how many years will pass before someone can tell me if I committed a crime," he says.

  Stories like Santos's and the suicide of a friend, as well as his own experience of war, drove Edgardo Esteban to write an autobiography which was turned into an award-winning film, Blessed by Fire.
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