Falklands 4.0

This Tuesday the Malvinas war ended.

Forty years ago, on June 14, 1982, British commander Jeremy Moore accepted the surrender of Argentine General Mario Benjamín Menéndez.

I was 15 and I was worried that my father would have to enlist and be killed.

I was thinking about the essay I would have to write for school called

.

That made me panic and embarrassed.

Expose feelings like this, cry at a wake.

On the first day of the war, the history teacher told us that we were going to talk about why it was absurd.

It had been declared by Lieutenant General Galtieri, the dictator of the time, and my teacher's concern was not the one that prevailed in the street, where a patriotic spirit had awakened that caused a crowd to cheer the dictator on the day of the landing on the islands.

The images of those years plunge me into a riotous sadness.

I remember an indiscernible mix: the plastic smell of the little Argentine flags that they sold everywhere, the squeaky texture of the Ciudadela brand socks that I used to go to school (we were forbidden to

a

—”Argentinos to win”— that were shown on television, the omnibus program to raise funds —

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— in which famous and unknown donated mink coats, a limousine, money, and my mother's tears when the very old actress Pierina Dealessi took off her own mother's earrings in front of the cameras saying: “It's the last thing I have of her And I'm going to donate it."

The aroma of Toblerone chocolate, the songs of Charly García, the headlines of the newspapers - "We are winning" -, are mixed with the faces of the boys I liked, the World Cup in Spain, the reading of Miguel Hernández.

Nothing terrible happened to me, nor do I have relatives or friends who fell in the conflict.

But every time I think of that time I feel that life, so dead, is the most authentic thing I have, what happens to me the most.

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