The Malvinas War ended this Tuesday. Forty years ago, on June 14, 1982, British commander Jeremy Moore accepted the surrender of Argentine general Mario Benjamín Menéndez. I was 15 and worried that my father would step in and be killed. I thought about the essay I had to write for school called Goodbye, Dad. This made me panic and embarrassed. Show such feelings, cry at a wake. On the first day of the war, the history teacher told us that we would talk about why this was absurd. It had been proclaimed by Lieutenant-General Galtieri, the dictator at the time, and my teacher’s concern was not that which prevailed in the streets, where a patriotic spirit had awakened, causing a crowd to cheer the dictator on the day he landed in the islands . The images of those years plunge me into a raging sadness. I remember an imperceptible mix: the plastic smell of the Argentinian flags that were sold everywhere, the squeaky texture of the Ciudadela brand socks I used to wear to school (we were forbidden to wear jeans), a jingle – Argentinos to win – which were shown on TV, the omnibus fundraising program – 24 hours for Malvinas, 50 rating points – in which celebrities and strangers donated mink coats, a limousine, money and my mother cried when the very old Actress Pierina Dealessi He took off his own mother’s earrings in front of the cameras and said: “This is the last thing I have of her and I will donate it.” The smell of Toblerone chocolate, the songs of Charly García, the newspaper headlines – “We win” – mingle with the faces of the guys I liked, the World Cup in Spain, the reading by Miguel Hernández. Nothing bad happened to me, nor do I have relatives or friends who fell into the conflict. But every time I think about that time, I feel like life, so dead, is the most authentic thing I have, what happens to me the most.
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