In the days before the 42nd anniversary of the beginning of the Falklands war, hundreds of Argentine tourists, many from the provinces, visited the Falklands museum, opened in 2014, during the government of Cristina Fernández, located inside the sinister complex of buildings of the Escola Mecànica de l’Armada (Esma), torture center during the military dictatorship (1976-83).
Through texts, photographs and videos, the museum explains the history of the various British invasions of the islands in the 19th century, the attempts to regain Argentine sovereignty, and the fateful war that began on April 2, 1982 and ended nine weeks later with a balance of 649 dead Argentine soldiers.
Inside the Esma, a complex of buildings that, like Auschwitz, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for the horror it symbolizes, the museum invites visitors to relate the atrocities of the dictatorship and the war against the British .
The blurred black and white images of the military victims hanging on the walls of the Esma merge in the visitor’s gaze with those of the young Argentine soldiers defeated and humiliated by the British and their own officers exhibited in the Falklands museum. “It is no coincidence that the museum is in the Esma complex. There is a common thread; we were victims of the dictatorship, too”, says Víctor Hugo, ex-combatant of that war. “Most of us who went to fight there were doing mandatory military service; many were tortured by the military”.
A group of ex-combatants from Tierra del Fuego have filed a lawsuit against 200 military personnel before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for alleged crimes against combatants.
The relationship between the Falklands and the crimes of the dictatorship is so important that everything indicates that the first revision of the history of the dictatorship planned by the denialist Government of Javier Milei and his ultra-conservative vice-president Victoria Villarruel has been to put a military man – the colonel Esteban Vilgré Lamadrid – in charge of the Falklands museum.
Under the influence of Villarruel – the daughter of a military man and apologist for the crimes of the dictatorship -, Milei has incorporated into her government program a plan to rewrite the history of the crimes of the dictatorship and the State terrorism that caused the disappearance of some 30,000 people, a figure agreed upon by most historians but disputed by the new government.
At the same time that the military is being whitewashed, it is intended to turn the memory of the war into a story of heroism without a political background, says Hugo. “Until now, the museum has not been a war story, but a way of expressing through museology the historical data that supported the historical claim of Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands”, he explains. At the same time, the ordeal of the private soldiers at the hands of the officers is explained. “Now they will create a narrative in the style of Hollywood and Salvem el sol olda Ryan”, ironically Hugo.
The decision is important. The museum received almost 10,000 visits last year. “It is an educational museum; many school students go there and it’s a double-edged sword”, says Hugo.
In an interview granted to the newspaper Página Doce in February, Vilgré Lamadrid replied that his plan is to rectify a pro-British bias in the narrative of the museum which – according to him – reinforces a victimistic narrative towards Argentine soldiers instrumentalized by the intelligence services British The British “created a series of plans to show that the war was a product (…) of the military Leopoldo Galtieri”, says Vilgré. Under this lens, Margaret Thatcher “had to intervene to save the Kelpers” [as the inhabitants of the Falklands are known].
The plan of the museum’s new management is to remove this pro-British bias and criticism of the dictatorship from the history of the war.
With the new government, historical revisionism is advancing. In the events commemorating the war, on Tuesday, April 2, both Milei and Villarruel paid tribute to those who fell in the war with appeals in favor of the military of the dictatorship. Milei called for a “reconciliation” with the armed forces. “There is no international respect if political leaders do the impossible to tarnish the name of our armed forces”, he went so far as to say.
Interestingly, while the government aims to combat the supposed pro-British narrative in the museum, Milei is willing to accede to British demands for the future. An ardent admirer of Margaret Thatcher, the new president met British foreign minister David Cameron in Davos. “There is a lot of British interest in hydrocarbons, fishing, resources in the South Atlantic and Antarctica,” said Daniel Guzmán of Agenda Malvinas, a geopolitical analysis group in Tierra del Fuego. “Instead of having an aggressive policy at the UN, this government has been complacent with Cameron’s visit to the islands in February and the meeting in Davos used to talk about facilitating British investments.”
