Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Moreover, the president's independent foreign policy also attracted
devotees among Argentines who say “We love Americans. We just
don't like their government.” President George W. Bush evoked
CASUALTIES OF THE
MALVINAS WAR
I
t came as a sobering statistic to the public. In February 2006, the
newspaper
La Nación
reported that “the quantity of suicides of the
Argentinean ex-combatants of the Malvinas War is already higher than
the number of those who fell during combat on the islands.” One
conservative estimate placed the number of suicides at 350, while 323
combatants died in the land battle defending the islands from the British
expeditionary force. However,
La Nación
did not add those killed in
the sinking of the Argentine battleship
General Belgrano
, who numbered
to 326. Nonetheless, the fact that 50 Malvinas veterans were taking
their own lives every year came as a shock. “All of us who were in the
Malvinas ask ourselves in some moment if it would not have been bet-
ter that we had stayed there,” confessed César González Trejo, founder
of the Federation of Veterans of the War. “Also, the question arises: Why
him? Why my companion and not me” [“No cesan los suicidios de ex
combatientes de Malvinas”].
The estimated 14,000 former conscripts have suffered in silence a
number of problems since the war ended. Half of them cannot find
employment, and government resources for psychological treatment
for them are scarce. President Kirchner doubled the size of their indi-
vidual pensions in 2004, which was followed by a promise from the
minister responsible for veterans affairs that in a few years all veterans
would have decent housing.
None of these government actions prevented a group of 80 veterans
from invading a government building and threatening officials unless
their demands for more health care were granted. Other veterans took
great offense when in April 2007, at the public commemoration of the
25th anniversary of the beginning of the Malvinas conflict, the president
and first lady did not attend.
Source:
“No cesan los suicidios de ex combatientes de Malvinas.”
La Nación
, February 28, 2006.
