Symbolic struggles on the Malvinas/Falklands battlefields: British and Argentine commemoration of the 1982 war

LEONI, JUAN B.

Edimburgo

Conferencia; 11th Biennial Fields of Conflict Conference; 2022

University of Edimburgh

Conflict archaeology has claimed memorialization as one of its main fields of concern, focusing -among other issues- on the symbolic and ideological disputes expressed in war memorials. In this paper I present a comparison of the British and Argentine commemorative landscapes constructed on the battlefields of the 1982 conflict, specifically on the mountains around Port Stanley, where the decisive combats of the war were fought. The British memorial landscape –which has been aptly addressed by archaeologist Tony Pollard- officially owns the local geography. It is inscribed in a national memorial tradition that has a formalized commemorative liturgy, and honors both military units and individual military men fallen in the fight. On the other hand, there is a non-official Argentine commemoration, largely carried out by veterans who return to the islands in individual or group pilgrimages. This memorialization -inorganic, discontinuous, and of a low scale- is clandestine (as it is not officially authorized), ephemeral (as any material object is rapidly removed afterwards) and hidden (in order to avoid the former). Unlike British commemoration, it can be conflictive as well, as it expresses ideologically loaded, alternative Argentine views of the war.