On 2 April 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. The United Kingdom sent an expeditionary force to retake the islands.
After naval and air battles, the British forces landed on The Falklands May
21st, and had surrounded Stanley by June 11th. The Argentine forces surrendered
on Monday, June 14, 1982. To celebrate
the 31st anniversary of the occasion, I give you Episode IV of this
series.
When I first lived in Montevideo in
1982, military dictatorships ruled both Uruguay and Argentina. They were very different places than they are
now. The small colony of Fulbrighters
in Uruguay did a lot of things together, so we got to know one another pretty
well despite our many differences. Several
quirky things happened when a couple of us spent June 15-16th
visiting Buenos Aires, almost directly across the Rio de la Plata from
Montevideo.
My traveling companion from Montevideo to Buenos Aires was a
fellow Fulbrighter, a Professor from a large University in Florida named Terry.
She had several attributes that recommended her to travel with---fluency
in Spanish (she had dual citizenship, USA and Panama), knew Buenos Aires (B.A.)
a little bit from a previous visit there, and the Panamanian passport to smooth
our way past immigration at the border since Argentina didn't like the USA at
all that week. Today was one day after
the end of the Falkland Islands War. We
had shared satellite intelligence with our NATO ally England during the naval
war, and Argentina’s government blamed us for their military defeat.
We took the high-speed ferry from Colonia across the Rio de
la Plata, which also helped smooth our entry into B.A., and headed directly to
our hotel by taxi to check in and get rid of the suitcases that screamed
"tourist" to all who saw us. The taxi driver handed us a piece
of paper that listed the conversion factor for the fares on the taxi’s meter to
the actual cost of the trip in pesos for today. These conversion sheets were changed daily
as Argentina’s currency inflated to less and less value. The recorded meter fare for the trip was
multiplied by about 1,000 that day to get the actual cost for the
passengers. The peso was dropping in
value daily, by huge amounts. If you
were paid in pesos their value was less and less every day, and they had little
to no value for exchange into more stable currencies. Nor were Argentine citizens allowed to
exchange currency legally. If you were
paid in dollars (and we Fulbrighters were), you were rich in local terms. With a nominal rate of a few pesos to the
dollar, and an actual rate of a few thousand, you can see the problem.
At the hotel we were given another sheet of paper with the
day’s cost for our rooms. The rates were
very expensive in pesos, very cheap in dollars.
We were to pay by the day because of the instability of the
currency. Terry's room was on the third
floor. Mine was on the fourth. I picked her up in her room half an hour later
so we could explore the city before it got dark. June 21st is the
shortest day of the year and begins winter in the Southern hemisphere, so it
was getting dark very early in the afternoon when we visited. My entire
room was the size of a large bathroom, with a short single bed and a chest of drawers. In a separate room was a sink and a toilet
in a tiny bathroom shared with the next room.
Terry’s room was huge by comparison, a large double bed, a good-sized
bathroom, and the normal furniture you’d expect in a 4-star hotel in a big
city. I asked Terry why she had such a
nicer room than mine and asked what it cost her. She explained to me how the system
worked.
I had actually paid for both rooms when we checked-in, at a
ridiculously low rate in dollars. The
clerk assumed that a male and female traveling together asking for separate
rooms were a married man and his mistress.
Terry got “our room” with its large double bed assigned to her, which
the clerk assumed we’d share. My
oversized closet was for appearances sake to protect her reputation, not
intended for my use overnight. The dual
standard was still flourishing in Latin American culture 30 years ago!
A military junta headed by General Leopoldo Fortunato
Galtieri Castelli ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1982. During the
junta's rule, Congress
was suspended, unions, political
parties, and provincial governments were banned, and in what became known as
the Dirty
War, between 9,000 and 30,000 people deemed left-wing
"subversives" disappeared from
society. These were the “disaparicios”. A death squad called Intelligence
Battalion 601 directly reported to Galtieri. Torture and mass executions were commonplace.
During our walk, one of the quirky things that happened
on this trip was that we got to see a couple of "disaparicios"
disappear. We were on one of the broad
avenues in downtown B.A. when a military truck roared to a halt at the curb
half a city block in front of us.
Several soldiers in full uniform armed with machine guns jumped out of
the truck, beat two men to the ground with their gun butts, and carried the
senseless civilians into the back of the truck, which was covered with
canvas. The street was crowded;
everybody watched, but nobody got involved. The truck roared off, and just that
quickly the entire episode was over for us.
I have no idea what happened to the two men, but the odds are good that
they didn’t survive their experience.
That night featured dinner starting at 10:30 PM, tango music
at a local club until 2 or 3 AM, and too few hours of sleep on my tiny bed in
my tiny room. Terry reported a lot more
sleep on her huge bed in her large room.
Life isn’t always fair!
The British victory in the Falkland Islands War, coupled
with a ruinous inflation, spelled Galtieri's downfall, which actually occurred
on June 18th, 1982, just a few days after we returned on a commuter flight to
Uruguay from this visit. The Argentine economy had been in dire condition
prior to the military coup in 1976. It deteriorated further under the junta during
the Dirty War. Argentina was not a happy place during our visit.
Not only had they just lost a war with The United Kingdom and were in the
middle of a civil war, but the economy was suffering from a ruinous inflation
and nobody but the richest of the rich could afford the essentials of life. The fall of Galtieri signaled the eventual end
of all of the military dictatorships in South America and the eventual return
to democracies in the region. By the time
I returned in 1999, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile all boasted
flourishing democracies and a much better quality of life for all.
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