2. Exile, the Malvinas War and human rights^*

Silvina Jensen

In Historia reciente: Perspectivas y desafíos de un campo en construcción, Marina Franco and Florencia Levín signal one of the most pertinent challenges for researchers working on the Malvinas today: the need to develop conceptual precision (2007, p. 58). Through precision, they argue, we might free our analytical categories from both their status as value judgements and from the powerful connotations generated by the protagonists of a recent conflict-filled past, in the hope that research might avoid reproducing the political battles that these categories entail.

Uniting the Malvinas and human rights as a means of delving into the question of exile is far from an obvious enterprise, however. Prior to April 1982, or rather before 1 May of that year, the symbolic connotations of the Malvinas were recognisable to all Argentines – including those who lived in other countries as a result of the political violence between 1974 and 1983. The Islands were a geographical territory upon which were projected nationalist feelings and national values; and the Malvinas therefore also represented a ‘patriotic cause’, the claim to a land snatched from national sovereignty more than a century ago – a fact which stirred up, to differing degrees, the patriotic feelings of civil society and the military. The Islands were also a ‘symbol’ through which ‘los argentinos sintetizaban diversos sentidos, a menudo opuestos, de su argentinidad’ [Argentines synthesised different, and often opposing, definitions of their ‘Argentineness’] (Guber, 2001).¹ After the ‘recovery’ of the Islands on 2 April, resulting in an international armed conflict, the Malvinas became associated with the war, a war whose origin lay in the landing on the South Georgia Islands ordered by the third military junta (composed of Leopoldo F. Galtieri, Isaac Anaya and Basilio Lami Dozo). Only days before the landing, the junta had suppressed a mass demonstration called by the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) under the slogan ‘Bread, Peace and Work’: a violent repression of civil society.

These (distinct yet overlapping) layers of meaning surrounding the Malvinas, layers that became increasingly confused throughout the hostilities and were often impossible to consider together without creating contradictions, played a central role in the debates of those in exile in Mexico, Spain and France.

The notion of human rights is no more easily definable, particularly in terms of its conception in the 1970s and 1980s. It is true that, in the period of the terrorist state in Argentina, the denunciation of the dictatorship centred on ideas drawn from discourses of human rights, understood to mean the defence of life, liberty and physical integrity. It would not be misleading to claim, alongside protagonists of the diaspora such as Jorge Bernetti and Mempo Giardinelli (2003), or researchers studying the exiled communities such as Marina Franco (2008) and Pablo Yankelevich (2002), that the fight for human rights was the fundamental cause of the exile communities from Sweden to Brazil and from Mexico to Australia. However, the Argentine diaspora had to undergo a long process in order to form this identity of human rights campaigners, following the collapse of the revolutionary frameworks to which many of those in exile had subscribed. As a result, over the course of almost eight years of exile, the same questions were debated in the geographically disparate exile communities: who were human rights for? What was their scope? Was it the same to defend human rights within Argentina and in exile? Were human rights an absolute ethical value, a pipe dream or a philosophical abstraction; or were they in fact a historical category linked to class struggle and the particular configuration of the conflict between social groups throughout Argentine history?²

During the visit of the IACHR (Inter-American Commission of Human Rights)³ to Argentina, the periodical Criterio (13 September 1979) had highlighted that the subject of human rights was ‘polemical’, ‘ambiguous’ and ‘ambivalent’; during the Malvinas War, this ambiguity and polemic intensified among both the opposition in Argentina and in exile.

Carlos Gabetta (1983, p. 15) argues that the South Atlantic conflict represented an ‘earthquake’ that shook the foundations of the exile community, fracturing associations, multiplying disputes and shifting the main public focus of the diaspora towards the unmasking of the repressive nature of the military junta, whose thousands of victims had been killed, disappeared, taken as political prisoners or forced into exile. Taking this hypothesis as its starting point, this chapter seeks to problematise the relationship between the Malvinas War and human rights, attempting to explain to what extent Argentina’s ‘recovery’ of the Islands interacted with the exiles’ identity as human rights campaigners, particularly in terms of the exiles’ varying political backgrounds, strategies of resistance to the dictatorship and attitudes towards the war.

This chapter is divided into two parts. The first attempts to provide a brief overview of the positions that the political and humanitarian exile organisations adopted towards the ‘recovery’ and the war, attempting to highlight the ideas that dominated this hugely complex conflict. The second explores some of the debates surrounding the idea of human rights that took place in exile during the conflict between Argentina and the UK. My analysis examines how the Malvinas conflict can be considered to have been a humanitarian ‘test’ (Goligorsky, 1983) for the exiles, exploring some of the most stimulating polemics on the topic, including Mexico’s Socialist Discussion Group (Grupo de Discusión Socialista) versus León Rozitchner (Venezuela); and, particularly, Eduardo Goligorsky versus Abel Posse and Hugo Chumbita (Spain). This section aims to analyse questions that the exiles had been debating since 1976, from the start of their fight against the dictatorship. These questions were raised each time the exiles considered the best means of garnering international solidarity, a difficult enterprise in the face of Argentina’s immensely complex political map (confused by both the perplexing identities of the nation’s political parties and the characteristics of Argentina’s political history in the lead-up to the coup). They also came to the fore in attempts to define the public profile of the exile associations and when the exiles considered their own militant past as members of revolutionary movements.

In summary, this chapter aims to establish to what extent the Malvinas War forced the exiles to revisit subjects such as the use of violence for political aims, the justness of war, the meaning of sacrificing life and liberty, the definition of freedom and democracy, the viability of bringing the perpetrators of abuses to trial, the fight against impunity and the battle for memory. Each one of this vast array of questions drew attention to and/or created a crisis (or at least tension) within the exiles’ relationship with human rights.

Exile associations and the Malvinas conflict

In describing the reactions of Argentines based in Madrid to the ‘occupation’ of the Malvinas, Rafael Flores⁴ highlighted that between the unease, amazement and anger of some and the confidence of others, the dominant response was confusion (Flores, 1982, pp. 36–7). In Stockholm, an ex-militant of the PRT-ERP⁵ in Bahía Blanca, Jaime Naifleish, identified ‘ideas y sentimientos encontrados’ [opposing ideas and feelings] among the expatriates, which both resisted clear-cut definitions and exposed the complexity of differing positions where, days before, agreement had (erroneously) appeared to reign (Naifleisch, 1982).

Beyond the different national contexts,⁶ among the organised exile groups – whether connected to a political party, working across these divides or with a humanitarian focus – three dominant positions towards the Argentine–British conflict emerged. There were those who declared themselves completely, and almost acritically, in favour of the ‘recovery’; those who opposed it and even hoped that the UK would attack Buenos Aires; and the majority of those in exile, who avoided extremes and attempted to reconcile a continued denunciation of the dictatorship and the continued assertion of Argentina’s claim over the Islands, with differing emphasis on the one or the other of these two factors of the equation.

The diversity of positions resulted from a large number of factors, including each person’s political identity prior to exile; whether they belonged to organisations of the diaspora; their perspective on the dictatorship; their personal views on Britain and its imperialist stance; their acceptance or rejection of war as a means of resolving territorial disputes; the behaviour of the dominant political forces to which the exile was connected in their country of residence; their consideration of the political timing of the event, etc. This variety of factors and their idiosyncratic combinations resulted in a political map filled with nuances and ambiguities, revealing the acute tension experienced by the exiles between April and June of 1982 and leading many political and social commentators in the host countries to note how the Argentine communities had been ‘shaken up’, bringing former enemies into the same band. Marcel Niedergang, a columnist for Le Monde, claimed that the ‘Malvinas cause’ had placed the Argentine opposition, both in exile and at home, on the side of the military (Niedergang, 1982).⁷ Meanwhile, the reporter in Buenos Aires for Barcelona’s La Vanguardia, Lluís Foix, explained that the question of the Islands’ ‘recovery’ had produced an unprecedented level of political unity among Argentines, to the point that opponents of the dictatorship not only proclaimed that ‘¡por primera vez me gustan las botas!’ [I like [military] boots for the first time], but that ‘queues of volunteers’ were crowding outside the Ministry for Foreign Affairs asking to be recruited to defend the island territory. The philosopher Fernando Savater also described Argentina’s situation as ‘un enigma en estado puro’ [a perfect enigma], leaving the uninitiated open-mouthed at the way that ‘el honor patrio y su hermana doña dignidad nacional’ [patriotic honour and his sister national dignity] could unite dictator and victim in ‘un mismo espasmo de amor ante unos mendrugos de granito roídos por el Atlántico’ [a spasm of passion over some scraps of granite battered by the Atlantic] (Acotto, 1982).

Whilst for the European left – and for some members of the Argentine exile⁸ – this represented losing sight of who the enemy was, obfuscating the ability to identify those on the side of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (Soto, 1982), for a large proportion of the diaspora the situation was significantly more complex. For them, clear, problem-free definitions were impossible, at least during the conflict itself. This was particularly due to Argentina’s internal political situation, which many in the diaspora were describing as the ‘crisis’ or ‘decline’ of the military regime, seen as paving the way for democracy.

By way of illustration, my discussion below considers the positions of some of the most important exiles and exile associations in Sweden, France, Spain and Mexico, examining their descriptions of the enterprise launched by the junta on 2 May and the nuances, emphases, tensions and ambiguities in their public actions and declarations, first in relation to the ‘recovery’ and then during the war itself.

A revolutionary Marxist group in Paris defined Malvinas as ‘la expresión absurda y criminal’ [the absurd, criminal expression] of two States in deep crisis. They denied the war’s status as an anti-colonial struggle for liberation, and described it as a conflict ‘inventado por la dictadura, […] usado por el imperialismo británico también en crisis’ [invented by the dictatorship and exploited by the imperialist British, who are also in crisis] (Divergencia, 1982). Similarly, a socialist militant from the Casa Argentina a Catalunya labelled the Malvinas a ‘curse’, a ‘caricature’ and another ‘trick’ of the dictators who manipulated the Argentines’ weakness for all things national(ist) in order to remain in power. But were the exiles in Paris and militants in Barcelona saying the same thing? Not really, or at least not fully. R. E. felt that there was ‘nothing to defend’: ‘A mí, las Malvinas, la idea de defender las Malvinas, no me iba a hacer poner en peligro ni un solo brazo de un joven argentino’ [Personally, the Malvinas, the idea of defending the Malvinas, was not going to make me put even one limb of a young Argentine at risk].⁹ In contrast, Luis Alonso and Ángel Fanjul from the Paris Marxist group separated out Argentina’s rights to the Malvinas and the demagogic, opportunist manoeuvring of the dictatorship (Divergencia, 1982).

On the non-Peronist Left, a human rights activist from Barcelona also recognised the ‘invented’ nature of ‘lo de Malvinas’ [the Malvinas matter]. In her view, the military ‘[se lo] habían sacado de la manga para unir y sacar el patriotismo’ [had pulled it out of their sleeve to bring people together and stir up their patriotism]. Her opposition to the ‘cause’ and the war was founded on its dual condition as a ‘patriotic cause’ or, more precisely, its jingoism and territorialism. As M. D. stated:

Although in M. D.’s case class identity determined her radical opposition to the Malvinas cause and the war, many members of the Argentine Communist Party in exile joined the Frente Antiimperialista Latinoamericano [Latin American Anti-Imperialist Front], positioning themselves in opposition to Britain’s colonial machinations and in favour of the ‘recovery’ of the Malvinas archipelago. The divergences in opinion between different sectors of the Argentine Left permeated the dynamic of the Comisión de Familiares de Presos Políticos, Muertos y Detenidos-Desaparecidos [Commission of Relatives of Political Prisoners, Victims and Disappeared Detainees] in Barcelona, the organisation in which many militants had been working together since 1976.

In relation to the idea that the occupation of the Malvinas represented a ‘fabrication’, ‘invention’, ‘trap’ or ‘manoeuvre’, the Cordobese ex-union leader Rafael Flores, then based in Madrid, argued that the occupation of the Malvinas was not ‘invented’ by the military, despite its use as a tool to silence the popular movement that on 30 May had chanted that ‘¡se va acabar, se va acabar, la dictadura militar!’ [the military dictatorship is going to end, it’s going to end]. This was not a strategy that appeared out of the blue. The military academies taught officers that the Malvinas represented one of the longest-standing national military operations; and the Malvinas were, moreover, an essential component of the Argentine imaginary, actively taught from primary school (Flores, 1982, pp. 36–7).

At the same time, Luis Rodríguez wrote in El Periódico de Catalunya that the Malvinas were one of the ‘grandes mitos nacionales’ [great national myths] and that Galtieri was exploiting it in order to maintain the status quo.¹⁰ Rodríguez claimed that, beyond the dispute with the UK over sovereignty and the economic potential of the Islands, the junta’s decision stemmed from the need to achieve ‘una dinámica que unificara al país tras una empresa histórica y cuyo rédito sería capitalizado por las FFAA’ [a dynamic that would unite the country behind a historic enterprise whose benefits could be capitalised upon by the armed forces]. In the same line of argument, but ascribing even less depth to the invasion, Eduardo Goligorsky condemned Malvinas as a ‘slogan’ used by the military to stimulate ‘la irracionalidad atávica y la credulidad de un conglomerado humano que últimamente se mostraba escéptico y remiso a dejarse llevar por las narices’ [the atavistic irrationality and the credulity of a population who had recently been sceptical and unwilling to fall into line] (Goligorsky, 1983, p. 239). A few days after the ‘recovery’, Goligorsky (a Radicalist exiled in Barcelona) was in Buenos Aires and stated that Argentina was engaged in an ‘irredentist delusion’ led by Galtieri (Goligorsky, 1983, p. 210).

In the diaspora, a significant number of voices denounced the military actions of 2 April as a desperate manoeuvre seeking to ‘borrar el pasado con un sablazo’ [erase the past with a swipe of the sword], bringing to light ‘un problema eterno, pero siempre desactualizado, tema de pequeños conciliábulos nacionalistas y de almirantes retirados’ [an eternal but outdated problem, a topic discussed in small, secretive nationalist gatherings or among retired admirals] (Bayer, 1982). But other readings also developed, including those of the Peronist Comisión Argentine des Droits d l’Homme (CADHU), the Trotskyist Centre Argentin d’Information et de Solidaritè (CAIS) and the Comisión de Solidarité des Parents des Prisionniers, Disparus et Túes en Argentine (COSOFAM) in France. These organisations recognised that the Argentine intervention was intimately bound up with the internal political problems experienced by the dictatorship, but they did not cease to support the Argentine people’s ‘sovereign rights’ over the Islands (‘En el exterior’, 1982, p. 36).

In an announcement published in Le Monde (16 May 1982), the Argentine committees in France provided an argument with an important nuance: the only sovereignty over the Islands, or legitimate right to lay claim to their possession, rested with the Argentine people. The text’s condemnations of the Royal Navy’s ‘aventura belicista’ [warmongering enterprise], of the Argentine dictatorship and its opportunistic manoeuvre and of the behaviour of the European Economic Community¹¹ are mixed with defences of liberty, human rights, justice, popular sovereignty and territorial sovereignty over the archipelago, demonstrating the disorientation of the exile organisations (‘En el exterior’, 1982, p. 36).

This plurality of positions and multiple emphases was not restricted to differences between associations, but was found at times among people united under the same banner who disagreed on how to interpret the conflict. This was influential in determining the dynamic of each association, which depended on the difficult negotiations taking place within each one, both in terms of the possibility of reaching agreements and the ruptures that took place. An example can be found in the public declarations of the Swedish and French branches of the Association of Relatives of the Victims of Repression (COSOFAM). In Sweden, the Association declared itself opposed to the invasion, whilst in France it began by condemning the war led by the junta, but eventually focused on denouncing the warmongering attitude of Britain and the US and reiterating Argentina’s sovereignty over the Islands (Divergencia, 2 July 1982).

For the exiles, it was extremely important to differentiate between the legitimacy of the Malvinas ‘cause’, dear to Argentine national sentiment, and its political, demagogic exploitation by the military.¹² In the same way, the exiles considered it essential not to confuse support for military intervention in the Malvinas (in some cases even endorsing the war) with a decline in the repudiation of the terrorist nature of the junta that had governed the country since 1976.¹³ A member of the Confederación Socialista Argentina de Cataluña explained that ‘una cosa era la reivindicación y otra cosa era que los militares se montaran sobre esa reivindicación para continuar en el poder’ [the demand for sovereignty was one thing, but the military jumping on the back of this demand in order to remain in power was another] (Interview with C. R., Barcelona, 13 December 1996). The same interviewee explained that defending Argentina’s sovereignty over the Islands and denouncing British imperialism were not the same as supporting whoever made the recovery of the Islands possible.¹⁴ Beyond these positions, the Confederación Socialista Argentina even declared that any mention of the Malvinas problem should be preceded by a condemnation of the murderous activity of the military junta.

It was necessary to question the supposedly anti-imperialist nature of the action of 2 April,¹⁵ given the military’s history of both ceding and breaking up national territory (CSA – Cataluña Branch. Internal document, 1982).

The Argentine socialists in Mexico summarised their position in a dual demand: ‘¡Por la soberanía argentina en las Malvinas! ¡Por la soberanía popular en Argentina!’ [For Argentine sovereignty in the Malvinas! For popular sovereignty in Argentina!]. The Argentine socialists declared that the conflict could not be read exclusively through the prism of the internal politics of the warring nations. This went against simplistic interpretations that identified support for the Malvinas cause with a pardoning of the dictatorship, arguing instead that the military dictatorship was no less a dictatorship for merely having occupied the Malvinas.¹⁶

Among those who recognised Argentina’s rights over the Malvinas, some favoured a peaceful solution through diplomatic routes whilst others, in light of the fact that the Islands had been seized, ended up supporting the war. In the latter group, some even came to consider it a ‘just war’, the response to an initial violent act of colonial ‘theft’ by Britain (which had ‘usurped’ part of Argentina’s territory in 1833),¹⁷ an ‘excessive’ but ‘legitimate’ defence,¹⁸ or an anti-imperialist war of national liberation similar to the cause of third-world colonies.

Although the Malvinas cause has a long political history and was a popular demand prior to the act of military occupation, it was crucial to evaluate the political circumstances of the invasion in order to denounce the junta’s ‘opportunism’;¹⁹ to define the impact of the occupation on the ‘health’ of the government; and/or not to miss the opportunity of what some perceived as an imminent return to democracy which would include their own return to the country.²⁰ As Héctor Borrat explained, those who supported the ‘recovery’ of the archipelago assumed that, regardless of the outcome of the war, the consequence at a national level would be the restitution of democratic rule. If Argentina suffered military defeat, the junta’s regime would be discredited, hastening its downfall. If, however, Argentina retained sovereignty over the recovered national territory, the victory would not belong solely to the regime; and in any case the conflict would have been important in bringing about the mobilisation of parties, unions and movements (Borrat, 1982).

Debating human rights: The Malvinas invasion as a humanitarian test

It is no easy task to explain the interpellation of the question of human rights in the Argentine–British conflict over the Malvinas. The following pages will explore what it meant for the exiles to live with what Flores (1982) termed the ‘desgraciada paradoja’ (deplorable paradox) of the fact that the military who were perpetrating genocide were also responsible for ‘recovering’ the Malvinas, and to what extent this ‘paradox’ placed their human rights activism in crisis.

As outlined above, one of the dilemmas experienced by the exiles between April and June 1982 was how to wrestle ‘ownership’ of the Malvinas question from the military, whilst attempting not to distance themselves too greatly from what they perceived as an action that had galvanised popular support in Argentina. In this context, the exiles found themselves confronting a double challenge: contesting their characterisation by the military – also deeply entrenched in civil society – as ‘subversives’, ‘traitors’ and ‘deceivers’; and reinforcing their status as human rights activists, even though stressing their anti-dictatorship fight risked further alienating parts of the country beyond Buenos Aires. In fact, as the philosopher Horacio González noted from his exile in São Paulo, during the war Galtieri had employed the familiar strategy of dismissing condemnations of human rights violations, but had added the spin of declaring them to be another ‘cunning trick’ by the British Foreign Office or war ‘propaganda’ from the heart of imperialism that was disseminated by ‘anti-Argentine’ elements abroad (González, 1982). We must not forget that there were groups in exile, such as the Movimiento contra la guerra en el Atlántico Sur in Barcelona, which did not hesitate to condemn some of the ‘Malvinas heroes’, including the captain Alfredo Astiz, the commander of the South Georgia detachment remembered for his participation in kidnappings and torture in the ESMA (Navy School of Mechanics) (Manifiesto, 31 May 1982). At the same time that this group of exiles drew attention to the perpetrators of genocide, now celebrated as Malvinas ‘heroes’ in Madrid, Flores (1982) expressed his dismay at this harsh reality: ‘lo retorcido de nuestra suerte, la desgraciada paradoja reside en que los asesinos de nuestros hermanos – que no hermanos suyos – los más sistemáticos entregadores de la soberanía y dignidad argentina, sean los que ejecutaron la ocupación de Malvinas y Georgias del Sur’ [The cruel twist of our fate, the deplorable paradox, lies in the fact that those who murdered our brothers – and even their own –, those who have most systematically dismantled Argentine sovereignty and dignity, are also the ones who executed the occupation of the Malvinas and South Georgia Islands].

It is commonly asserted that Peronist and Montonero exiles expressed the greatest enthusiasm for the recovery of the Islands and even for the war. However, as we have seen above, almost no exile committees or organisations escaped visible tensions, whether they represented a union across political divides fighting against the dictatorship, a single political party (including the non-Peronist and non-armed left) or groups focused on human rights. Although many exiles continued to emphasise the condemnation of the dictatorship and many opposed the war, there were also many who recognised that Argentina had legitimate rights over the archipelago. Even the slogan of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo²¹ – a key reference point for the exiles in the anti-dictatorship fight – validated Argentine sovereignty over the Islands, albeit without losing a critical perspective.

As a result of this situation, the consensus that had been established in defining opposition to the dictatorship in terms of human rights was, if not destroyed, at least shaken, becoming a topic of concern, debate, reclamation and even revision in terms of form, content and opportunity.

The Malvinas invasion also opened a debate in exile on the use of force in the solution of border disputes and international disagreements.²² By extension, this debate impacted on the incomplete revision of the past recourse to violence as a legitimate method of political action and means of seizing power. This revision had led the revolutionary militants of the diaspora to evaluate (and critique, repent, ask forgiveness for, re-examine or adapt) their participation in the armed struggle that culminated in the military coup of 1976 with its tragic toll of deaths and disappearances. The conflict over the Malvinas therefore re-ignited discussion over types of violence (just, reparative, in legitimate defence) and the need to contextualise past judgements and present evaluations on the recourse to arms as a means of collective action. In a text written as an ‘open letter’ to his fellow exiles, Eduardo Goligorsky (1983, pp. 217–8) argues that the idea that the use of force is a valid means of recovering national sovereignty can be applied in unexpected ways, leading even to the paradoxical situation where violence against the British can be used to pardon the violence of Argentina’s military governments since 1966. Goligorsky’s contribution reflects the extent to which the Malvinas conflict reopened the debates among the diaspora community of the existence of ‘one’ violence or multiple violences (exercised from above or below; violence dealt or received; violence and counter-violence; violence for exploitation; and violence for defence, etc.). Goligorsky’s text also demonstrates how some sectors of the diaspora demonised others when he concludes that:

Once British forces arrived in the South Atlantic and hostilities began – including the sinking of the Belgrano and the death of 323 people on board – the exiles had to adopt a position on whether to support the war or raise the flag of peace as an absolute value, regardless of the cause (the patria or homeland; sovereignty; liberty; revolution; etc.). The diaspora communities debated whether the means (the war) could be justified by the end in ethical, political or national terms. Some political groupings considered the fight against imperialism, colonialism and in favour of national liberation an absolute value that would be sufficient to suspend the respect for the right to life.

For other exile groups, no life was negotiable.²³ Writing in Mexico, the dramatist Alberto Adellach described the human costs of the war in terms of Galtieri’s penchant for whisky: ‘Si cada botella contiene un litro de whisky y cada ser humano adulto seis de sangre, se puede considerar que los 74 días de la guerra en las Malvinas, le costaron al país 18.000 litros de sangre joven y valiosa y 100 litros de whisky importado. Buen promedio, sin duda. Muy buen promedio’ [If each bottle contains a litre of whisky and each adult human contains six litres of blood, we can consider that the 74 days of war in the Malvinas cost the country 18,000 litres of young […] blood and 100 litres of imported whisky. An impressive average, without a doubt. Very impressive] (1982). In Barcelona, Goligorsky described Malvinas as ‘otra guerra sucia’ [another dirty war] (1983, pp. 242–3). Far from a ‘loca aventura militar’ [crazy military operation], he believed that the Malvinas conflict had produced ‘un tendal de muertos, mutilados y desaparecidos, argentinos y británicos, auténticos, de carne y hueso, con nombre y apellido’ [a string of deaths, injuries and disappearances on both the Argentine and British sides, of real people, human beings of flesh and blood, with a name]. The Radical journalist accused some of his exiled compatriots of being as inhuman as Galtieri, who had dismissed the Malvinas tragedy with the assertion that the war in the South Atlantic had caused fewer deaths than were caused by road traffic accidents in Argentina.

In his important debate with other members of the diaspora in the Centro de Cultura Popular and the Agrupación Peronista in Barcelona, Goligorsky criticised his fellow exiled compatriots for their ‘insensibility’ towards the deaths that had taken place in the occupation of the Islands. Jaime Naifleish also made a similar observation from his exile in Stockholm, highlighting the ‘macabre’ nature of the Malvinas operation launched by the ‘macabre’ dictatorship and denouncing the casualties suffered by Argentina. It was now ‘las madres de los asesinados en las islas’ [the mothers of those killed on the Islands] who were grieving for ‘esos otros hijos, que no eran los de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo’ [those other children, who did not belong to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo] (Naifleisch, 1982). Naifleish criticised the lack of attention given to these victims, who ‘fueran devueltos sin vida o mutilados desde los páramos australes’ [were returned dead or badly injured from the Southern plains]. The journalist exiled in Barcelona, Goligorsky, denounced the supposed ‘guerra limpia y patriótica’ [clean, patriotic war] which continued to ravage the nation’s young. With the wounds of the ‘dirty war’ still open, the military were ‘enviando al matadero a la camada inmediata posterior, como si se hubiera planificado el exterminio sistemático de una generación’ [sending the next-youngest group to the slaughterhouse, as though they planned systematically to exterminate a whole generation] (Goligorsky, 1983, p. 210).

Goligorsky criticised Chumbita and the Peronist militants for rewriting the Cuban revolutionary slogan ‘Patria o muerte’ [Homeland or Death] as ‘Soberanía o muerte’ [Sovereignty or Death] (Goligorsky, 1982a).²⁴

He also accused the Mexican Grupo de Discusión Socialista²⁵ of abandoning their self-critique of the past temptation to engage in violence in the name of ‘grand ideas’ such as ‘sovereignty’, the ‘pueblo’ [people] or the ‘patria’ [homeland]. In his view, the authors of the pamphlet Por la soberanía argentina were repeating ‘su manía de convocar a la lucha popular cada vez que en una hecatombe realimentaban sus ilusiones de pescar en río revuelto’ [their habit of calling for popular struggle after every incidence of mass bloodshed in the hope of bolstering support for their cause] (Goligorsky, 1983, p. 214).

However, the situation did not merely present a simple choice between good and evil in order to pass (or fail) a humanitarian test. In describing his response to the sinking of the Belgrano, film-maker David Blaustein explains how he was able to mourn his compatriots who had been killed ‘porque de repente se me juntaron las imágenes de los pibes del Belgrano, hundiéndose, con la figura de Augusto Conte (su amigo y compañero de militancia, secuestrado mientras hacía el servicio militar)’ [because suddenly the images of the kids sinking in the Belgrano fused in my mind with the figure of Augusto Conte (his friend and fellow militant, kidnapped whilst undertaking military service)] (Lorenz, 2006, p. 45), highlighting the dramatic nature of the dilemma posed by the Malvinas War for the exiles.

The Malvinas conflict invoked the fight for human rights in exile in a third way. Early on, the members of the diaspora had organised themselves in their host countries to demand the release of political prisoners, clarification of the situation of the disappeared detainees and the recovery of the freedom of expression, of association and of work (etc.). In the period prior to 2 April, references to a probable forthcoming ‘Nuremberg’ for the perpetrators had become common.

Days before the ‘recovery’ of the Islands, the lawyer Gustavo Roca highlighted the impossibility of an exit/retreat/’trick’ by the military, despite the frequency of this occurrence in the many military governments of Argentina’s recent history. Even if the junta were able to provide the military with a significant boost – which the Madrid-based CADHU campaigner imagined to be an Argentine intervention in Central America alongside the US army under the Reagan administration – Roca argued that sooner or later ‘se improndrá el justo castigo a los responsables del genocidio de nuestro pueblo y de la depredación de nuestro país’ [a just punishment will be imposed on those responsible for the genocide of our people and the plundering of our country] (‘A seis años vista’, Resumen de la Actualidad Argentina, 62, 1982, pp. 34–5).

In this analysis prior to Malvinas, Gustavo Roca trusted in the increasing isolation of the junta and the economic, social and political crisis experienced by the regime to bring about its downfall. However, when opinions on the enemy began to change, the fear of impunity became palpable and became a topic of debate in exile.

The Mexican Grupo de Discusión Socialista stressed that asserting Argentina’s ‘indisputable sovereignty’ over the Malvinas ‘no implica […] echar un manto de olvido sobre su política desde 1976 hasta el presente’ [does not mean […] casting a veil of oblivion over the junta’s actions from 1976 to the present] (Rozitchner, 2005, p. 149). Writing in Venezuela, León Rozitchner launched a criticism of the group, claiming that they had abandoned political ‘ethics’ by casting Britain as the principal enemy rather than the dictatorship, thereby ‘estabilizando una alianza de objetivos comunes con los genocidas’ [coming to share the same objectives as the perpetrators of genocide] (Rozitchner, 1996, p. 143). In response, the Grupo Socialista claimed that the only legitimate position was to support the ‘cause’ of the war because that was the stance of political, union and human rights organisations and therefore of the people (Rozitchner, 2005, pp. 152–3).

As can be seen from the complex picture described above, the exiles had radically different views about the impact which the war could have on the regime’s future, with some envisaging the possibility that the military would be tried for their participation in systematic human rights violations. The editors of Testimonio Latinoamericano and the Agrupación Peronista de Barcelona entered into a polemic with Eduardo Goligorsky on this point.²⁶ In the view of Álvaro Abós and Hugo Chumbita, the courageous, hard-fought reconstruction of the political and social opposition which had come forward to demand ‘Bread, Peace and Work’ and democracy on 30 March had not been dismantled by the events of 2 April. By contrast, those in the military who were aware of the danger posed by this unrest sought to substitute the looming ‘Argentinazo’ with a ‘Malvinazo’, which, although instigated by the junta, could lead to the destruction of the regime despite support for military victory on the battlefield (Testimonio Latinoamericano, 12/13, April 1982, pp. 13–14, 24–5).

If the outcome were victory for Argentina, the periodical imagined two possible scenarios: 1) Galtieri taking advantage of the boost in support to launch an electoral campaign, seeking to become a pseudo-Perón; and 2) a more probable retreat by the regime, which, through ‘el gesto histórico de rescatar las islas’ [the historic feat of recovering the Islands] would manage to diminish their record of crimes and corruption (Testimonio Latinoamericano, 12/13 April 1982, pp. 3–5, 13–14 and 24–5). The periodical’s editors claimed that ‘la exaltación nacionalista no es un sentimiento fácilmente manipulable’ [nationalist passion is not a feeling easy to manipulate] (Testimonio Latinoamericano, 12/13, April 1982, pp. 3–5). In contrast to those who decried the passionate nature of the Argentine people, particularly some politicians and union leaders who were little more than the regime’s puppets, Abós and Chumbita protested that the people’s willingness to support this cause did not mean they had forgotten what the regime was and what it represented. Moreover, they argued that this people, who, despite responding to the military’s call, were able to distinguish between support for a cause and approval of those behind the action would obtain important political capital which would force the regime to step down (Testimonio Latinoamericano, 12/13, April 1982, pp. 13–14 and 24–5).

When the outcome was confirmed as defeat, Testimonio Latinoamericano declared that although the military had sought to bring to fruition ‘una causa que le era ajena’ [a cause that did not belong to them], the junta’s status as a reactionary, anti-popular regime had rendered success unlikely. If Argentina’s citizens had supported the invasion it was because they knew that democracy could not exist without full sovereignty, which could not be achieved without the Malvinas. The periodical argued that when it became clear that the talk of national dignity and sovereignty was little more than empty words in the mouth of dictators, these same citizens returned to the Plaza de Mayo on the night of 14 June to demand that Galtieri step down. For the editors of Testimonio, this meant that the people had not shown inconsistency. In any case, as a Peronist film-maker exiled in Paris observed, the Argentines had by no means given carte blanche to the military.²⁷

The Malvinas, so deeply rooted in the Argentine collective imaginary, taught as part of the notion of patria, or homeland, from primary school onwards, became for many exiles the means of measuring the democratic and humanitarian commitment of their fellow Argentines both at home and in the diaspora. From his exile in Spain, Eduardo Goligorsky engaged in debate not only with the Mexican Grupo de Discusión Socialista and with Peronist groups in Barcelona (Testimonio, Agrupación Peronista, Centro de Cultura Popular), but also with a man employed in the civil service under the dictatorship, the writer and diplomat Abel Posse, who was working for the Argentine Embassy in Paris.

Posse and Goligorsky exchanged several articles in the pages of La Vanguardia in May 1982. The civil servant working for the military government declared that the exiles could not continue to interpret all the regime’s acts through the framework of anti-dictatorship resistance because the Malvinas invasion was part of an anti-imperialist war that had nothing to do with the ‘defensa humanista’ [humanist defence] of the dictatorship’s victims. Posse compared certain sectors of the diaspora with the liberal, left-wing politicians who in 1946 had turned their back on the people, allying themselves with their right-wing enemies. This sector of the left, Posse argued, was ‘bobo, indisciplinado y opinativo’ [stupid, undisciplined and opinionated] and their insistence on bringing Astiz to trial echoed the mistake of accusing Perón and Evita of being Nazis, attempting to ‘conformar un nuevo tribunal de Nüremberg con falsas denuncias de torturas y desapariciones’ [establish a new Nuremberg Trial with false claims of torture and disappearances].

Posse denounced the ‘stupidity’ of this left as unique in Latin America and the wider world, noting that while Cuba, China and the USSR supported Argentina in the war, what he termed the ‘izquierda justina’²⁸ was positioning itself to become ‘el undécimo miembro del Mercado Común Europeo y hasta anda queriendo quedar bien con los ingleses’ [the 11th member of the European Common Market and even hopes to curry favour with the British] (Posse, 1982).

For his part, Goligorsky argued that the war was a mistake and lamented the shameful spectacle of the Argentine people applauding the junta’s decisions. His criticism was directed at all the exiles, however, and their inability to maintain unity in their fight against the dictatorship.²⁹ Goligorsky contended that the war had revealed the focus on democracy, the rejection of Manichean binaries and the critique of irrational frameworks to be nothing more than empty words, tactical positions or false guises. For that reason, he called on the exiles to engage in self-critique in order to reconsider the place given to ‘la reforma pacífica y el cambio gradual, compatibles con un sistema de elecciones democráticas con respeto por las minorías y de alternancias en el poder’ [peaceful reform and gradual change, compatible with a democratic electoral system that respects minorities and allows changes of government] (Goligorsky, 1982a). The journalist argued that supporting Galtieri’s decision cast the strength of the exiles’ commitment to democracy and human rights into doubt. The Malvinas brought the rebirth of slogans, such as ‘Soberanía o muerte’ [Sovereignty or Death], that had played a significant role in the armed militancy of the 1970s, demonstrating the fragility of the expatriates’ new focus on life over heroic death. For Goligorsky, a truly humanist conviction must acknowledge that the respect for human rights is not restricted to occasions when we find ourselves on the losing side, ‘sino, sobre todo, cuando se puede estar en el de los victoriosos. Y aunque el territorio reivindicado descanse sobre un mar de petróleo’ [but, above all, when we might be on the victorious one. Even if the claimed territory is floating in a sea of oil] (1982a).

Goligorsky also rejected the strategy of claiming Argentine democratic or humanist ‘peculiarities’³⁰ in order to disguise lapses in allegiance to values that were absolute, universal and constant. When the ‘irridentists’ supported the Malvinas War, he argued, they not only forgot the dictatorship’s crimes, but also revealed the fragility of their humanist convictions and the continuation of the ideas that had, in the past, been used to justify violence ‘from below’ and now seemed to suggest that there were certain situations in which someone’s humanity could be ‘violada legítimamente’ [legitimately violated] (Goligorsky, 1983, p. 216). For someone who considered the crimes of terrorism to be as reprehensible as those of a repressive regime, it was not strange to find that fellow Argentines who had been persecuted by the dictatorship were now in agreement with a diplomat in one of the regime’s most notorious embassies.

For Goligorsky, the Malvinas were ‘un test sobre las virtudes del libre examen y del debate racional, contrapuestas a los vicios de la retórica apocalíptica, de los estereotipos maximalistas, de las implicaciones dogmáticas y de los desafíos tribales’ [a test of the virtues of liberum examen and rational debate in opposition to the vices of apocalyptic rhetoric, maximalist stereotypes, dogmatic entanglement and the challenges of tribalism] (Goligorsky, 1983, p. 227). Framing the war in this way was neither a casual observation nor the personal view of one man who had learned ‘la naturaleza sacrosanta de la vida humana, propia y ajena’ [the sacred nature of human life, both one’s own and that of others] after so much death (Goligorsky, 1983, p. 227). Goligorsky’s position exposed an unresolved debate in the diaspora, exacerbated by the Malvinas conflict, which centred on the complex transformation of the former revolutionary militants into human rights activists in exile – a transformation that could be either profound and definitive, or tactical and opportunist. It is this same complexity that today demands that researchers undertake a careful and detailed purging of the meanings attached to the definition of human rights in this troubled recent past.

References

Adellach, A. (1982) ‘Cartas a Madrid’, Resumen de la Actualidad Argentina, 70, pp. 39–40.

Bayer, O. (1982) ‘La aventura de las Malvinas’, Resumen de la Actualidad Argentina, 65: 29.

Borrat, H. (1982) ‘Las coincidencias forzosas’, Testimonio Latinoamericano, 14 (May/June): 8–10.

Confederación Socialista Argentina. Delegación Cataluña (1982), internal document.

Chumbita, H. (1982) ‘Malvinas, el dilema de Europa’, Testimonio Latinoamericano, 14 (May/June):11–16.

Los Derechos Humanos (editorial) (1979), Criterio (13 Sept.): 18–19.

Mensaje de los marxistas revolucionarios argentinos organizados en la IV Internacional de Argentina, España y Francia. Leído en el meeting del Internationalist Marxist Group de Londres (1982), Divergencia, 2 (July).

Grupos de Trabajo contra la Dictadura, por la Libertad y la Democracia en Argentina (1982) ‘Comunicado’, Resumen de la Actualidad Argentina, 69 (28 June): 36.

Flores, R. (1982) ‘Exiliados y Malvinas’, Resumen de la Actualidad Argentina, 68 (25 Jan.): 36–7.

Franco, M. (2008) El exilio: Argentinos en Francia durante la dictadura (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI).

Franco, M. and F. Levín (2007) Historia reciente: Perspectivas y desafíos de un campo en construcción (Buenos Aires: Paidós).

Gabetta, C. (1983) Todos somos subversivos (Buenos Aires: Bruguera).

Goligorsky, E. (1982a) ‘El derramamiento de sangre y los arrebatos emocionales’, La Vanguardia, 11 May.

— (1982b) ‘Ahorrar sangre de gaucho’, Testimonio Latinoamericano, 15–16 (July–Oct.): 6.

— (1983) Carta abierta de un expatriado a sus compatriotas (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana).

González, H. (1982) ‘La paradoja kelper’, Testimonio Latinoamericano, 15–16 (July–Oct.): 3–5.

Grupo de Discusión Socialista (1982) ‘Por la soberanía argentina en las Malvinas. Por la soberanía popular en Argentina’, Visión socialista (México), 10 May.

Guber, R. (2001) ¿Por qué Malvinas? De la causa nacional a la guerra absurda (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica).

Jensen, S. (2010) Los exiliados. La lucha por los derechos humanos durante la dictadura (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana).

Lopez Acotto, A. (1982) Letter, El País (6 April), rpt. in Resumen de Actualidad Argentina, 55.

Lorenz, F. (2006) Las guerras por Malvinas (Buenos Aires: Edhasa).

Naifleish, J. (1982), ‘La primera guerra de Malvinas’, Comunidad, 31/32, (Sept./Oct.): 12.

Niedergang, M. (1982) ‘Puntos de vista. La mirada europea’, Testimonio Latinoamericano, 14 (May/June): 5.

Páez, P. (1982) ‘La ocupación y la democracia’, Resumen de la Actualidad Argentina, 75 (8 Nov.): 24–6.

Palermo, V. (2007) Sal en las heridas. Las Malvinas en la cultura argentina contemporánea (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana).

Posse, A. (1982) ‘La guerra y la izquierda justina’, La Vanguardia, 11 May.

Resumen de Actualidad Argentina (1982) 55.

Resumen de Actualidad Argentina (1982) 62.

Resumen de Actualidad Argentina (1982) 68.

Rodríguez, L. (1982) ‘Argentina, a la hora de las Malvinas’, El Periódico de Catalunya, 9/10 Apr.

Rozitchner, L. (1996) Las desventuras del sujeto político. Ensayos y errores (Buenos Aires: El Cielo por Asalto).

— (2005) Malvinas: de la guerra sucia a la guerra limpia. El punto ciego de la crítica política (Buenos Aires: Losada).

Savater, F., ‘La mirada europea’, Testimonio Latinoamericano, 14 (May/June): 5–6.

Soto, E. (1982) ‘La sangre no lava la sangre’, Testimonio Latinoamericano, 14 (May/June): 25.

Yankelevich, P. (2002) (ed.) México, país refugio. La experiencia de los exilios en el siglo XX (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés).

___________

* The interviews used in this article are part of the field work of the author’s doctoral thesis, ‘Suspendidos de la historia/Exiliados de la memoria: El caso de los argentinos desterrados en Cataluña (1976– )’ (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 2004). Available at http://www.tdx.cesca.es/TDX-1024105-231137 (ISBN B-6634-2005/84-689-0953-X). Interviewees’ real names are not used, in order to protect their anonymity.

1 See also Lorenz (2006) and Palermo (2007).

2 A particularly in-depth analytical perspective can be found in the polemical debate between Luis Bruschtein and Héctor Schmucler published in Controversia (Mexico) from the end of 1979 to early 1980. For a detailed analysis see Jensen (2010).

3 Known in Spanish as the CIDH: Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos.

4 Flores was a militant in the Resistencia Libertaria (Libertarian Resistance) and General Secretary of the Rubber Workers Union in Córdoba before the dictatorship. He was exiled in Madrid.

5 The PRT-ERP was a guerrilla group formed of factions from the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores [Workers’ Revolutionary Party] and the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo [People’s Revolutionary Army].

6 For the differences between the exile communities in France, Mexico and Spain see Franco, 2008, pp. 289–312.

7 An Argentine poet exiled in Barcelona described an experience he had in Casa Argentina, where a fellow Argentine rose to his feet in a meeting and said: ‘Mi hermano está condenado y me escribe desde la cárcel pidiendo que todos los argentinos se unan a la lucha contra Inglaterra. ¡Hay que ir de voluntarios! ¡El país lo necesita!’ [My brother is being held captive and he writes to me from prison asking that all Argentines join the fight against Britain. We should all sign up! Our country needs us!] (Interview with L. L., Barcelona, 12 December 1996).

8 In his testimony, R. E. stated: ‘Los catalanes no estaban acostumbrados a tanta versatilidad. Nadie podía comprender el apoyo popular a la toma del archipiélago, después del acto fantástico de la Plaza de Mayo de dos días antes y de la represión terrible ... los periodistas catalanes estaban como locos’ [Catalans were not used to such versatility. Nobody could understand the popular support for the seizing of the archipelago after the unbelievable demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo two days before and the terrible repression. […] The Catalan press were going crazy] (Interview, 20 January 1997).

9 Interview with R. E., Barcelona, 20 January 1997.

10 Rodríguez (1982).

11 The EEC had placed economic sanctions on Argentina as a result of the invasion.

12 From the headquarters of the Associació d’Amics de les Nacions Unides in Barcelona, Hugo Chumbita, a militant in Nilda Garré and Vicente Saadi’s Intransigencia Peronista, outlined a distinction between the justice of the national demand and the temporary context of the government that had launched the military action (Testimonio Latinoamericano, 14 May/June 1982, pp. 11–16).

13 Andrés Cornelli, a representative of the PCA (Partido Comunista de la Argentina) who participated in the debates surrounding the Malvinas in Barcelona, emphasised the need to avoid confusing support for the recovery of the Islands with an abandonment of the fight to recover democracy.

14 The Madrid branch of the CSA made the same point through the words of Andrés López Acotto, one of its members. In a letter published in El País (6 April 1982) he stated: ‘Independientemente de la opinión que cada uno tenga sobre el actual gobierno de la Argentina, de su origen, de su continuidad y de sus móviles – puntos sobre los cuales hemos hecho pública la nuestra, en tanto claros opositores al mismo – hay un hecho muy claro que no puede ni debe tergiversarse: Las islas Malvinas han sido, son y serán argentinas’ [Irrespective of the opinion that we each hold of the current Argentine government and its origin, continuity and motives – upon which we have made public our position of opposition – there is a clear fact that cannot and should not be distorted: the Malvinas Islands have been, are and will be Argentine] ( Resumen de Actualidad Argentina, 55, 1982).

15 An Argentine exiled in Madrid, Roberto Páez, denounced the apparent anti-imperialist nature of the military occupation of the Falklands–Malvinas as false: ‘La dictadura no defendió intereses nacionales, sino eventuales negociados de sus personeros con firmas multinacionales, así como un esquema geoestratégico en el que se reservaba cierto protagonismo que no excluía la ingerencia imperialista norteamericana’ [The dictatorship did not defend national interests, but possible deals between their officials and multinationals, as well as a geo-strategic vision in which their protagonism did not exclude the imperialist interference of the US] (‘La ocupación y la democracia’, Resumen de la Actualidad Argentina, 75, November 1982, pp. 24–6).

16 Grupo de Discusión Socialista, ‘Por la soberanía argentina en las Malvinas. Por la soberanía popular en Argentina’ (Visión socialista, 1982).

17 The Grupo de Discusión Socialista declared in ‘Por la soberanía’ that: ‘La aventura de la Junta Militar se corresponde con una posición inglesa anterior, no por disimulada menos violenta. Nos referimos a la prolongada e irritante renuncia de Gran Bretaña a cumplir una resolución de las Naciones Unidas que tendía a dar solución pacífica al conflicto en torno a la soberanía de las Malvinas. Esta disputa había tenido a su vez un comienzo violento que los británicos gustan olvidar o justificar con datos históricos muy poco convincentes. En 1833, una corbeta inglesa despojó por la fuerza a los argentinos de las islas que habían heredado como resultado de su independencia del dominio español’ [The military junta’s operation corresponds to a position previously sustained by Britain and is no less violent for being masked. We refer to Britain’s prolonged, infuriating refusal to fulfil a United Nations resolution that sought to provide a peaceful solution to the conflict over the sovereignty of the Malvinas. This dispute had, in turn, begun with violence, which the British prefer to forget or justify with rather unconvincing historical facts. In 1833, a British corvette used force to strip Argentines of the Islands they had inherited as a result of their independence from Spanish control] (Rozitchner, 2005, pp. 147–8). This line of argument was common among the revolutionary militants of the 1960s and 1970s in debates over who had ‘thrown the first stone’ in Argentine politics.

18 This was the position of the Partido Intransigente member Eduardo Andriotti Rondanin, who participated in the round-table discussion on the Malvinas organised by the Centro de Cultura Popular in Barcelona on 28 April, a few days before fighting began (Testimonio Latinoamericano, 14 (May/June 1982, pp. 11–16).

19 Separating the recognition that Argentina was experiencing a dictatorship from the recognition that the military had fulfilled a long-standing national, popular desire was not easy, particularly as no-one could predict the impact that the occupation would have on the internal political situation. The Madrid-based Agrupación Eva Perón stated that: ‘Con la recuperación de Malvinas, Georgias y Sandwichs del Sur para el patrimonio nacional, la Junta militar que hoy gobierno la Argentina ha producido un acontecimiento histórico cuyas consecuencias políticas, económicas y militares exceden la intencionalidad de los autores al tomar esa decisión’ [With the recovery of the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, the military junta currently ruling Argentina has created a historical event whose political, economic and military consequences exceed the intentions of those who took this decision].

20 The disputes surrounding the causal link between the ‘recovery’ of the Islands, the outbreak of the Argentine–British conflict and the continuation/end of the dictatorship were very heated. In response to some Peronist groups in Catalonia who trusted in the surge which the popular mobilisation for democracy in Argentina had achieved in the context of the invasion, the Grupo de Exiliados de Barcelona denounced the opportunism of those who had come out in favour of the ‘Malvinas cause’ without reflecting on who had brought about the ‘recovery’ of the Islands. To this end, they stated: ‘Los principales perjudicados inmediatos de esta aventura serán las masas trabajadoras. Haya o no haya guerra. Si hay guerra, el desangre económico y humano. Si no hay guerra, la bancarrota nacional por el bloqueo económico y el ahogo financiero. Todos aquellos sectores que en nombre de una pretendida brecha democrática entran en el juego patriotero compartirán con la Junta Militar la responsabilidad de las consecuencias que lleven esa aventura’ [Those who will be worst affected by this operation are the working classes, whether or not there is a war. If there is a war, through the economic drain. If there is no war, through the national bankruptcy caused by economic blockades and financial collapse. All sectors who, in the name of a ‘democratic breach’, enter into this jingoistic game will share with the military junta the consequences of this operation] (Resumen de la Actualidad Argentina, 55, 1982).

21 ‘Las Malvinas son argentinas, los desaparecidos también’ [The Malvinas are Argentine, and the disappeared are too]. In the same vein, the Trabajadores y Sindicalistas Argentinos en el Exilio (TYSAE) adopted the slogan: ‘Las Malvinas son argentinas, los muertos, presos y desaparecidos también’ [The Malvinas are Argentine, and the dead, imprisoned and disappeared are too].

22 The exiles were divided in their categorisation of the events of 2 April, debating whether to define them as an ‘occupation’, a ‘recovery’ or a ‘conquest’.

23 The Madrid-based Mesa de la Izquierda described the Malvinas war as ‘un crimen más de la dictadura’ [another crime of the dictatorship]. However, the group still insisted that it was also ‘un crimen más del imperialismo’ [another crime of imperialism] (Divergencia, 2, July 1982).

24 ‘Pero lo que termina por descalabrar los frágiles cimientos que sustentaban la credibilidad de la adhesión sincera a la causa de los derechos humanos, es la vehemencia acrítica con que muchos miembros de la diáspora argentina han reaccionado ante un operativo militar que, como el de las Malvinas, lleva implícitas acciones de guerra, con su secuela de muerte y mutilación para ambos bandos. Aún quienes han denunciado las especulaciones utilitarias y nada patrióticas por las cuales el Gobierno argentino inició esta peligrosa maniobra de distracción, han optado por la dialéctica de las armas, anteponiéndola a la de las ideas y las negociaciones, y han abjurado de su compromiso con la intangibilidad de la vida humana por miedo a perder el tren de una movilización popular. Reincidiendo en viejos tics, han exhumado la consigna “Soberanía o muerte”, como si no hubieran tenido suficientes testimonios de que la segunda de las dos alternativas debe ser erradicada, no sólo cuando se está en el bando de los perdedores sino, sobre todo, cuando se puede estar en el de los victoriosos. Y aunque el territorio reivindicado descanse en un mar de petróleo’ [But what finally destabilises the fragile foundations that underpinned the credibility of the sincere support for the human rights cause is the acritical vehemence with which many members of the Argentine diaspora have greeted a military operation which, like that of the Malvinas, includes actions of war, with its trail of death and mutilation by both sides. Even those who have denounced the utilitarian, unpatriotic reasons behind the Argentine government’s launch of this dangerous strategy of distraction have opted for the dialectic of arms, putting it before that of ideas and negotiations, and have turned their back on their commitment to the preservation of human life for fear of missing out on a popular mobilisation. Falling back into old habits, they have exhumed the slogan ‘Sovereignty or Death’, as though they had not seen sufficient proof that the second of those two alternatives should be eradicated, and not only when we are on the losing side but, above all, when we might be on the victorious one. Even if the claimed territory is floating in a sea of oil] (Goligorsky, 1982a).

25 Among those who signed the document ‘Por la soberanía argentina en las Malvinas: por la soberanía popular en la Argentina’ (10 May 1982) were José Aricó, Sergio Bufano, Ricardo Nudelman, Jorge Tula, Emilio de Ípola, Néstor García Canclini, Juan Carlos Portantiero and others (Rozitchner, 2005, pp. 139–53).

26 From a different political position, Osvaldo Bayer refused to interpret the behaviour of the Argentine people in terms of the demonstrations on 30 March and along the same lines as the European media. In his view, these perspectives had missed the most important element: ‘que en la manifestación realizada con motivo de la llegada de Haig a Buenos Aires, el ministro de Reagan, fue estruendosamente silbado por la multitud. El propio dictador Galtieri fue abucheado y silbado al automencionarse “Presidente de la Nación” e “intérprete del pueblo argentino”’ [In the demonstration held to protest Haig’s arrival in Buenos Aires, Reagan’s minister [the Secretary of State] was loudly booed by the crowd. The dictator Galtieri was also booed when he referred to himself as the ‘President of the Nation’ and ‘spokesperson for the Argentine people’] (Bayer, 1982).

27 The ‘liberal, left-wing’ component of the diaspora had reservations about this argument. When the war ended, Eduardo Goligorsky stated: ‘Quienes la apoyaron para no perder el tren de una movilización popular, ¿harán su autocrítica? ¿Adoptarán, finalmente, algún principio ético universal que los disuada a alistarse, personalmente o de manera vicaria, en todas las conflagraciones que desangran a su país y al mundo? ¿Se sentirán, por esta vez, más o menos responsables ante las madres de los nuevos muertos y desaparecidos y mutilados como los apologistas de la represión lo son ante las Madres de Plaza de Mayo?’ [Will those who supported the war to avoid missing out on a popular mobilisation engage in self-critique? Will they eventually adopt an ethical, universal principle that will dissuade them from enlisting themselves (directly or indirectly) in all the conflicts that ravage their country and the world? This time will they feel some degree of responsibility when faced with the mothers of those who have now been killed, injured or disappeared, as the apologists of repression do when faced with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo?] (1982b).

28 By comparing Justine, the masochist character created by the Marquis de Sade, with this branch of the Argentine left, Posse argued that ‘su profesión es poner en evidencia el mal de los otros en vez de imponer su bondad’ [their profession is to highlight the evil in others rather than impose their own goodness].

29 From Stockholm, Jaime Naifleish criticised ‘la dispersión del exilio con sus equívocas unidades antidictatoriales’ [the dispersion of the exiles with their confused anti-dictatorship groupings]. After the end of the war, the PRT member insisted that the political future could not be based on ‘el ilusionismo, el “porlomenismo” del mal menor’ [wishful thinking or ‘being content’ with the lesser of two evils] and that progress had to be made towards true dialogue (1982).

30 In response to the editors of Testimonio, who talked of ‘peculiarities’ (for example in the Peronist conception of democracy as taking place in the plaza rather than in parliament), Goligorsky declared: ‘Los latinoamericanos han de ser, según esta doctrina, “originales”: Sin habeas corpus, sin libertad para elegir a sus gobernantes, sin poder ver ni oír ni leer lo que se les antoje’ [Latin Americans will, according to this doctrine, be ‘original’: without habeas corpus, without the freedom to choose their government, without liberty to see, hear or read what they wish] (1983, p. 95).