MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Malvinas Families will inaugurate Argentine Memorial next October

The cenotaph has been ready since 2004.

The Commission of Malvinas war Families confirmed to the Buenos Aires press that the Argentine Memorial at the Falklands’ Darwin cemetery will be inaugurated next October in two consecutive Saturdays. An advance party to coordinate the events is expected in the Falkland Islands at the end of the month.

The dates made public Monday follow an agreement between Britain and Argentina announced last May by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, which was described as “an absolutely humanitarian act”.

The Argentine cenotaph which cost an estimated one million US dollar was built in Argentina and transported in blocks to the Falklands in February 2004.

It was assembled and declared completed two months later in April but has since been waiting for the official inauguration ceremony.

According to the families commission the two ceremonies on October 3 and 10 will include religious services and time for the next of kin to be with their beloved.

The first batch of relatives will leave Buenos Aires October 2nd, spend overnight in Rio Gallegos and on Saturday fly to the Falklands in the weekly Lan service.

Members of the Families Commission, and Argentine officials headed by Gabriel Fucks from the Foreign Affairs Ministry White Helmets (a special peace and aid corps) will be in the first flight.

Meantime in Argentina rallies and ceremonies in support of the families will be held in Buenos Aires and other cities, and on Sunday a peregrination to the Virgin of Lujan, patron saint of Argentina has been scheduled.

An image of the Virgin of Lujan will be carried to the Darwin cemetery in the second flight of 240 next of kin on Saturday October 10. A specially built shrine is waiting for the image at the Darwin Argentine cemetery.

The second group of relatives during the previous week will be participating in a march together with Malvinas veterans to Congress in Buenos Aries and later to Plaza de Mayo for a “mass dedicated to the memory of the heroes” in the city’s Cathedral officiated by Argentina’s cardinal Jorge Bergoglio.

The long delayed inauguration was stalled by Argentine authorities’ insistence that all next of kin travel as a single group on an only date. The Falkland Islands government which has always been open to Malvinas next of kin requests however pointed out that the Islands does not have the logistics to handle an estimated 800 people in a single visit. There are not even enough buses to take the next of kin from MPA to Darwin cemetery or 800 beds if by any chance visitors were unable to return on the same day.

Finally the two trips were agreed with LAN, which normally calls at MPA on Saturday afternoons and flies back to the continent an hour later. On these two occasions however the aircraft will remain sufficient time for the ceremonies to take place.

Most probably Lan will be making the flights with an aircraft with greater capacity than the normal Airbus 320, according to the reports in Buenos Aires.