MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Malvinas veterans revisit scenes of war where they were tortured by their officers

Former conscript Rubén indicates where in 1982 he spent ten hours staked out on the cold wet ground as a punishment

In the this 30th anniversary year of the armed conflict between British and Argentine forces it is not surprising that we have seen, and will continue to see, increased numbers of veterans from both sides arriving in the Falkland Islands.

What does surprise many civilians, particularly those who were not here to witness warfare first hand, is the discovery that often those who fought find it easier to relate to their former enemies than to those who have never had to bear arms.

That this can be so is because it is the job of a soldier, in battle, to try to kill or at the very least, capture, the enemy. He has to obey orders; it’s what he is paid for and war is what he has trained for.

He doesn’t necessarily have to enjoy what he is doing, or feel any particular animosity towards those he is trying to kill, even when they are trying equally hard to kill him.

If it is not unusual for ex-combatants to bear little ill-will against their enemies, ill-will between units on the same side or between the ordinary soldiery and their officers would seem to be much more common.

This is particularly so in the case of many of the conscripted soldiers who fought in the Falklands on the Argentine side in 1982.

Fighting cold and hunger

For many of them the battle against the twin enemies of cold and hunger began long before the arrival on the Islands of the British forces and their hardships were added to by the ill-treatment they received at the hands of some of their officers and non-commissioned officers.

On May 27 1982 Rubén Gleriano, who was just a few days short of his nineteenth birthday was caught attempting to filch food from a military canteen.

He was hungry because since Argentina’s national day, May 25, when all the troops were given a bar of chocolate by General Menendez, he and his companions, who lived in a trench just at the side of where Sulivan Shipping’s office now is on Davis Street, had received nothing else to eat. For this crime he spent ten hours from four in the afternoon staked out on the cold wet ground.

In the Falklands for the first time since 1982, last week Rubén showed Penguin News the spot where he had suffered this punishment. Thanks to a slight slope in the ground he had been able to see Lookout Rocks until he lost consciousness and although many houses have been built in the area since then, the rocks helped him to locate the spot.

At 2am, when he was nearly dead from hypothermia, his companions were able to free him and carry him back to their trench. As he still did not regain consciousness, the next day they took him to a first aid post where he remained, unaware of his surroundings for a further two days. When finally he returned to Argentina at the end of hostilities he needed surgery on his feet which had been frozen.

In 2007 Penguin News named Rubén, who comes from Mar del Plata, as one of a number of former soldiers who were bringing law suits against officers and NCOs for crimes against humanity, including the torture and even murder of their own troops.

Some of the testimonies by former members of the 12th Infantry Regiment from the Northern Province of Corrientes concerned two soldiers allegedly shot to death and four others who died of starvation and at least 13 who, like Rubén Gleriano were staked out on the ground.

Soldiers were made to sign a silence agreement

At the end of hostilities, all returning Argentine soldiers were made to sign an agreement not to recount their experiences, even to their own families. It has only been in the last few years, in the wake of books and subsequently films like Iluminados por el Fuego (Made Crazy by Fire) which gave graphic accounts of the treatment dished out to conscripts, that what started simply as rumours have had a more public presence.

Like many other former conscripts, since being released from military service, Rubén has dedicated himself to setting right the wrongs that were done to them and now works for the Argentine Senate in Buenos Aires where he and another ex-conscript head a department concerned with the rights and welfare of their former companions in arms.

As Rubén says, no lawyer or legislator will help the veterans of the Falklands war, unless they themselves work for changes in the law.

Despite the willingness of the present Argentine government to disassociate itself from the actions of the military dictatorship, it is a measure of the difficulties facing ex-combatants in their search for justice that the case brought by Rubén and his colleagues from Corrientes which we reported as going before the provincial court in Tierra del Fuego in 2007 is still waiting to be heard in the Argentine Supreme Court, possibly in March 2013.

It is a slow business, but Rubén clings to the belief that in the end justice will prevail.

By John Fowler – Penguin News - Stanley