Rosana Guber
guber@arnet.com.ar
CONICET- IDES (Argentina)
Abstract:
The Argentine Air Force turned its Air Battle on Malvinas/Falklands against the Royal Task Force into history by setting an official commemoration, promoting paintings and creating the hunting-falcon as the main war character. By founding a time-space framework and a specific actor in recent Argentine history, the aerial institution challenged dualistic approaches with which most of the literature depicts the latest dictatorship (1976-1983) as a military venture against other Argentine citizens. International war was thus a turning point in military identity. Henceforth Malvinas evolved as the setting where internal military conflict became public, political and historical. Despite their bad equipment and lack of experience in aiming at naval targets, the risky attacks of the young pilots were resignified as the sacrifice for the Motherland, thus severing the Air Force from the war and political pasts of the two other armed forces, the Army and the Navy.
Keywords: air force, Malvinas/Falklands, social memory
