Art That Speaks Of Pain, and Broken Hearts

A Difficult Subject

It is impossible to live here in Argentina and not be aware of the lasting pain of those who lost family members in the Falklands/Malvinas War of 1982. Nobody loves family more than the Argentinos do, and the war cast a long shadow over this society. This blog entry is just about the art, and the enduring pain which that art reflects. It is not about politics, or who did what, or which nation has what claim, or any of that crap. Please respect that in your comments, if any. Politicians make wars, and people fight in them, but somehow it is never the children of those politicians who do the dying.

La Ruta Más Difícil

The pic at the top is the large view and this below is a close up of the words under the tail of the plane. The words mean "Homage to the brave Argentine pilots who flew to the stars by the most difficult road. Honor and Glory!" And below it says, "And a Hawk in the heart".

Pipi y Tucu

This is simply a memorial to two particular A-4 pilots who flew and died in the war. I do not know their story, but someone cared enough to commission this painting. The art is in a cartoonish style, but the loss was all too real.

Madre Malvinera

I used a close up of this as header for a poem I wrote in Castellano and published here a few weeks ago, but I wanted to include the full painting, as it tells a story.

When the fighting on land was done, many of the Argentine dead were simply tumbled into a mass grave and covered over with earth, without being identified, and for many years the UK government refused to do anything about this, ignoring the traditional courtesy of returning the remains of fallen soldiers once a war is over.

Finally 3 years ago, the government of the UK grudgingly allowed Argentine forensic archaeology teams to travel to the islands and begin the long, sad process of DNA identification of the remains, and their return to their next of kin. This is called Madre Malvinera, or "Mother of the Malvinas" and represents in the abstract all the mothers of those whose remains were left unidentified in that mass grave for three and a half decades.

Summary

I spent much of the day wrestling with infuriatingly elusive PC issues, and I'm rushing to get this posted before midnight UTC to qualify for Wednesday Walk. There is another installment of pictures for next week.