Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:57:39.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reframing Memory in the School Classroom: Remembering the Malvinas War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

MATTHEW C. BENWELL
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Narratives of memory have received considerable attention in Argentina but rarely have these been examined in relation to the 1982 Malvinas War. This article focuses on national memory narratives of the war manifest in educational resources and explores how and under what conditions local ways of remembering can transform and/or reproduce such narratives, through research within secondary schools in Río Gallegos, a city in the south of Argentina. It shows how the city's connections with the military and the war generated sensitivities that influenced how the Malvinas was engaged in the classroom. The localised framings deviated from predominant national memory narratives by underplaying the broader context of state terror and overlooking histories associated with the Malvinas before 1982.

Spanish abstract

Las narrativas sobre la memoria han recibido considerable atención en Argentina pero raramente se han examinado en relación a la Guerra de las Malvinas de 1982. Este artículo se centra en las narrativas sobre la memoria nacional de dicha guerra que se reflejan en recursos educativos y explora cómo y bajo qué condiciones formas locales de recordar pueden transformar y/o reproducir tales narrativas a través de una investigación en escuelas secundarias de Río Gallegos, una ciudad al sur de Argentina. El artículo muestra cómo las conexiones de la ciudad con los militares y la guerra generaron sensibilidades que influyeron en cómo el tema de las Malvinas se presentó en las clases. El encuadramiento local se separó de las narrativas predominantes de la memoria nacional al minimizar el contexto más amplio del estado de terror y hacer caso omiso de las historias asociadas con las Malvinas antes de 1982.

Portuguese abstract

Narrativas de memória têm recebido considerável atenção na Argentina, mas estas raramente têm sido examinadas em relação à Guerra das Malvinas de 1982. A partir de pesquisa em escolas secundárias em Río Gallegos, cidade do sul da Argentina, este artigo foca em narrativas nacionais de memória da guerra manifestas em recursos educacionais e explora como e sob quais condições modos locais de relembrar podem transformar e/ou reproduzir tais narrativas. Demonstra-se a forma como as conexões da cidade com os militares e com a guerra geraram sensibilidades que influenciaram a forma pela qual a questão das Malvinas foi tratada nas salas de aula. As abordagens locais divergiam das narrativas nacionais predominantes de memória ao reduzir o foco no contexto mais amplo do terror de Estado e omitir histórias associadas com as Malvinas antes de 1982.

Keywords

memorycommemorationeducationArgentinaMalvinas WarmemoriaconmemoracióneducaciónArgentinaguerra de las MalvinasmemóriacomemoraçãoeducaçãoArgentinaGuerra das Malvinas
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 273 - 300
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Elizabeth Jelin and Susana G. Kaufman, ‘Layers of Memories: Twenty Years After in Argentina’, in Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper (eds.), The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 89.

2 Federico Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2006); Federico Lorenz, Todo lo que necesitás saber sobre Malvinas (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2014); Rosana Guber, ¿Por qué Malvinas? De la causa nacional a la guerra absurda (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2012).

3 Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas.

4 Bosco, Fernando J., ‘Human Rights Politics and Scaled Performances of Memory: Conflicts among the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina’, Social and Cultural Geography, 5 (2004), pp. 381–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Legg, Stephen, ‘Contesting and Surviving Memory: Space, Nation, and Nostalgia in Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23 (2005), pp. 481–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ana Ros, The Post-Dictatorship Generation in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay: Collective Memory and Cultural Production (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

5 Jelin and Kaufman, ‘Layers of Memories’.

6 While the academic analysis of textbooks is fairly commonplace, fewer studies have focused on how state narratives are interpreted within school settings although for some pertinent examples see, Michelle J. Bellino, ‘Whose Past, Whose Present? Historical Meaning among the “Postwar” Generation in Guatemala’, in James H. Williams (ed.), (Re)Constructing Memory: School Textbooks and the Imagination of the Nation (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2014), pp. 131–52; Lisa Y. Faden, ‘History Teachers Imagining the Nation: World War II Narratives in the United States and Canada’, in James H. Williams (ed.) (Re)Constructing Memory, pp. 191–218.

7 Milstein, Diana and Mendes, Héctor, ‘Cuerpo y escuela. Dimensiones de la política’, Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, 62 (2013), pp. 143–61Google Scholar.

8 Benwell, Matthew C. and Dodds, Klaus, ‘Argentine Territorial Nationalism Revisited: The Malvinas/Falklands Dispute and Geographies of Everyday Nationalism’, Political Geography, 30 (2011), pp. 441–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For example, see, Vikki Bell, ‘Afterword: The Politics of “Memory” in the Long Present of the Southern Cone’, in Francesca Lessa and Vincent Druliolle (eds.), The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 209–21; Bosco, ‘Human Rights Politics’.

10 Bellino, ‘Whose Past’.

11 Jelin and Kaufman, ‘Layers of Memories’, p. 90.

12 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), p. 5.

13 Tabar, Linda, ‘Memory, Agency, Counter-Narrative: Testimonies from Jenin Refugee Camp’, Critical Arts: South-North Cultural Media Studies, 21 (2007), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone, ‘Transforming Memory’, in Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (eds.), Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 5.

15 Hodgkin and Radstone, ‘Transforming Memory’, p. 5.

16 Jelin and Kaufman, ‘Layers of Memories’, p. 90.

17 Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Struggles of Memory (London: Latin America Bureau, 2003); Friedrich, Daniel, ‘The Memoryscape in Buenos Aires: Representation, Memory, and Pedagogy’, Cultural Studies, 27 (2011), pp. 171–89Google Scholar.

18 Bell, ‘Afterword’, p. 214.

19 Osvaldo Bayer, Atilio A. Boron and Julio C. Gambina, El terrorismo de estado en la Argentina: apuntes sobre su historia y sus consecuencias (Buenos Aires: Instituto Espacio para la Memoria, 2010).

20 Federico Lorenz, ‘Se habla de Malvinas al estilo “Billiken”’, Página/12, 19 June 2011.

21 Federico Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas.

22 Guber, ¿Por qué Malvinas?

23 Guber, Rosana, ‘Bautismo de fuego y gracia de Dios. Las bellas memorias aeronáuticas de la guerra de Malvinas’, Tabula Rasa, 6 (2007), pp. 221–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas. The terms conscript and veteran are used interchangeably in this article. Most crucially, they are distinguishable from officers (i.e. senior members of the military dictatorship) because their military service was obligatory. For more on the contested nature of these definitions see Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas.

25 Federico Lorenz, ‘Visita a un sentimiento nacional’, available at http://www.perfil.com/contenidos/2014/07/25/noticia_0055.html (last accessed 10 October 2014).

26 Atkinson, David, ‘Kitsch Geographies and the Everyday Spaces of Social Memory’, Environment and Planning A, 39 (2007), pp. 521–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Emilio Crenzel, ‘The Memories of the Disappeared in Argentina’, in Gabriele Andreozzi (ed.), Desaparición: Argentina's Human Rights Trials (Oxford: Peter Lang AG), p. 296.

28 Ibid., p. 296.

29 Legg, Stephen, ‘Reviewing Geographies of Memory/Forgetting’, Environment and Planning A, 39 (2007), pp. 456–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tabar, ‘Memory, Agency, Counter-Narrative’.

30 Tabar, ‘Memory, Agency, Counter-Narrative’, p. 15. Bellino, ‘Whose Past’, p. 138.

31 Barbara A. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003); Brian Conway, Commemoration and Bloody Sunday: Pathways of Memory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

32 Conway, Commemoration and Bloody Sunday, p. 149.

33 Guber, ¿Por qué Malvinas?

34 Ghoshal, Raj A., ‘Transforming Collective Memory: Mnemonic Opportunity Structures and the Outcomes of Racial Violence Memory Movements’, Theory and Society, 42 (2013), pp. 329–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Ibid., p. 338. For a similar discussion of reputational trajectories and valence in memory projects in Latin American contexts see, Jansen, Robert S., ‘Resurrection and Appropriation: Reputational Trajectories, Memory Work, and the Political use of Historical Figures’, American Journal of Sociology, 112 (2007), pp. 953–1007CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Atkinson, ‘Kitsch Geographies’; Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995); Tim Edensor, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2002); Noah W. Sobe, ‘Textbooks, Schools, Memory, and the Technologies of National Imaginaries’, in James H. Williams (ed.) (Re)Constructing Memory, pp. 313–18.

37 Keith A. Crawford and Stuart J. Foster, War, Nation, Memory: International Perspectives on World War II in School History Textbooks (Charlotte, NC: IAP, 2007); Escudé, Carlos, ‘Argentine Territorial Nationalism’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 20 (1988), pp. 139–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grosvenor, Ian, ‘“There's No Place Like Home”: Education and the Making of National Identity’, History of Education: Journal of the History of Education Society, 23 (1999), pp. 235–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jonathan Scourfield, Bella Dicks, Mark Drakeford and Andrew Davies, Children, Place and Identity: Nation and Locality in Middle Childhood (London: Routledge, 2006); James H. Williams (ed.), (Re)Constructing Memory.

38 Hau, Matthias Vom, ‘Nationalism and War Commemoration – a Latin American Exceptionalism?’, Nations and Nationalism, 19 (2013), pp. 146–66Google Scholar.

39 Daniel S. Friedrich, ‘The Mobilization of Historical Consciousness in the Narratives about the Last Argentine Dictatorship’, in James H. Williams (ed.) (Re)Constructing Memory, pp. 13–34.

40 Scholars have explored the challenges of teaching other emotive and complex subjects such as the Holocaust. See, for example, Foster, Stuart, ‘Teaching about the Holocaust in English Schools: Challenges and Possibilities’, Intercultural Education, 24 (2013), pp. 133–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Carlos Escudé, Patología del nacionalismo: el caso argentino (Buenos Aires, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1987); Grosvenor, ‘“There's No Place Like Home”’; Ram, Haggay, ‘The Immemorial Iranian Nation? School Textbooks and Historical Memory in Post-Revolutionary Iran’, Nations and Nationalism, 6 (2000), pp. 67–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scourfield et al., Children, Place and Identity.

42 The research presented in this article is from the first stage of a larger project which sought to understand the ways in which the Malvinas is taught in Argentine schools from the perspective of politicians, officials and teachers. The next part of the research will work alongside young people in order to understand how they perceive commemoration of the Malvinas War and the sovereignty question more generally.

43 Faden, ‘History Teachers Imagining’, p. 191.

44 Bellino, ‘Whose Past’, p. 133.

45 Sobe, ‘Textbooks, Schools, Memory’, p. 313.

46 Bhattacharya, Neeladri, ‘Teaching History in Schools: the Politics of Textbooks in India’, History Workshop Journal, 67 (2009), pp. 99–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Ibid., p. 101.

48 Hau, Matthias Vom, ‘Unpacking the School: Textbooks, Teachers, and the Construction of Nationhood in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru’, Latin American Research Review, 44 (2009), pp. 127–54Google Scholar.

49 Milstein, Diana, ‘Un nuevo desafío: sobrevivir a la transformación educativa’, Cuadernos FHYCS-UNJu, 22 (2004), pp. 11–21Google Scholar.

50 Graciela Krichesky and Karina Benchimol, La educación argentina en democracia: transformaciones, problemas y desafíos de una escuela fragmentada (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Nacional, 2008).

51 Ana Pereyra, La relación de los adolescentes con la historia reciente de Argentina. Un studio exploratorio de la conciencia histórica entre estudiantes de escuelas medias públicas de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: FLACSO, 2007).

52 Grosvenor, ‘“There's No Place Like Home”’, p. 248.

53 Bellino, ‘Whose Past’.

54 BBC News, ‘Argentina to Open Falklands Museum, Says Fernández’, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17267714 (accessed 14 November 2013).

55 Scorer, James, ‘From la guerra sucia to “A Gentleman's Fight”: War, Disappearance and Nation in the 1976–1983 Argentine Dictatorship’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 27 (2008), pp. 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Escudé, ‘Argentine Territorial Nationalism’.

57 INDEC, Censo 2010 available at http://www.sig.indec.gov.ar/censo2010/ (accessed 10 October 2014).

58 Milagros Pierini and Pablo Gustavo Beecher, Cien años del Club Británico de Río Gallegos: los británicos en Santa Cruz (Río Gallegos: Club Británico de Río Gallegos, 2011).

59 Andrew Graham-Yooll, La colonia olvidada: tres siglos de habla inglesa en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 2007); Michael Mulhall, The English in South America (Buenos Aires: Standard Office, 1878); Glyn Williams, The Welsh in Patagonia: the State and the Ethnic Community (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991).

60 Pierini and Beecher, Cien años del Club Británico.

61 Benwell and Dodds, ‘Argentine Territorial Nationalism’.

62 Milagros Pierini and Pablo Gustavo Beecher, ‘Malvinas y Santa Cruz: una relación histórica quebrada por una guerra’, Malvinas en la universidad: concurso de ensayos (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación de la Nación, 2012).

63 The president made reference to her memories of living in Río Gallegos during the 1982 war in a speech in Ushuaia in April 2015.

64 Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas.

65 Ibid.

66 Pensar Malvinas: una selección de fuentes documentales, testimoniales, ficcionales y fotográficas para trabajar en el aula (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación de la Nación, 2009). For example, the Malvinas museum in Buenos Aires consciously avoids associating the Malvinas with the 1982 war exclusively and focuses on other historical events crucial to Argentina's sovereignty claim, as well as the islands' fauna and flora.

67 Interview with Alberto Sileoni, Minister of Education for the Nation, Buenos Aires, 25 March 2013.

68 Interview with an education official at Argentina's Ministry of Education, Equipo Educación y Memoría, 20 March 2013.

69 Although see Lorenz, ‘Se habla de Malvinas’.

70 Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas.

71 Interview with a public secondary school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 3 March 2013.

72 Jelin and Kaufman, ‘Layers of Memory’; Sobe, ‘Textbooks, Schools, Memory’.

73 Tabar, ‘Memory, Agency, Counter-Narrative’; Vom Hau, ‘Nationalism and War Commemoration’.

74 Legg, ‘Reviewing Geographies’.

75 Interview with an education official at the Provincial Office of Higher Education, Santa Cruz, Río Gallegos, 6 March 2013.

76 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory; Legg, ‘Reviewing Geographies’.

77 Jelin and Kaufman, ‘Layers of Memory’.

78 Interview with a private secondary school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 15 March 2013.

79 See Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado: cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo. Una discusión (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores, 2005); Friedrich, ‘The Mobilization of Historical Consciousness’.

80 Interview with a private secondary school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 15 March 2013.

81 Atkinson, ‘Kitsch Geographies’; Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory.

82 Interview with a public secondary school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 11 March 2013.

83 Bellino, ‘Whose Past’.

84 The film Iluminados por el fuego directed by Tristán Bauer (2005) is a graphic depiction of the experiences of conscripts in the islands and is now distributed by the Ministerio de Educación de la Nación as a DVD.

85 Also observed in the research of Graham, Brian and Whelan, Yvonne, ‘The Legacies of the Dead: Commemorating the Troubles in Northern Ireland’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25 (2007), pp. 476–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an example of extracts from diaries written by conscripts see, Leonardo Abrahan, Diario de Malvinas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2006).

86 See Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas.

87 Interview with Alberto Sileoni, Minister of Education for the Nation, Buenos Aires, 25 March 2013.

88 These observations are based on short visits to several schools in the city of Santa Fe during March to April 2015.

89 Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas.

90 Conway, Commemoration and Bloody Sunday; Faden, ‘History Teachers Imagining’.

91 Interview with a private secondary school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 7 March 2013.

92 Andrew Graham-Yooll, La colonia olvidada.

93 Pierini and Beecher, Cien años del Club Británico, p. 261.

94 Hodgkin and Radstone, ‘Remembering Suffering: Trauma and History. Introduction’, in Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (eds.), Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 97–103.

95 Friedrich, ‘The Mobilization of Historical Consciousness’.

96 Interview with a private secondary school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 15 March 2013.

97 Cf. Bellino, ‘Whose Past’.

98 Legg, Stephen, ‘Memory and Nostalgia’, Cultural Geographies, 11 (2004), pp. 99–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas; Guber, ‘Bautismo de fuego’.

100 Interestingly, during a visit to a public school in Santa Fe in April 2015 an explicit link was made between these two national dates, as they were commemorated together during the same ceremony. Although anecdotal, it is suggestive of an approach which more closely resembles state narratives of memory in terms of linking the Malvinas War to the context of the dictatorship. For an additional reflection on how the dates might be remembered together see Lorenz, ‘Se habla de Malvinas’.

101 Natasha Niebieskikwiat, Lágrimas de hielo: torturas y violaciones a los derechos humanos en la guerra de Malvinas (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2012).

102 The gathering of veterans in many central plazas in cities throughout Argentina is testament to these grievances which centre on, for example, the issue of financial support through state pensions and (mental) health provision. In recent years debates about who should be eligible for the pension have sparked angry protests with some arguing the category ‘ex-combatant’ should include those who were on standby in the continent in 1982 but who did not see action in the south Atlantic.

103 Interview with a private secondary school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 7 March 2013.

104 Lorenz, Las guerras por Malvinas; Scorer, ‘From la guerra sucia’.

105 Vom Hau, ‘Nationalism and War Commemoration’.

106 Interview with an education official, Argentina's Ministry of Education, 20 March 2013.

107 Atkinson, ‘Kitsch Geographies’; Bellino, ‘Whose Past’.

108 Vom Hau, ‘Nationalism and War Commemoration’; Ram, ‘The Immemorial Iranian Nation?’; Escudé, ‘Argentine Territorial Nationalism’.

109 Interview with a private school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 15 March 2013.

110 Interview with a different private school history teacher, Río Gallegos, 7 March 2013.

111 Vom Hau, ‘Unpacking the School’; Benwell, Matthew C., ‘From the Banal to the Blatant: Expressions of Nationalism in Secondary Schools in Argentina and the Falkland Islands’, Geoforum, 52 (2014), pp. 51–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 See Bosco, ‘Human Rights Politics’.

113 Francesca Lessa and Vincent Druliolle (eds.), The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Ros, The Post-Dictatorship Generation.

114 Conway, Commemoration and Bloody Sunday; Ghoshal, ‘Transforming Collective Memory’.

115 Although see Bellino, ‘Whose Past’; Faden, ‘History Teachers Imagining’; Bhattacharya, ‘Teaching History in Schools’; Vom Hau, ‘Unpacking the School’.