Everyday life and war. Experiences of the Apostadero Naval Malvinas members’ in the South Atlantic conflict

Abstract

On 2 April 1982 Argentine forces landed in the Malvinas islands, which provoked the outbreak of the only Argentine war in the 20^th century. After two and a half months, on 14 June, it ended with his surrender. During that period, who were in the islands have developed various strategies for living and survival in extraordinary conditions, learned to be subject to daily shelling, incorporating the death of his everyday life, and shaped new ties between co-location, destination, unit.

The Apostadero Naval Malvinas members’ were one of the few groups that  lived  together the 74 days that the war lasted, because that unit was created the same day of the landing and existed until the end of the conflict. The aim of this article is, primarily, to reconstruct the everyday life of this group during the war and the changes that took place, considerating the context of the war, number of personnel, shared spaces, activities that took place. Within this framework, it analyzes one of the elements that was always present: their life together and the relationships that were built among its members, using, mainly, oral sources.