“The islands came back, right?” Elena asks Juan exceptthat, taken away, has just self -medicated with something that does not know what it is but that he found on the shelf of the deposit of an abandoned pharmacy in which the two take refuge. Juan Salvo is the protagonist of The Eternalutaembodied by Ricardo Darínand Elena, played by Carla PetersonHe is his former partner and mother of his daughter.
when Elena tells Juan’s “the islands” in the third chapter of the series, which is already the most watched in the non -English speech world, he is talking about two things at the same time. He tells him about those moments in which Except seems to disconnect from what is happening around and connect with what seems to be a mixture of memories and visions that are increasingly revealed, as the plot takes place. And also tell you about Malvinas.
Malvinas enters with subtlety in this adaptation of the work of Héctor Germán Oesterheld y Francisco Solano López who created, as director and head of the script team, Bruno Stagnaro. The islands begin to appear in a graffiti in the middle of the streets besieged by mortal snowor in a decal that Argentines claim them, and end up being –spoiler Alert– protagonists of the protagonist’s life: in The Eternaluta from Stagnaro, which takes place in our days and not in the fifties, as in the original work, Juan Salvo is a former combatant.
In those mental islands that isolate him in his surroundings and cornered him against himself, the character embodied by Darín sees wells of land in which he can fall, fire balls that fall from heaven, two uniformed men, war flares. Are they mental islands or is it the posttraumatic stress having been in Malvinas? Are the mental islands not made of geographical?
“The first time I went out to the snow,” Juan says except his ex -partner, who is a medical one, to detail when the islands returned. All that subtlety that the claim for Malvinas sovereignty is appearing throughout the series, while the except visions are a little longer -and more revealing -, they become much more important when (more spoiler) in the fourth chapter of The Eternaluta We learned that this man we follow more than any other was in the Malvinas War. Even in Monte Longdon, the most fierce battle -And the most definitive- of the contest of 1982.
Juan Salvo knows how to throw, he knows where he should protect himself from the enemy’s shots, he knows how to cover his teammates, he knows where to run to escape and what should be done under pressure. He knows how to cushion the anxiety of his companions, although he does not know what to do with his, and knows perfectly that it can die at any time. That is why you can make the decision that, if you are going to die, you will die singing one of Manal With friends. AND knows all that because he went to war and returned.
He does what he can have fought in a war and survived to tell it, or to shut it up almost completely. When knowing all that becomes invivable, except seems to be disconnected for a few moments of time and the space in which it is: the islands assault it. But how was it, in real life, that battle that caught the bones and the unconscious to a fictional character?
There are ten kilometers and, by car, it has been traveling for about fifteen minutes. That is the distance between Puerto Argentino and Mount Longdon, in the SOLEDAD ISLAND. On June 8, 1982, in the middle of the Malvinas War, it was the Argentine troops that were settled in the capital of the islands. But British forces began to besiege the area, especially Longdon, a land that, due to its topographic and location characteristics, is key to “guarding” Puerto Argentino.
English troops attacked by land and also through teams of Paracharidists. The greatest siege to the mountain occurred during the nights, in full darkness. Just an Argentine section managed to defend an area of the mountain with stability, new British units came by other flanks to try to occupy it.
The numerical superiority of the English was notorious, and also of ammunition to attack the Argentine soldiers, who resisted where they were sent to support a garrison that had suffered too many casualties,
Between the 8 and the first hours of June 11, the British approached the mountain, 186 meters above sea level, for each road they found. It was a way of being closer to Puerto Argentino: occupying the capital was a central objective in a war that, although it was not known that June 8, was about to end. Argentina would sign the surrender just six days later.
The true battle of Monte Longdon, that in which Juan except remembers having been and in which there was also the man who lacks a leg and who, in the first chapter, cleans the glass of the car to Darín’s character a few hours before the deadly snow begins to fall, would start on June 11 at night.
The first big British coup was on June 11 around 20.30. In that attack, the enemy’s artillery fire intensified as it had not happened in the previous days, and managed to cut the telephone line that communicated to the leaders of each garrison with each other and with the central command. Now everyone depended on radio equipment.
An hour later, the British troops had managed to reach the position of the subtenient Juan Domingo Baldini and the section he headed. When communicating his novelties, Baldini announced that he would start a counterattack, but a few hours later he died in full combat. By 23, the English attack on Monte Longdon was massive, much more condensing than in the previous 72 hours.
Thus began a dynamic of British advance and Argentine counterattack To get those troops to retreat. But resources, human and arms, were increasingly disparate with respect to those of the enemy. The fighting were melee, so every garrison that came to reinforce the Argentine presence in the mountain found dead of both sides. In addition, those garrisons that approached the combat did so in crossfire, that is, risking their lives even before entering the true confrontation.
A onslaught headed by Lieutenant Raúl Castañeda around 3 in the morning of June 12 was effective enough for British troops to retreat as they had not done since the battle had begun. But the fire of the English mortars opened their way to start a new attack, to which newly arrived combatants to that area were added.
Two hours later, the British troops surrounded the Argentines in the north, the northwest, the west and the southwest of the mountain. In the middle of the Malvinense mob, with very low temperatures and a visibility practically closed at night and smokeonly the flares managed to illuminate the sky for a few seconds. Those flares that Juan Salvo sees when his mind takes him to an island, and that he also sees when, kilometers away, different members of a mission – the manage to enter the city in the midst of the danger – they are notified that everything goes well. Is that the mental islands, the Falklands and the streets covered with snow and fear are confused to the protagonist of The Eternaluta.
At 5 in the morning, Argentine troops no longer had a sufficient amount of fighters to try a new counterattack. But, above all, they hardly had ammunition. In the battle of Monte Longdon there were fighting with Bayonetsas if it were a much more remote era, and that was exacerbated when Argentine soldiers had no loads to shoot their most modern weapons.
Even with the last resources, the Argentine combatants who were standing tried until the early hours of the morning to go back to the British. But there was no way their attacks giving in.
The orders of withdraw from Monte Longdon They reached 6.30. The Argentine troops received the instruction from the commander of the Puerto Argentino group, which told them to leave that battlefield and go to Wireless Ridge, where there would be clashes the next day. The last to leave the mountain, according to several officers and soldiers in their memoirs, they did it crying. They sensed that it was the end, and walked among dead companions.
From that cliff of Soledad Island, the fighters that remained standing had to execute their artillery fire in the direction of the highest areas of Monte Longdon to try to intimidate the English. That faction said they have 23 casualties during the night battle, but some Argentine sources said that the enemy suffered the loss of between 50 and 60 men who were out of combat.
Among the Argentine troops, the stage was more bloody. About three hundred men had been part of the battle, and about ninety they returned in conditions To Puerto Argentino. The others were dead or seriously injured, or were taken as prisoners of war by the English.
No other battle of the Malvinas War was so bloody Like Monte Longdon. Just two days after its end, Argentina surrendered in that contest that had begun on April 2, promoted by Leopoldo Fortunato Galtierileader at that time of the dictatorship that ruled the country.
Although the naval domain of the British had been confirmed after their torpedoes reached and sank the Ara General Belgrano cruise, Argentine soldiers offered resistance until the end. Monte Longdon was the most forceful test of that melee resistance, in the middle of the cold, the night, the smoke, the fear, the fire. In the midst of all that appears to Juan except when the islands return.
Related news :