The Argentine rock revolution that emerged after the Malvinas War

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The phenomenon already existed, although it was semi-underground and the heritage of a few.

Suddenly -yes, because it was suddenly, no one imagined it would happen- a war broke out, and the

unnatural alliance between a military dictatorship and the emerging music scene of a boiling country led to an explosive success: Argentine rock.

It was in 1982, 40 years ago, the four decades that have passed since the Falklands War.

That "alliance" was neither sought nor explicit, because the immense majority of the musicians were against the "milicos", as

.

But it happened in fact, because the nationalist fervor that invaded the country with the seizure of the islands on April 2 affected all walks of life.

Also to music.

"There is a great misconception that the Malvinas War was the great cause of a series of phenomena in popular culture,"

Mariano del Mazo, journalist, writer and great connoisseur of Argentine rock history , qualifies

"What the Malvinas War did was precipitate a series of things that were brewing prior to the war. The

was already taking place in 1980, 1981, with

and punk, which until then were not very acquaintances".

But it was still a limited phenomenon that, for broad swaths of the population, was even associated with suspicion.

None defined, but the aura of suspicion in a country steeped in fear was enough to get away from those musicians.

The decision to ban listening to music in English on the radio gave a boost to Argentine bands that would not have occurred with such force and speed had

The suspicions were diluted and the middle classes turned massively to the phenomenon.

The Malvinas war ended on June 14, after 74 days, with a clear

, 649 deaths from the South American country and 255 British.

Abel Gilbert and Esteban Buch are two Argentine journalists who brought together the

, Gourmet Música, 2022)

.

Fearsome, harrowing, happy, contradictory sounds.

The journalist Matías Roveta, in an article for the website

, summarized what Gilbert and Buch heard and put into his book.

The authors "refer to the communiqué of the dictatorship with which society was notified about the landing in Puerto Argentino, at dawn on April 2, 1982. Immediately, other sound tracks entered the scene: the

, which invades

public space like a

(Leopoldo Fortunato) Galtieri on national television announcing the ominous "if they want to come let them come."

Those were the sounds of the days before and of the nationalist fervor on the continent.

On the cold islands, crossed by the strong winds of the desolate southern Atlantic Ocean, the sounds were different: "Not having binoculars or night vision,

had to use their ears to identify types of shots or proximity of explosions to survive ".

In Buenos Aires another war was lived.

The combats had been going on for two weeks, and in the facilities of the Obras Sanitarias club the Festival of American Solidarity (later renamed "Latin American Solidarity") was being prepared.

More than

saw and listened to Charly García, Lusi Alberto

, Leon Gieco, Juan Carlos Baglietto, Raúl Porchetto... The proceeds went to a Patriotic Fund, from which mismanagement and

Charly García sang

In

to Malvinas the focus is on that moment: "In the middle of the war and against the grain of the nationalist effervescence, Charly composed a song with a critical tone that included the reference to listening to

.

It was a festival inevitably bound to contradiction, says Roveta's article.

"Beyond the fact that at all times those musicians had the will to transmit a

on stage, the meaning of that event remains controversial. 'The call for peace, which was at the root of the rock countercultural imaginary (... .), lived that time, not without contradictions, with the vindication of

over the Malvinas Islands and empathy with the young soldiers who were at the front''", he explains.

Del Mazo insists that the rock that came to the fore during the war was ready long ago to take that massive step, the one that 40 years later allows

to play in a bar in the Madrid neighborhood of

The atmosphere allowed it: there were demonstrations, the political parties were emerging from a thaw of several years and a magazine like

criticized

the dictatorship with

"Argentine rock had a high-quality origin in the 70s and developed in authoritarian situations, like that of 74, even though it was formally a democracy, and in the dictatorship, Malvinas opened

. Argentine rock had a lot of influence on Latin America because it came from many years of rock made with Argentine canons. Argentine rock is not rock made in Argentina, but Argentine rock. The criticism of the tangueros - "foreign music sung in Spanish" - was a mistake, when in Mexico they were famous Teen Tops, here, in Argentina, much more interesting things happened".

"Soda Stereo was not a sparkling, bubbly group that imitated

or

, it was a band that had listened to a lot of Argentine rock, as well as international bands."

In those months there was confusion.

It was the year before the return of democracy after seven years of dictatorship, a return that would be embodied in

, the Argentine Adolfo Suárez (except for very important nuances).

The military, who believed that the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) would give them the support of the United States, found that the alliance between

in Washington and

in London was evident, although certain forms were kept.

Partners in NATO and historical partners, what did you expect?

Thus, those soldiers who came to power with the fight against far-left terrorism as their main currency were seen, forging relations with

or Muammar El Gaddafi's Libya.

Latin American and Third World solidarity was solid, palpable, and the declining Argentine dictatorship had no choice but to embrace it.

This also influenced within the borders of the country.

"With the prohibition of showing music in English, a lot of music that was not known in Argentina began to be known, such as

, by

, which was quite functional to what the dictatorship wanted to show", recalls Del Mazo.

"And the end of the Malvinas War and the opening that led to democracy marked the reunion of the people with the old banned,

The returns of the Uruguayan Alfredo Zitarrosa or the Spanish

were ceremonies, more than musical, cathartic".

"It was the amalgamation of old glories with a lot of new boys and girls. Rock began to be taken as a product and that product began to be exported. In a bad economic moment in Argentina, already in democracy during the Alfonsín government I

remember the headline of a magazine:

dollars entered the country through rock. In that circuit bands were strengthened in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, until they reached Mexico and Los Angeles " .

"We have to highlight Soda Stereo, a little later Los Cadillacs, and GIT, and Zas. Los Violadores a little less... They were the bands that hit the

very hard , a market that was later lost and was occupied by Mexican

. Charly García continued to make excellent music, but he was never interested in exporting, he remained a cult figure. And I remember Los Pericos, who were the first to record an album in English being Argentines. They were highly criticized for that detail. A band like Sumo, less, because its singer, Luca Prodan, was not Argentine".

Del Mazo has a certain longing for that cathartic moment.

"The approach that an artist has to make to create in a dictatorship is very different from what he has to do to create in a democracy. The creators had to squeeze a little more the resource of allegory, of metaphor, and that sometimes results in great works of art. The deployment of

sometimes makes some things easier...".

"Never again was the communion between the musicians and the people so strong from the political point of view.

singing

... There was a reverberation that will not happen again, because these times they have lost that political clarity. Today everything is much more

and much more confused."

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