June 14, 1982

How Combatants of the Argentine Army Experienced the Ceasefire

Abstract

During the Malvinas war, June 14th, 1982 is named as the day of the Argentine “surrender”, the “capitulation”, the “ceasefire”, but also as the day of “the maximum resistance”. How officers, non-commissioned officers and conscript soldiers of the Argentine Army experienced it, how the decision was made and how it was presented by the military and the British government, are the topics that are studied here. The sequence of communications between the de facto president General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri and the governor of the islands General Mario Benjamín Menéndez is analyzed through Argentine and British bibliographic and documentary sources. The main corpus of this research is constituted by the testimonies produced within Voces de Malvinas (Vassallo, 2022) project and during the eleven seasons of the radio program Malvinas Causa Central (Natalizio, 2012). Generally, four axes are repeated in the testimonies of the combatants: the impact of the ceasefire news, the delivery of weapons and the review by the British, seeing the national flag lowered and/or the British flag waved, and being prisoners of the English.