Veterans, Families and the Domestic Geopolitics of Remembering War

ABSTRACT

This paper makes a key contribution to emerging debates at the intersection of domestic geopolitics and critical military studies by focusing on how veterans and their families experience memory and the commemoration of war. Veterans of the Malvinas War in Santa Fe, Argentina, framed the ‘next generation’ – encompassing their daughters and sons – as central to sustaining memory of the 1982 war and interest in the contemporary geopolitics of the sovereignty dispute. It then presents the sometimes complex experiences and emotions of veterans’ family members in order to highlight the tensions bound up with remembering war, commemorative performances and the everyday geopolitics of the sovereignty dispute. The paper concludes by calling for a domestic geopolitics that engages the voices of veterans and other family members to enable sensitive analyses of the ways memory and the commemoration of war are lived, negotiated, (re)produced, evaded and even resisted through familial spaces and relations.

Introduction

‘My dad always talks to me about this, he says that veterans are already old, most of them are over 50 and it’s like… after they’ve left us, after they’re gone, someone has to continue keeping alive the memory of what happened, of our reasons to defend not only the Malvinas cause, but everything to do with, with the sovereignty of our homeland. And if that’s forgotten, who, who’s going to fight for that? So, he always talks to me about its importance, even though they won’t be there in the future, I can be there, as a representative of the Malvinas veterans. Not as one of them but as a representative of this group and of these ideologies, right? And of that passion for the [Malvinas] cause. So, I think it’s important that other young people, children and relatives, because not all of them are sons and daughters of Malvinas veterans, are there … are there supporting the cause’. (Fede, son of a veteran officer, aged 26, 20/07/16)

The anxieties associated with the loss of people, and most especially war veterans, who embody and have direct memory of past wars is evident across diverse national contexts (Basham 2016; Edkins 2003; Hodgkin and Radstone 2003a; Pennell 2018). These preoccupations centre on the perceived importance of remembering ‘sacrifices’ made in the past in order to retain and reproduce deep-rooted notions of identity and national values into the future (Carr 2003; Drozdzekwski, De Nardi, and Waterton 2016b; Habashi 2013). As a consequence, it is so often the ‘next generation’ that is expected ‘to bear the responsibility of carrying memory forward’ (Pennell 2018, 84). This burden can fall particularly heavily on the daughters, sons and families of war veterans as illustrated in the quote that opens this paper. Fede was the son of a veteran officer who served in the Argentine Air Force in the Falklands/Malvinas War in 1982, a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the UK over territories in the South Atlantic. His father had reminded him of his role in ‘keeping alive’ memory of the Malvinas War and its connection to the contemporary geopolitics of Argentina’s sovereignty claim to the British-administered islands, a cause that family members of veterans and younger generations of Argentines should support according to Fede.

How the Malvinas War and its protagonists – the veteran officers and conscripts – are remembered and commemorated has been the subject of contestation and controversy in Argentina and this paper examines some of these societal struggles and sensitivities within the domestic spaces and relations of war veterans (Benwell 2021; Guber 2001; Lorenz 2021). More broadly, national discourses of memory related to the Malvinas focus on paying homage to the héroes who fought for ‘a just cause’ – the recuperation of the islands from the British colonial usurper – that was corrupted by a widely discredited military dictatorship (1976–83), responsible for taking the nation to war, as well as the abuse of civilians in mainland Argentina and conscripts sent to fight in the South Atlantic (Dobry 2012; Niebieskikwiat 2012). The veterans involved in the research presented below had connections with the military either as professionals or conscripts and while their politics in relation to memory of the dictatorship varied, they were unanimous in expressing pride in having served their nation. Recognition of their national service and, most especially, that of their comrades killed in action was seen as an important way to commemorate these sacrifices and keep la causa (i.e. the recuperation of sovereignty over the islands, as well as the societal inclusion and protection of those who fought in the war) high on the national political agenda in the present and into the future.

Studies of critical and feminist geopolitics have increasingly turned to domestic spaces and relations to argue that, ‘Geopolitics does not simply permeate relations of care, familial forms and notions of the self, but forges them too’ (Cowen and Story 2013, 343). This body of work picks up on the absence of quotidian relations and practices in the spaces of the home in geopolitical scholarship, and demonstrates how they can be intimately (re)produced by geopolitics (e.g. Brickell 2012; Carter and Woodyer 2020; Harker 2009, 2011; Smith 2009, 2020). Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly (2021) have recently contributed to this agenda highlighting the dearth of research from critical military geography investigating the lives of children and families of serving soldiers (although see Cree 2020a; Gray 2023; Long 2022a, 2022b; Wool 2015). This is a pressing topic of investigation given ‘the concept of military citizenship not only shapes soldiers’ lives but also those of their immediate families’ (Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly 2021, 253). The interest in other family members and their relations with military citizenship through the lens of serving soldiers can be productively built on and extended to relatives of those who previously served in the military. The connection to the military, military service and its wider geopolitical claims and causes does not, of course, end with the termination of contractual military service. These strong links with the military, while dependent on the personal, cultural, societal and (geo)political context (see Caddick 2018), can manifest and be maintained through, among others, relationships with fellow veterans (and their families), participation in commemorative practices, as well as involvement in various political and geopolitical campaigns.

This paper makes a key contribution to debates at the intersection of domestic geopolitics and critical military studies. It shows how the domestic arena and relations between veterans and their families are central to understanding the intimate ways predominant practices of remembrance and commemoration are reproduced and/or resisted. Significantly, it examines the accounts of (post-)military servicemen and family members in Latin America, a continent and context that has received markedly less attention relative to work in Europe and North America (Natale 2022). Studies interrogating war remembrance and commemoration are often drawn to public performances and national discourses of memory. In contrast, the research below extends scholarship exploring everyday, domestic geopolitics by examining the complex experiences and emotions of veterans and their families when reflecting on their relationships with memory and commemoration of war. This focus, firstly, enables intimate insights into veterans’ anxieties regarding the reproduction of war remembrance into the future, as well as the experiences of veterans’ daughters, sons and partners who are often expected to keep these memories (a)live. Secondly, it draws attention to and extends debates about the negotiated agencies of family members of war veterans in relation to performances of militarism. While veterans’ families can overtly resist or avoid commemorative parades and performances (see Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly 2021), this paper emphasises the sensitivities inherent to, for instance, choosing not to participate and/or countering the (geo)political perspectives of veterans, most especially for family members embedded in complex relationships that crosscut the personal and political (see Basham 2016; Caddick 2018; Cree 2020b).

It proceeds with a review of relevant literature, drawing on the work of feminist scholars who have long underlined the entanglements between domestic life and geopolitics (Brickell 2012; Pain and Staeheli 2014). It then turns to existing work from critical military studies focusing on the lives of military personnel and their families, before examining studies that have highlighted the relational, intimate and intergenerational transmission of embodied and emotional memories within domestic space. Contextual information pertaining to the Falklands/Malvinas War, the ongoing sovereignty dispute and the role of veterans in commemorating and disseminating knowledge about the Malvinas in Argentina is outlined before presenting details about the research study. Discussion of the empirical data is followed by some concluding remarks that reiterate the call for research with the families of veterans that can shed light on how memory of geopolitical events is transmitted, (re)produced and resisted within domestic spaces and relationships.

A Family Affair? Memory of War in the Domestic Spaces and Relations of Veterans

In recent years, the domestic sphere has become a vibrant area of research for scholars of geopolitics looking to examine ‘the ways in which “the home” and the “traditional” terrain of the geopolitical are in-fact folded into each other in multiple ways’ (Carter and Woodyer 2020, 1046). The recent Special Section in this journal on ‘Domesticating Geopolitics’ is testament to the increasing levels of interest in ‘debates around intimacy, everyday and domestic(ated) geopolitics’, manifest through, for instance, family relations, bodies, emotions, mundane objects and practices that constitute these environments (ibid, 1046). One of the major interventions of this body of work from feminist political geographers, has been the challenging of historical and persistent disciplinary dualisms set up between domestic life and geopolitics. Brickell (2012, 585) counters the tendency to conceptualise the domestic arena as somewhere solely influenced by geopolitics in a unidirectional, top-down fashion, instead referring to the ‘mutual imbrication of geopolitics and home’. This approach acknowledges how geopolitics can be influenced by, as well as (re)produced within and through, domestic spaces and relations. Others have looked to address the relative invisibility of the family and the most intimate aspects of familial relationships within studies of geopolitics (Cowen and Story 2013; Harker 2011, 2012; Smith 2009, 2012). Harker’s (2011, 312) work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories shows how ‘families do not stand outside or apart from geopolitical processes’. He convincingly argues that this focus on domestic spaces and practices can ‘create more intimate knowledges about the people and things’ implicated in (dealing with and getting by) the everyday geopolitics of occupation (Harker 2009, 322). In order to address the ‘absent presence’ of the domestic sphere in political geographical inquiry, this body of work makes a case for investigating ‘the family’s everyday rhythms, tediums and dilemmas as relevant epistemological registers for geopolitical study’ (Cowen and Story 2013, 346).

Research by political geographers on military families has also tended to overlook the domestic arena and familial relations (Beier and Tabak 2020; Cree 2020a, 2020b; da Silva 2017; Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly 2021). Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly (2021, 260) contend that:

Military citizenship is more nuanced than has been hitherto recognised. It extends well beyond the serving soldier to encompass the friends, family and communities of those under contractual service.

As this work has shown, there are often certain expectations, duties and tropes transposed on to family members of serving soldiers. In the case of children of serving parents they are depicted ‘sometimes as heroes, sometimes as victims but always as “extraordinary” citizens, bravely playing their part in their military duty to the state’ (ibid, 254). Other family members are often enrolled to participate in national commemorative military events and performances with the expectation they will display ‘heroic’ stoicism and reverence typically associated with serving soldiers (Long 2022a; Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly 2021). Yet as Cree (2020b, 310) has shown in the context of her work with military spouses, family members of serving soldiers are rarely positioned as ‘critical subjects with political agency’. In the case of children, their predominant societal construction as citizens in the making or ‘becomings’ means they are rarely afforded or seen as capable of expressing political agency (see Benwell and Hopkins 2016). Cree (2020b, 319) identifies the military wife (and this could be extended to other family members of military personnel) as a political subject who is ‘precarious and vulnerable, forged in relation to power’, in ways that sensitively acknowledge the complex institutional and societal contexts in which they are situated (see Woon 2017, who argues for relational understandings of voice and agency that take account of existing power structures). Notwithstanding the asymmetrical nature of these relations, her work detailing the experiences (rather than solely the representations) of military wives hints at the ways they were able to push back and resist normative societal assumptions about them and their lives (Hyde 2017). Similarly, Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly (2021, 254) show how children of serving soldiers were able ‘to negotiate, accept or resist ideas of militarism’, in ways that avoid positioning them as simply victims of militarisation. These negotiations and acts of resistance might not always be explicit, ‘noisy’ or immediately perceptible (e.g. the kinds of withdrawal or refusal to participate in commemorative parades and events outlined below), reiterating the importance of engaging directly with the experiences and emotions of those in military families (Drozdzekwski, Waterton, and Sumartojo 2019; Hughes 2020; Meziant 2023).

There is considerable scope to extend this work on domestic geopolitics and military family relations to those who previously served in the armed forces and/or families of war veterans. Herman and Yarwood (2014, 42) in their work on military personnel leaving the armed services and transitioning into civilian life, highlight the ‘need for more nuanced and holistic understandings of post-military lives’ (also see Atherton 2009). Their work contributes to a rich and burgeoning literature exploring the identities and complex experiences of those who have left the military, centring most attention on the lives of war veterans (e.g. Bulmer and Eichler 2017; Bulmer and Jackson 2016; Caddick 2018; Cree and Caddick 2019; Natale 2022; Robinson 2012). Studies that investigate the multiple perspectives of those in military families are rarer and tend to be focused on the families of serving members of the armed forces (see Gray 2023; Gray and Dolan 2022; Long 2022a, 2022b), or are funded by the military in response to particular social and psychological issues (Ender 2002; da Silva 2017; for exceptions see; Moss and Prince 2017; Wool 2015). This paper, then, calls for more research examining the emotional and everyday geopolitics of war veterans and their close family members (i.e. daughters, sons and partners) in diverse international contexts. It examines the ways that memory of war circulates in and through the domestic spaces and familial relationships of Malvinas war veterans in Argentina. Firstly, I show how veterans framed the ‘Malvinas cause’, encompassing memory of the 1982 war and the contemporary geopolitics of the sovereignty dispute, as something that the next generation needed to embrace, lest it be forgotten when they were no longer around. It then explores how the ‘next generation’ (as well as partners of Malvinas veterans) negotiate these implicit and explicit expectations to reproduce memory of the Malvinas through negotiating their (non)participation in events and activities related to the war’s commemoration.

Human geographers, along with scholars from an array of social science disciplines, have long recognised that ‘[m]emory is a crucial element of how individuals and collectivities negotiate their histories, presents, and futures’ (Closs Stephens 2013; Smith 2013, 51). This has sparked a plethora of research exploring how, for instance, memory can be (re)produced, mobilised, (geo)politicised, felt, embodied and experienced, predominantly in European and North American contexts (Legg 2007), although there is a very well-established body of memory work stemming from South America (e.g. Bosco 2004; Jelin 2003; Jelin and Kaufman 2000; Ros 2012). In particular, the intersections between emotional geographies and embodied forms of memory have attracted attention across a broad range of contexts (Bondi 2005; Bondi, Davidson, and Smith 2005; Dittmer and Waterton 2016; Drozdzekwski, De Nardi, and Waterton 2016a, 2016b; Drozdzekwski, Waterton, and Sumartojo 2019). As Drozdzekwski, De Nardi, and Waterton (2016a, 447) point out, ‘[m]emories are powerful forces encountered via experiences, emotions, places and things’ that supersede mere representation given their propensity to be felt and sensed. This sensitivity to remembering as experiential, emotional and embodied facilitates ‘new insight into how memory and identity fold together, with a fresh perspective on the resulting political implications’ (Drozdzekwski, Waterton, and Sumartojo 2019, 254). It foregrounds people’s everyday sensorial engagements with memory to underline how they receive, reproduce and sometimes resist predominant narratives of commemoration and remembrance. This approach to memory research relies on what Bennett et al. (2015, 9) define as ‘embodied or “whole body listening” that entails attending to gestures, textures, atmospheres, things and the context of happenings’. This is especially important given, as Muzaini (2015, 110) contends, acts of remembering (and forgetting) can so often be unspoken, silent/silenced, affective and internal rather than overtly manifest.

Geographers in particular have been influential in identifying the home as a rich setting for explorations of memory (e.g. Blunt 2005; Blunt and Dowling 2006; Blunt and Varley 2004; Ratnam 2018; Tolia-Kelly 2004). As Blunt and Varley (2004, 3) state, ‘[g]eographies of home are both material and symbolic and are located on thresholds between memory and nostalgia for the past, everyday life in the present, and future dreams and fears’. Memory can be encountered in the everyday spaces of the home through material artefacts, atmospheres and through the telling of other’s oral histories (Ratnam 2018; Tolia-Kelly 2004). Tolia-Kelly (2004, 316) employs the concept of re-memory to refer to ‘the memories of others as told to you by parents, friends, and absorbed through day-to-day living that are about a sense of self beyond a linear narrative of events, encounters and biographical experiences’. Importantly, these intimate memories shared in domestic spaces and between family members are ‘intertwined and nested’ with communal and national memory narratives which can often have clear links to contemporary geopolitical issues (Jelin and Kaufman 2000; Kuusisto-Arponen 2009, 551; Till 2012). In the context of their research in Cyprus, Christou and Spyrou (2012) show how emotional and traumatic experiences linked to geopolitical events lived in the past (that continue to reverberate and shape geopolitical relations on the island in the present), are most powerfully relayed to young people in the spaces of the home through the accounts of older family members (also see Benwell 2016a; Habashi 2013; Hörschelmann 2008; Leonard 2013; Spyrou 2006).

Research exploring the passing on or transmission of memory between different generations has made links between national agendas and people’s everyday experiences (Berliner 2005; Hodgkin and Radstone 2003b). The state is active in cultivating what Carr (2003, 68) terms ‘an experiential relationship’ to significant historical events that is ‘intended to pay homage to history by binding children to the past deferentially through the use of affection and family’. His intervention shows how notions of family and cross-generational consensus are promoted through, for instance, collective commemorative performances involving young people and veterans, as a way of eschewing any hint of intergenerational tension or amnesia (Hoelscher and Alderman 2004; Muzaini 2015). Pennell (2016, 38), through her extensive work on the First World War centenary, frames the national imperative for war commemoration ‘as being about keeping the memory alive and preserving it for the future. Consequently, the role of youth as vessels of memory is central, for it is they who have to bear the burden of memory in order to pass it on to subsequent generations’ (also see Hodgkin and Radstone 2003a). Her research engages young people to understand their perspectives of war remembrance practices such as battlefield tours, to show how the transmission of memory involves multiple actors, is never hermetically sealed and can be subject to contestation and disruption (also see Berliner 2005; Habashi 2013). It is somewhat curious that this interest in the intergenerational transmission of memory has not been examined in the context of war veterans and their families (although see Bulmer and Jackson 2016, who discuss some of the sensitivities of undertaking research on/with veterans that might explain this gap). The research presented below conducted with Malvinas war veterans and their families – partners, daughters and sons of different ages (see Research Study section) – examines these intergenerational dynamics that manifest through the embodied and emotional everyday experiences of war remembrance and commemoration that are lived at different intersecting scales (i.e. the intimate as well as the national, see Pain 2015; Pain and Staeheli 2014).

The Malvinas and the struggle to ‘reclaim’ them form a significant part of Argentine national identity and under the current administration of Alberto Fernández have played a central role in its foreign policy. In 2020 it established the Consejo Nacional de Asuntos Relativos a las Islas Malvinas, Georgias del Sur, Sandwich del Sur y los Espacios Marítimos e Insulares correspondientes as a way of demonstrating Argentina’s renewed commitment to the sovereignty dispute. This forum involves the President of the Republic, the Foreign Minister, the Secretary of the Malvinas, as well as senators, members of congress, academics, war veterans and specialists in international law. In short, the current government in Argentina has been looking to consolidate the nation’s Malvinas diplomacy in ways that transcend party politics, as a response to the perceived desmalvinización (a term that has multiple meanings but broadly refers to the forgetting or avoidance of the Malvinas question and all it encompasses in Argentine society and politics) of the previous presidency under Mauricio Macri (2015–19). ‘Malvinas unites us’ was the slogan under which a whole host of commemorative and other events were organised throughout Argentina in 2022 to mark the 40^th anniversary of the war, at which veterans often played an important role (Télam 2022).

The Malvinas War and those who fought in it have not always been so readily embraced as part of the Argentine national story, most especially in the years following the fall of the last military dictatorship in 1983 (Guber 2001; Lorenz 2006). Given the 1982 war took place under the watch of the military generals, responsible for an extensive campaign of internal and transnational repression (see Lessa 2022), there were clear concerns about anything that might restore the military’s credibility in Argentina’s emerging democracy. A consolidated political approach to memory of the Malvinas War, therefore, continued to remain elusive 20 years after the war had concluded (Guber 2001). Under the presidencies of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2003–15) this changed as they placed strong emphasis on the importance of interrogating memory of human rights abuses committed during the military dictatorship. This also included memory of the Malvinas War which received consolidated national attention with the release of previously classified reports evaluating the role of the armed forces in the war, the opening of a large national Malvinas Museum and the development of numerous educational resources for primary and secondary schools.

The dominant memory narratives marking this period tended to ‘position the war within the context of state terrorism, juxtaposing the heroic actions of young conscripts with the abuses they suffered at the hands of their superiors’ (Benwell 2016b, 286). These presented the war ‘as a fiasco and irresponsible insanity’ directed by the military generals (Guber 2001, 115), emphasising the interconnections between the dictatorship, human rights abuses and the Malvinas War. In this conceptualisation, the figure of the conscript is constructed as the hero/victim of the piece. This sets up a number of tensions concerning commemoration of the 1982 war, given the involvement of conscripts who made up the majority of Argentina’s forces, and professional officers. How does Argentina go about commemorating and remembering a military campaign directed by a discredited regime in the name of a cause that many see as justified? How can memory narratives negotiate the fact that Argentine forces who fought in the war consisted of both professional members of the armed forces and conscripts? In other words, how could these narratives encompass both those with closer connections to the military dictatorship, as well as young men enlisted and sent to fight in the islands (Guber 2009; Lorenz 2006, 2021)? Some of these conscripts were also subject to human rights abuses at the hands of their superiors (see Niebieskikwiat 2012) and efforts to bring those officers responsible to justice are ongoing 40 years later (Mercopress 2019).

In light of these political developments, some Malvinas veterans (mainly those conscripted) have become prominent figures in the politics bound up with remembering the past and honouring their ‘sacrifices’ in the present (although there are many more who consciously avoid such public engagement and visibility). A veteran is now director of the national Malvinas Museum in Buenos Aires (having taken over from an historian) and a handful of veterans sit on significant political councils that meet to discuss issues related to the Malvinas question (e.g. the Consejo Nacional mentioned above). Away from these national roles, Malvinas veterans are often visible within their local communities through, for instance, participation in commemorative events on key anniversaries, delivery of presentations at schools (Benwell 2021) and their involvement in various philanthropic campaigns (e.g. helping people affected by natural disasters). Some family members also participate alongside veterans at these public engagements with daughters and sons of Malvinas veterans becoming increasingly active. The motivations for their involvement are elaborated in the empirical material presented below, from the perspective of both veterans and their relatives. Some family members, like those included in this research, take part on an individual basis, whereas others mobilise as part of more-or-less formal associations or groups of ‘hijxs’ (sons/daughters) of Malvinas veterans (Reda Spinedi 2018). These are very often connected to, or have links with, centres of veterans situated in towns and cities throughout Argentina and are a way for daughters and sons (and often other family members) to show solidarity with those who fought and ‘keep alive the memory of what their fathers lived’ (Reda Spinedi 2018, 54).

Research Study

The research presented below stems from fieldwork undertaken in 2015 and 2016 in the city of Santa Fe (capital of the province of Santa Fe), located in the northeast of Argentina.¹ The selection of the city reflected my desire to explore how provinces in the Argentine interior that are geographically distant from the South Atlantic, remember the Malvinas War. Whilst austral provinces adjacent to the South Atlantic were directly implicated in the events of 1982 and many people there have vivid memories of the war as a result, cities and provinces relatively distant from the islands also have intimate connections. Many of the military officers and conscripts sent to fight in the Malvinas originated from northern provinces of the country such as Corrientes, Chaco and Santa Fe (Guber 2009; Lorenz 2006). In these cities and towns, memory of the Malvinas War is embodied by surviving war veterans (and members of their families) who regularly take part in commemorative events. The primary focus of my research was to investigate how young people (aged 15–20) in Argentina learn about and engage with the geopolitics of the sovereignty dispute and memory of the 1982 war through their schooling. It became clear that veterans played an important role in these educational settings through their visits to participate in commemorative school assemblies and deliver talks relaying their experiences and memories of the war. It was during my observation of one of these assemblies involving veterans that I was invited to the Centre of Ex-soldiers of the Malvinas, Santa Fe. Towards the end of the first phase of research I spent increasing amounts of time at the centre (which also doubled as a museum curating military paraphernalia from the war), speaking to veterans (as well as members of their families who regularly attended) and accompanying them on the various engagements they fulfilled in and around the city.

This provided the basis for a second phase of research at the centre in 2016 when I was able to undertake a month-long period of participant observation and interview veterans and members of their families. Huxford et al. (2019) point out that veterans’ groups and centres of this kind are not necessarily representative of the larger veteran community given only a fraction are members. However, the centre offered me the opportunity to spend time with veterans (and their families), building requisite trust to undertake interviews in ways that would have otherwise been extremely challenging given my positionality (see below). Moreover, the research in this paper refrains from making broader claims about Malvinas veterans, focusing instead on the intimate negotiations of memory within domestic spaces. There is only one centre for veterans of the Malvinas in the city of Santa Fe and its members, consisting of ex-officers and conscripts, typically come from the surrounding area to run the museum, organise events and attend weekly gatherings. The centre’s membership encompassing professional and conscripted soldiers is distinct to some of those in other parts of the country (e.g. CECIM in the city of La Plata only admits conscripted soldiers). Some centres, like CECIM, do not admit professional members of the military, some of whom stand accused of human rights violations against conscripts during the Malvinas War. Although the decision was not uncontested, the centre in Santa Fe voted to admit officers in 1992–3 and many of the members saw this unity as critical in their struggles to obtain improved pensions and social welfare provisions.²

In total, nineteen veterans were interviewed of whom eleven were conscripts and eight officers. The partners of seven veterans (six of conscripts and one of an officer) were interviewed, as well as ten daughters/sons of veterans (five related to a conscript, five related to an officer and ranging from 21–43 years of age). The interview questions explored the different ways memory of the Malvinas was encountered in the everyday lives of veterans and their families. These were organised as collective family and/or individual interviews depending on the organisational practicalities and the time people had to participate in the research. The collective interviews offered an opportunity for dialogue with members of the same family in order to witness mediation of the topics raised. However, these interactions were inevitably ‘power-laden’ and it was not always easy to interject if certain individuals were dominating the discussion (Valentine 1999). My field notes written up after each day were sensitive to recording the dynamics of these interviews, most especially in instances where respondents were noticeably quieter or seemed to be ‘talked-over’. Where possible, and to alleviate these power relations inherent to family interviews, I initiated informal follow-up discussions at social gatherings, or contacted individuals via instant messaging apps. Informed consent was received from all those who took part in the research after they had read information sheets provided in Spanish. All of the interviews were conducted in Spanish and were recorded with consent, transcribed and coded thematically employing a grounded approach. My field notes and interview transcripts were read carefully several times to enable the iterative identification of codes that corresponded with dominant themes emerging from the data (Cope and Kurtz 2016). The coding brought to the fore issues relating to veterans’ and their families’ perspectives on commemoration of the Malvinas War and their diverse experiences of negotiating intimate memories in domestic space. Coding the data enabled the identification of recurrent themes, as well as illustrative quotes that were translated into English by the author for inclusion in this paper. Pseudonyms have been used for all the respondents to ensure their identities remain confidential (Hopkins 2010).

My identity as a white British man conducting research on the Malvinas in Argentina influenced many of the interactions I had with veterans and their families. Respondents were typically keen to accept an unusual opportunity to share their views about the Malvinas with a British researcher, although my initial interactions with veterans and members of their families were occasionally fraught. The tensions were exacerbated by memories of past military confrontations (and defeat at the hands of the British military) and the continuing grievances related to geopolitical relations between Argentina and the UK concerning the Falklands/Malvinas sovereignty dispute. However, spending considerable time at the centre for veterans and making explicit my intention to listen to the accounts of respondents with empathy and respect, helped generate a sense of trust, despite my national identity. Indeed, my British identity often became a focal point for jokes and comments that served to lighten the mood and make everyone feel more relaxed in my presence. My outsider status often proved useful during informal conversations and interviews, as it meant respondents felt the need to explain the complexities inherent to the politics of remembering the Malvinas War at intimate, regional and national scales (Mohammed 2001). Whilst detailed methodological reflection is beyond the scope of this paper, my positionality and its potential effect on (what I took away from) interactions with respondents received constant reflection in my field diary and these challenges are discussed in more depth in Benwell (2014).

Keeping the Malvinas Flame Alive

This section outlines the expectations veterans placed on ‘the next generation’ to ensure (memory of) the Malvinas remained on the national agenda, as well as their emotional responses to the perceived lack of interest from younger people and especially family members. Memory has long been identified as ‘central in constituting the historical narrative of identity within which the nationalist subject is produced’ (Hodgkin and Radstone 2003b, 169). Ensuring that memory of significant (usually violent) national pasts is continually reproduced is framed as fundamental to nationalist struggles. As Hodgkin and Radstone (2003b, 169) make clear, ‘the appeal to memory articulates the narrative of the nationalist past, and enjoins its subject to recognise and own it’. When this narrative is perceived as fading or forgotten, considerable anxiety about the loss of a nation’s identity and belonging can follow (Pennell 2018). These kinds of concerns, often identified at the scale of the nation, were also palpable among the testimonies of Malvinas war veterans and their families in relation to memory of the 1982 war:

‘That [memory of the Malvinas War] is something that cannot be lost, people are going to die but you cannot erase history and write it afterwards, without witnesses and so on, without documenting the facts it’s a little more complicated’. (Román, officer, 03/08/16)

For Román, there was an imperative to remember the Malvinas War but a recognition of the fragility of memory embodied in the figure of the veteran. There was a concern that national histories could not only be lost when they were no longer around but revised and rewritten without the direct testimonies of those who took part in the war. Román’s identity as an officer is critical to note here given his rejection of national narratives of memory related to the Malvinas War that tended to foreground the experiences of conscripted soldiers, whilst emphasising the role of the military as perpetrators of human rights abuses (see Lorenz 2020). As Natale’s (2022, 311) research with members of Argentina’s special forces illustrates, ‘the hegemonic narrative of Malvinas tends to exclude the military from the social memorialisation of the conflict’. The tensions between individual/collective, military/civil and subject/state ways of remembering the Malvinas War are brought to the fore in Román’s account and mirrors those of other officers who participated in this research. They are a reminder of how, ‘Memory […] both underpins and undermines the national narrative’ (Drozdzekwski, Waterton, and Sumartojo 2019; Hodgkin and Radstone 2003b, 170).

Notwithstanding the contested nature of these narratives of memory, there was an overriding concern among all veterans (conscripts and officers) of the Malvinas fading from national consciousness:

‘I think that Santa Fe is going to have to prepare the Malvinera youth because let’s be realistic, we’re already 54 years old and if we want to continue keeping that flame alive there has to be someone who’s going to replace us … It’s important for us and it would be a source of pride, for example, to have our children carry this cause, let’s say, the Malvinas flag because if not, all this work of 34 years is going to end up falling on deaf ears, it’s going to be lost and what we least expect and what we least want is for it to be lost’. (Matias, conscript, 18/07/16)

The veterans who participated in this research ranged from 53–72 years of age and were very conscious of the fact they were not getting any younger. Indeed, one of the most active and engaged veterans at the centre died shortly after I concluded my fieldwork. There was, then, a sense of urgency with the need to prepare the next generation, the Malvinera youth, to ‘carry the cause’ in the future. The cause comprised of remembering the 1982 war and its protagonists, as well as ensuring the Malvinas remained high on the state’s agenda in both domestic and international (geo)political arenas. The latter was highly pertinent given my research took place shortly after the election of Mauricio Macri, a President who was markedly less active (in stark contrast to the preceding Kirchner presidencies) in pursuing Argentina’s sovereignty claim and subsequently criticised for desmalvinización. In the extract above, Matias identifies a key role for the children of veterans in ensuring the Malvinas remains an important part of the nation’s past and present. Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly (2021) identify the ways that military citizenship can extend beyond the serving soldier to encompass other family members including their children. In the example above, there is an expectation that extended family will inevitably identify with the Malvinas cause and, in turn, wish to continue the ‘memory work’ practiced by veterans in the years following the war. The extension of these duties to family members of veterans in the aftermath of war is revealing of how they can be similarly enrolled to support and/or reproduce certain memory narratives related to past military campaigns. The next section highlights how these invitations to mobilise alongside or in place of veterans were not always received in straightforward ways by other family members.

The hope that future generations would become active geopolitical actors was, however, remarkably uncertain and a source of insecurity given the perceived lack of interest in the Malvinas among most young people:

‘If we tell each other our history, tomorrow our children will hopefully get on board with us. There are young people who are working very well with Malvinas, but they are very few, the kids, the young people who have taken an interest in the predicament of the fathers of Malvinas, they are very few, you can count them on one hand!’ (Juan, officer, 12/07/16)

‘There isn’t much knowledge and there isn’t much participation from relatives either, in the [commemorative] ceremonies. I always try to accompany him, at least for the 2^nd April but there isn’t much mobilisation, let’s say, I’m talking about the rest of the people, there isn’t much knowledge or mobilisation on these issues’. (Sofia, daughter of an officer, 03/08/16)

‘The eldest has a tattoo of the Malvinas on her back, which says, “In honour of my father”. She tattooed the Islas Malvinas on her back but they don’t actively participate in the Centre [of Ex-soldiers of the Malvinas, Santa Fe]. Up until now very few youngsters go. Maybe they’re remembering late, you know like they’re already adolescents, they’re already big and it’s a little harder to bring them closer. But on their Facebook I see that they put the Malvinas on their profile page … yes, my daughters share things that I “like” so we circulate things [about the Malvinas] in this way’. (Álvaro, conscript, 21/07/23)

The opportunity to visit schools and deliver presentations to classrooms of young people is considered of vital importance by many veterans (Benwell 2021). The first-hand presentation of their testimonies attempts to engage and malvinizar young people – a verb that has many connotations but is used by veterans to refer to the general process of increasing visibility and knowledge of the Malvinas in ways that connect memory of the war with Argentina’s ongoing sovereignty claim. In the first extract, veterans are positioned as key interlocutors in this process of engaging children and young people with their ability to transmit emotional and embodied memories bound to the islands and their experiences in 1982. However, from the perspective of veterans, these efforts did not lead to enough young people becoming interested in the Malvinas to the point where they might mobilise and campaign for/alongside them.

These anxieties about the lack of substantial engagement in events related to the Malvinas were extended to commemorative ceremonies, as Sofia’s extract emphasises, and in particular the absence of those closely related to veterans. In some ways, their absence was even more unsettling given the assumption that familial connections might encourage them to ‘turn up’. Carr (2003) contends that ‘generational motifs’ figure prominently in official commemorative war ceremonies and these are often embodied through the participation of relatives and descendants of war veterans. They are ‘[e]mblematic of a biological and social continuum that imprints the character of the past onto the future’ (Carr 2003, 59), performing a reassuring cross-generational consensus in how wars are to be remembered and commemorated by the nation. The absence of other family members at key commemorative events not only threatens to destabilise these enduring national memory narratives but is intimately felt as a source of considerable insecurity for Malvinas veterans and their close relatives.

Finally, Álvaro’s quote is suggestive of the different ways family members could show solidarity with veterans and the broader Malvinas cause. The veterans’ centre and events related to the Malvinas were often highly masculinised and dominated by discussions about the military including memories from past military service. These were not spaces or activities that were especially attractive to daughters (or partners) of veterans and Álvaro emphasises the embodied and online expressions of solidarity that they performed. These were not as public or visible as the weekly gatherings at the centre or commemorative parades but were an alternative way for them to show support for their father and for Álvaro to feel accompanied. For diverse reasons, then, the intergenerational participation of family members in activities associated with the Malvinas was not always straightforward.

‘They’re Not Malvineros Like I am’: Negotiating Memory of the Malvinas in the Domestic Sphere

This section explores some of the tensions inherent to remembering and commemorating the Malvinas War drawing collectively on the accounts of veterans and other family members. It highlights the complex relationships these actors have with memory of past wars and the contemporary geopolitics of the sovereignty dispute, which, shape the ways they (dis)engage in commemorative events and (feel able to) express their geopolitical agency. Whilst on the one hand veterans identified the importance of involving members of their families in commemorative events, particularly younger generations, this participation had its limits given family members were often perceived as ‘outsiders’ to their memories of the Malvinas War:

‘As a family, let’s say, we do go to different [commemorative] ceremonies … Sometimes I go with the family but in some cases no because, well, it’s like, how can I tell you, they’re not malvineros like I am. Like, they didn’t live it as I lived it’. (Tomas, conscript, 15/07/16)

In my case it’s very personal, that day [the 2^nd of April] it’s more important to be with my soldiers. That day is Malvinas. I’m inside a bubble for those that had the Malvinas and the memories that have stayed with us. The family see this from the outside … they see when you hug a soldier, when you cry, when you get emotional, it’s the brotherhood that exists between us, they are spectators. (Hugo, officer, 02/08/16)

‘For us, the veterans’ meeting is more comfortable. It’s where we have other types of chats, and obviously, we can’t expect them [other members of the family] to understand what we feel. What you feel, you feel, it’s not transmissible’. (Francisco, conscript, 23/07/16)

These extracts point to the importance of accounting for the complex intersubjective social interactions that constitute memory transmission (Berliner 2005). In the extracts above, veterans talked about family as external to their direct experiences of the war in 1982 – they were ‘spectators’ and could not be malvineros in quite the same way as those in the military. Many of the veterans interviewed, like Hugo, talked about April 2^nd (an Argentine national holiday – the day of the veteran and fallen of the Malvinas War – marking the anniversary of the Argentine ‘invasion/recuperation’ of the islands) as a day when they had to be around their fellow comrades (whether they were conscripts or officers) who shared military memories of the Malvinas War, rather than their family who did not. Kuusisto-Arponen (2014, 436), in her work on the spatial belonging of displaced communities in the Finnish context, emphasises the significance of ‘performative repertoires and memories that are expressive and embodied’, enabling her to identify silence as a tactic or social practice rooted in everyday encounters. The extracts above refer to the shared feelings embodied within and between Malvinas veterans (as opposed to family members) that affected how, when and with whom memories were shared or silenced.

This silencing of memory was also felt in and through domestic spaces and relations by veterans and other family members:

‘Many friends and colleagues to this day still have very little to say to the family of their experiences in that war, and well, they have it inside and I think it ends up affecting them, no? Because each one has our, our fits of madness, our moments of anger, that explode and not getting everything out, not wanting to tell it to the family, to share it, not letting out everything that one has inside, it’s difficult. And with children, there are some of us who have grandchildren too. They ask something, or about some experience that you had but it’s very difficult for veterans to tell them’. (Sebastian, officer, 12/07/16)

Matthew: Do you have many references to the Malvinas in the house?

Ernesto: No, no, almost nothing, in the patio area where we eat asado I put up some things about my life in the squadron but not related to the Malvinas. (Ernesto, officer, 13/07/16)

Matthew: Do you have many references to the Malvinas in the house?

Luciano: No, I got married a year ago so I can’t invade her [Luciano’s wife] house, her paintings, her things because I don’t think they belong there. That’s why I have my little house in the countryside and there I’m already putting my things that I’ve kept because it’s my space, my place where I stay and the memories … The way for me to overcome my ghosts is to not have anything here in the house. (Luciano, officer, 08/07/16)

In contrast to the centre, which was identified by veterans and family members as a space for the sharing of memories linked to 1982, Malvinas in the domestic sphere could generate fraught family interactions that meant mnemonic references to personal recollections were regularly evaded. Sebastian acknowledges the emotional challenges of repressing memories associated with 1982, as well as the inability to control when the topic might be raised at home, particularly by younger generations. In his work on forgetting, Muzaini (2015, 102) focuses on the embodied, material and spatial practices of attempts to obscure and obliterate memory. Such attempts can be frustrated, however, as ‘memories can re-emerge involuntarily … [and] may be foiled by the capacity of the material environment and other bodies to affect’ (ibid, 102). Ernesto and Luciano along with several of the other veterans involved in this research actively avoided displaying material markers of the war in the home. Very often, mnemonic ephemera had to be retrieved from dusty store cupboards or boxes during the course of interviews when veterans wanted to show me photos or other military paraphernalia. Instead, they set aside other spaces external to the domestic environment (including the museum at the veterans’ centre), where they chose to display material objects that made reference to their military careers or the Malvinas War. Such avoidances or absences in the home are illustrative of the agential capacities of material objects to spontaneously trigger traumatic memories for veterans, which can have challenging knock-on effects for their interactions with other family members.

The families of veterans were highly sensitive to these evasions of memories related to 1982 and identified the ways it shaped relations in domestic space.

‘The veterans themselves took a long time to come out and talk, the same thing happened with my dad, for many years he didn’t talk about it with anyone, not even with us, all my friends for example asked me and I didn’t know anything’. (Fede, son of an officer, aged 26, 20/07/16)

‘They’re not kids [referring to her children] who are going to ask you something. They don’t touch it [the Malvinas War], like, we try not to touch the subject. We understand him, like, if he wants to tell, let him tell us, if he doesn’t want to then he shouldn’t … And now that they’re all older, everyone knows what happened. They talk to him, they ask him things, he tells them what he wants, he doesn’t tell them what happened, we don’t ever get involved. We leave it to him and we don’t go to the talks [those delivered in schools or elsewhere in the city]’. (Ines, partner of conscript, 18/07/16)

Fede recalls the silencing of his father’s memories for many years following 1982, aligning with broader societal efforts to ‘forget’ the Malvinas War through the avoidance of commemorative practices associated with the military in the wake of the dictatorship era (Guber 2001). His father’s identity as a high-ranking and decorated officer (for operations in the Malvinas War), as opposed to a conscripted soldier, is significant given the additional sensitivities related to memories of those with professional connections to the military in post-dictatorship Argentina. The more recent re-positioning of the Malvinas War within national memory narratives and the inclusion of both officers and conscripts in Santa Fe’s centre for veterans, were seen by Fede as playing an influential role in his father’s renewed willingness to talk about his memories. Existing work draws attention to how emotionally traumatic national memories are encountered, engaged and negotiated within and through family spaces and relations (e.g. Benwell, Gasel, and Núñez 2020; Christou and Spyrou 2012; Habashi 2013; Leonard 2013). Similarly, Ines emphasises the care with which her daughters and sons negotiated memory of the Malvinas War at home, by avoiding direct questions and giving space for their father to talk about his experiences should he wish to do so.

The final sentence in Ines’ extract above refers to the family’s avoidance of public events related to the Malvinas War, in this case talks that presented veterans’ experiences and memories of 1982. Other family members cited their conflicting ideas and emotions regarding participation in commemorative parades and ceremonies:

‘I’m kind of on the side lines; I try not to get involved. It’s a feeling [for the Malvinas] that everyone has, but it’s a very special thing for them [the veterans]. My son is the same, because my son doesn’t like parading a lot, because, he tells me, I’m not a veteran. It’s like saying that I’m putting myself in his place but when he [Sara’s partner] asks me, like last time, we did it! People applaud and do all those things, and you feel like it’s not our place. In reality you go to accompany them [the veterans] but I understand what my son’s getting at. That’s why I don’t get involved, at least in any of those things. I’m just with him, I listen to his things and that’s it’. (Sara, partner of conscript, 21/07/16)

Matthew: And do you participate in the parades?

Sol: Yes, we accompany them to the ceremonies, that’s what we always do.

Matthew: Why? Sol: Why? Firstly, out of respect for them; secondly, because we’re also part of it…

Carlos: Their lives are bound up with the Malvinas as much as ours...

Sol: Even if sometimes we don’t want it to be that way but there we are… (Sol, partner of conscript; Carlos, conscript, 23/07/16)

The majority of interview respondents echoed the sentiments of Sara and her son in feeling uncomfortable parading publicly alongside veterans. Sara refers to her preference for accompanying, being with, and listening to her partner ‘on the side lines’, rather than participating in public commemorative events related to the Malvinas. There was a sense from these family members that they were not deserving of the public’s admiration given they had not served militarily in 1982. However, feminist analyses have for a long time pointed to the critical role of military spouses and families in enabling the mobilisation of military power (see da Silva 2017; Enloe 1990, 2000; Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly 2021). Less well understood are how these family members ‘might [dis]engage with the militaristic processes in which they are embroiled’ (Cree 2020b, 306), in this case ceremonies and parades commemorating past wars. In my research, interviews with military partners were conducted alongside veterans which may have made it difficult for them to speak openly about the reasons for their (non-) participation in such events. That said, Cree’s (2020b) work points to the resistant capacities of military spouses and partners to disrupt predominant imaginations of their vulnerability and passivity. The decision to disengage in parades, therefore, might be indicative of how military partners and other family members rejected their positioning in these highly choreographed militarised parades. As one partner of a veteran conscript stated in another interview in slightly more explicit terms, ‘They have to make a monument for us [partners of veterans]! When there are veterans, we don’t exist!’ (Daniela, 23/07/16) In contrast, Sol talks about her participation in the commemorative ceremonies precisely because the partners of veterans are identified as playing an active role in the war and its aftermath. The couple considered it important for veterans’ partners to be visible at commemorative events as a way of acknowledging that their lives were also bound up with the Malvinas War and its memory. As Esteban put it in another interview, ‘The soldier was not alone in the Malvinas, rather it was also the family that behind the scenes gave him that strength’. (Officer, 28/07/16)

Decisions to (dis)engage in commemorative performances, then, were not simple or uniform and sometimes appeared to be contradictory:

‘I don’t know why not … why I don’t participate. It grabs my attention, the cause interests me, the Malvinas cause, but it doesn’t interest me enough to go to participate in the parades, in ceremonies. I mean, I agree with the heroism of all the veterans, but since I don’t defend war at all, I mean, my dad doesn’t defend war either. I’m very interested in highlighting the bravery of all the veterans, the fact they were very marginalised, that when they returned no one cared about them, that there were many suicides, that many were left with problems and that society turned its back on them, both the society and politicians, and that has to be given more importance, right? But the fact of going and saying we’ll be back [to fight for/’reclaim’ the Malvinas] what do I know, that’s something that isn’t for me’. (Fede, son of an officer, aged 26, 20/07/16)

Fede declares his support for the Malvinas veterans in light of their treatment after 1982 but avoids the parades due to his anti-war stance. On the one hand, he acknowledges the ‘heroism’ and ‘bravery’ of men like his father subscribing to glorified constructions of war veterans, whilst on the other he expresses his opposition to war and any suggestion that Argentina might mobilise militarily in the future to ‘re-take’ the islands. In similar ways to the young daughters and sons of serving soldiers (Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly 2021), members of veterans’ families were not passively enrolled into commemorative practices and were able to sensitively negotiate and push back against aspects of these events. The quotes throughout this section highlight the complex relationships veterans and their families can have with the commemoration of past wars, militarism, and contemporary geopolitics. The Malvinas War and its memory saturated domestic spaces and relations in diverse ways that generated tensions, erasures and silences that were connected to other spaces and practices of commemoration.

Conclusion

This paper has highlighted the rich insights made possible by research that explores the domestic geopolitics of remembering war within the spaces and relations of veterans’ families. Existing studies of war remembrance and commemoration tend to focus on public performances or discourses, eliding the ways memories of war can be lived, felt, embodied, reproduced and resisted through familial relations within the home. The research presented above sheds light on the ways national imperatives concerning the intergenerational transmission of memory intersect with the embodied and emotional everyday experiences of veterans and their families within domestic spaces. Recent work has illustrated how spouses and children of serving soldiers are not passively and apolitically enrolled into military networks and respond diversely to societal assumptions made about them and their lives (e.g. Cree 2020a, 2020b; Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly 2021). This interest in agency and military families can be productively extended to those of former members of the armed forces and, in particular, war veterans. Veterans and their families are often expected (and wish) to retain strong connections to the military, and associated practices and performances of militarism and commemoration. This imperative to continue remembering and commemorating past wars is regularly linked to contemporary geopolitical issues concerning the nation – in the case of the research presented above, the ongoing and intractable sovereignty dispute over the Falklands/Malvinas and its identification by Argentina as a foreign policy priority. Significantly, then, the paper examines the perspectives of war veterans and their families beyond Europe and North America, contexts that have tended to dominate scholarship on (post-)military families from political geography and critical military studies (see Natale 2022).

Exploring the everyday, domestic geopolitics of war veterans and their families facilitates the identification of contradictions, tensions and nuances in the ways that war is remembered and commemorated. ‘The next generation’ are regularly framed as key figures in the national reproduction of memory and play a prominent role in the commemoration of past wars, embodied and performed through children’s and young people’s participation in diverse forms of public commemoration (e.g. Carr 2003; Pennell 2018). This paper builds on this analysis of generation and its performance through commemorative practices to highlight the intimate and emotional experiences of war veterans and their families concerning (expectations about) their involvement. Veterans of the Malvinas War involved in this research were active in their attempts to engage younger generations by presenting their experiences of war at school assemblies and referring to the key role their daughters and sons would play in sustaining future interest in the Malvinas cause. However, their perceived apathy and disengagement was a source of considerable anxiety for veterans as they questioned who would carry their legacy forward and continue the ‘memory work’ when they were no longer around. At the same time, the militarised and masculinised nature of the activities organised by veterans impeded the intergenerational participation of some family members, who performed their support and solidarity in alternative ways.

Notwithstanding the desire for greater family engagement, veterans and their families referred to evasions of the Malvinas and memories of the 1982 war in and through material objects and interactions in domestic spaces. These silences and the preference of some veterans to mark anniversaries with their ex-comrades in militarised (as opposed to domestic) spaces, seemed seemed to contradict their hopes for mobilising their partners, daughters and sons in the future. Some of the relatives of war veterans involved in this research talked about their nuanced relationships with war commemoration and the contemporary geopolitics of the South Atlantic that hinted at subtle forms of pushing back against their assumed role in such practices. The research presented here extends work on the negotiated agencies of those in military families (e.g. Cree 2020a, 2020b; Gray 2023; Yarwood, Tyrrell, and Kelly 2021), applying these ideas to the domestic geopolitics bound up with performances of militarism and commemoration in post-service contexts. The avoidance or resistance of commemorative events is shown to be particularly sensitive, most especially for relatives of veterans implicated in complex relationships that crosscut the personal and (geo)political scales. A domestic geopolitics that engages the voices of veterans and other family members enables suitably sensitive analyses of the ways memory and the commemoration of war is lived, negotiated, (re)produced, evaded and even resisted through familial spaces and relations.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to all of the veterans and other family members who so generously gave me their time to take part in this research project. I wish to acknowledge funding from the Santander Mobility Fund, as well as the intellectual support and stimulation provided by colleagues in the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research in this paper was generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust, Early Career Fellowship [ECF-2012-329] and the Santander Mobility Fund, Newcastle University.

Notes

1. Plans to promptly analyse the data and present the research were disrupted due to teaching commitments and then the pandemic hence the extended delay between fieldwork and publication.

2. As Huxford et al. (2019) emphasise, perceived injustices over pensions are often effective in mobilising veterans around a common cause. Veterans of the Malvinas War have continually demanded concrete political commitments to obtain moral and financial support (Guber 2009). The fact that these calls for reparations through pensions, adequate healthcare and so on, continue many decades after 1982 demonstrates that these struggles are ongoing and, in many cases, unresolved (Chao 2021).