“you’d have to be British to want this” complains one of the characters at the beginning of Rodolfo Fogwill’s Los Pichiciegos, the tiny 154 page novel which has been credited for helping bring down the Argentine junta in 1983.
I completely understand the character’s point. One of my first thoughts after setting foot on the Falkland islands was “why the hell do the Argentines WANT this?”
I had been prepared in advance that I was to visit a shithole. I had spoken to family friends, war vets, who had described it in gross detail: miserable weather, with snow possible at any time of the year, Antarctic winds hitting you in the face relentlessly, mined beaches, frozen food and penguins. The main artistic attraction is a garden filled with plastic garden gnomes. Why a war was fought over this place is beyond my imagination- had Thatcher or her predecessors been sensible, they would have got rid of the place long before Galtieri and co attacked. And Galtieri’s men were not up to any fighting, as Los Pichiciegos makes clear. Unlike the British, the Argentine army was made up of 19 year old conscripts, who were unmotivated, unequipped and unwilling to fight. The book has been compared to Catch-22, due to its black humour and graphic descriptions of soldiers’ lives, such as the problems of shitting when so many people are confined to a cave, and many have diarrhoea. At first this problem was solved chemically….but then disaster struck: “En esas putas islas no queda un solo tarro de polvo químico. ¿Por qué lo derrocharon? Lo derrocharon, lo olvidaron: ¡No queda un puto tarro de polvo químico! Ni los ingleses ni los malvineros, ni los marinos ni los de aeronáutica: ni los del comando, ni los de policía militar tienen un miserable frasquito de polvo químico, tan necesario. No hay polvo químico, nadie tiene.” After this, they are forced to shit outside at night in subzero temperatures, or take endless amounts of constipation provoking pills. As the war moves to its inevitable end, the characters, all Argentine deserters (los pichis) who have been hiding out in a cave and feeding themselves by raiding the pockets of deal soldiers and bartering with the British, sit and watch the remnants of their army queuing to surrender, a sad end for the army, but the end the pychis meet is even worse, accidentally gassed to death the last day of the war.
The book was published right as the war ended, riots followed shortly thereafter. It is easy to understand why.
I completely understand the character’s point. One of my first thoughts after setting foot on the Falkland islands was “why the hell do the Argentines WANT this?”
I had been prepared in advance that I was to visit a shithole. I had spoken to family friends, war vets, who had described it in gross detail: miserable weather, with snow possible at any time of the year, Antarctic winds hitting you in the face relentlessly, mined beaches, frozen food and penguins. The main artistic attraction is a garden filled with plastic garden gnomes. Why a war was fought over this place is beyond my imagination- had Thatcher or her predecessors been sensible, they would have got rid of the place long before Galtieri and co attacked. And Galtieri’s men were not up to any fighting, as Los Pichiciegos makes clear. Unlike the British, the Argentine army was made up of 19 year old conscripts, who were unmotivated, unequipped and unwilling to fight. The book has been compared to Catch-22, due to its black humour and graphic descriptions of soldiers’ lives, such as the problems of shitting when so many people are confined to a cave, and many have diarrhoea. At first this problem was solved chemically….but then disaster struck: “En esas putas islas no queda un solo tarro de polvo químico. ¿Por qué lo derrocharon? Lo derrocharon, lo olvidaron: ¡No queda un puto tarro de polvo químico! Ni los ingleses ni los malvineros, ni los marinos ni los de aeronáutica: ni los del comando, ni los de policía militar tienen un miserable frasquito de polvo químico, tan necesario. No hay polvo químico, nadie tiene.” After this, they are forced to shit outside at night in subzero temperatures, or take endless amounts of constipation provoking pills. As the war moves to its inevitable end, the characters, all Argentine deserters (los pichis) who have been hiding out in a cave and feeding themselves by raiding the pockets of deal soldiers and bartering with the British, sit and watch the remnants of their army queuing to surrender, a sad end for the army, but the end the pychis meet is even worse, accidentally gassed to death the last day of the war.
The book was published right as the war ended, riots followed shortly thereafter. It is easy to understand why.
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