It is significant that the commemoration of the start of the Malvinas War and its protagonists coincides for Christianity with Holy Week.
When I remember it, those deep words of Leopoldo Marechal return to my heart: “The homeland is a pain that our eyes do not stop crying; a girl with bare feet; a pain that is carried in the side without a word or a cry”.
The pain and perhaps even the guilt of the abandonment of our boys, most of them barely 18 years old.
Pablo Ríos expresses it beautifully and painfully: “A child dressed as a soldier,/ with a blow they ripped you off/ from the recreation of your youth/ and without asking you, they ordered you to go in search/ of the lost sisters you did not know./ You carry in your backpack toy weapons/ loaded with doubts and fear./ You cry inconsolably/ because mom will not be able to heal your wounds/ in that war that is no longer fantasy./ Not even dad will be there to take care of you/ when someone older wants to hit you./ Child dressed in a soldier,/ so far from home, so close to nothing./ In such cold lands,/ surrounded by unknown boys/ with the same fear in their eyes./ You played at being a man with a child’s face/ Child dressed as a soldier,/ we have stolen your smile,/ we have destroyed your fantasies,/ we have buried your childhood and your tears/ in a place so far away./ Child dressed as a soldier/ who walks among us/ so alone and helpless/ as in those forgotten islands./ Perhaps someday you can forgive us./ Maybe someday we can give you back/ Your stripped youth”.
Abandonment was the theme of Pope Francis in his Palm Sunday homily. He used to say: “There are entire towns abandoned to their fate, poor people with whom we dare not meet eyes. And also so many invisible Christs: unborn children, the elderly alone, the sick and disabled ignored, young people not heard in their pain…”.
And it ended: “Let us ask to have eyes and a heart for the abandoned. For us, disciples of the Forsaken One –Christ–, no one can be abandoned. Let us ask for the grace to know how to see, to know how to recognize the Lord that he continues to shout in each abandoned person. Let’s not let his voice get lost in the deafening silence of indifference. God has not abandoned us; let us take care of those who have been left alone.”
Let us honor in the abandoned of today the abandoned of then.
* Archbishop of Cordoba; member of the Interreligious Committee for Peace (Comipaz)