Luis Escobedo, Falklands veteran and ex-Colón, chose football to forget | OneFootball

He played for Colón between 1988 and 1989. The Malvinas War changed his life when he was only 18 years old. Over time, football served as his psychologist.

We could talk about a long and extensive career as a footballer, but every April 2 the story changes in every sense. Coming through Los Andes, where he also went on to play for Colón, Belgrano de Córdoba, Vélez, Santiago Wanderers of Chile, among others, he played almost 20 years as a professional. However, at just 18 years old, he became a man. In the Antarctic cold, hungry and with little ammunition, he walked for miles for days so they wouldn’t kill him. He was one of those who survived to tell the true story of the Malvinas War: Luis Escobedo, the veteran who chose football to forget about bombs and rifles.

With the passage of time, he realized that football was like therapy that made him forget many things, or simply forget. Looking back at what happened in the postwar period, there were many suicides, and even today some still suffer from it. They live with it. But something of great value that happened to Luis Escobedo after being in combat was returning to football, even though at first he wanted nothing to do with it: “When I came back from the war, I didn’t want to play anymore, but after a short time I felt the urge again because my old man took me to the stadium to watch a match. From then on, I never stopped.” Even so, he cannot say whether he fully healed from the wounds, but with football, the locker room, and his friends, “the war was gradually left behind.” The ball helped him not to be alone. He returned from the war in June 1982, and by October he was already playing football again.

He was born in Santiago del Estero but grew up in Budge, Buenos Aires. From a very young age, his father passed on his love for the ball. He took him to every match he could. Until one day, after a tryout, he made it into Los Andes, and there he went through all the youth divisions. He was a classic right back. Tough in defense and determined when it was time to push forward in attack. As he was reaching the end of his adolescence, it was snatched away when he was 17. At that time, he was already training with the Los Andes first team, which included players of the caliber of José Tiburcio Serrizuela. In 1981, he was called up for compulsory military service, and that year was lost to him. In March 1982, he was discharged and went back to training with the squad. However, 25 days after his return, after a match against San Lorenzo, he started reading the newspaper and found out that his company had been confined to barracks. After that, he never went home again: “I called and reported in. The next day I was traveling south. I couldn’t tell my family I was leaving because I had no way to do it. On Thursday, April 15, I set foot on the Malvinas Islands.”

The first combat

They were monotonous days, with different guard shifts. Then, all of a sudden, the sounds of planes and bombs were heard, and the fear began to grow stronger and stronger. What some soldiers believed was that there would be no conflict and that everything would be resolved diplomatically, but war was looming. “It was known that the British troops were close. On May 1 at 5 in the morning, when more than 100 soldiers were sleeping all piled on top of each other in a 5x5 room, anti-aircraft machine guns started firing. Waking up was chaos.” Terror and screams took over the place; the enemy had begun attacking the airport. In the middle of the darkness, with a surprise attack, it was Luis Escobedo’s baptism of war.

That was when they truly became aware of where they were: “What hurt me the most at that moment was that the General Belgrano had been sunk and many soldiers died.” That changed their mindset, since hatred and anger were the only feelings running through their veins. “Most of the boys became men because of the anger of knowing we were being attacked. We had to transform ourselves because there was no other option; it was survive.”

A plane would pass by and drop a bomb. There was no other option. You couldn’t do anything. It hit you or it didn’t. That was how cruel the days in the Malvinas Islands were. On top of that, there was no communication. There wasn’t even time, not even time to feel fear: “I didn’t have those feelings there. I became aware of it here over time, reading the letters I wrote in which I said goodbye to my relatives. They received my letters, but none of theirs ever reached me.”

His anger toward the military leaders of the time

Argentina is letting the chance pass for war veterans to tell the true story. Luis Escobedo says explicitly: “I never felt deceived. In 2012 I went back to the Malvinas Islands, and that was when I truly became aware of what had happened. After so many years, I felt anger toward the military leaders of the time, who fought a desk war. They were not beside the soldiers; they were in Buenos Aires directing the war, they were never on the front line. Everything was done very improvised. To this day, I still can’t believe we were able to endure so much cold, so much hunger. But in the war, all we soldiers wanted was to defend what was ours.”

The surrender

His battalion was stationed at the entrance to the city. For the last three nights, all they could see were the flashes and how the English were entering the city. On the night of June 13, there was an attack in the hills where they were defending. They knew the British’s next step was them, the entrance to the city: “We got ready all that night, and the next morning at the barricades we were going to face the English. The other soldiers were already coming in wounded; it was all chaos. At noon, when we were ready for the confrontation, the order came that hostilities were ceasing and surrender was coming. For many it was a relief, but the truth is we felt anger because we had gone through so much that we didn’t care about giving our lives before making that decision.”

Luis Escobedo prefers not to remember the worst things he had to see in the war, but what he cannot get out of his head are several questions. Why did they have to go through so much hunger, so much cold? Why was everything so improvised? Why did they let so many young boys die? With a pale voice from the memory, he says: “We went to war with very little weaponry. To fight lightly armed against a world power. It makes you angry to think that if it cost the English that much, what would it have been like if we had had more planes, more ships, more technology? You start thinking about so many things that could have been, but weren’t.”

Even so, Escobedo holds no grudge of any kind. He was a prisoner for four days, and the treatment was proper within what war is. There is an anecdote from 2019, when he went to the Malvinas for the last time and met two British veterans: “We talked about what happened to us at that time and what came after. They suffered a lot in the postwar period and had many emotional problems. In other words, the suffering is mutual; we feel the same.”

As for the Chileans, Luis Escobedo draws a distinction between the military and ordinary citizens: “I was lucky enough to play in Chile and I have many friends there. Every time I go, they make that clear to me. Not long ago, a journalist from a Chilean channel was sent to find out what had become of Luis Escobedo, and not just anyone does that. It’s mutual affection with the Chilean people.”

Lastly, he leaves a reflection that invites us to think: “Argentines are very special and triumphalist. We lost a war, and the politicians here are to blame because they neither remember nor take as an example what happened to us. We Malvinas veterans had to fight and walk a long road to create our laws. The postwar period was very difficult. And here, the only ones we must remember are those boys who gave their lives so that Argentines today can have this democracy. The true heroes we must remember here are those 632 boys who gave their lives on the Malvinas Islands.”

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.