Luis Escobedo, Falklands veteran who turned to football after Colón | 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 played 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 passing of time, he realized that football was like therapy that made him forget many things, or simply forget. Taking stock of what happened in the postwar period, there were many suicides, and even today some still suffer from it. They endure it. But something of great value that happened to Luis Escobedo after being in combat was returning to football, even though he wanted nothing to do with it: “When I came back from the war I didn’t want to play anymore, but shortly after I started to feel that 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. In June 1982 he returned from the war, and by October he had already started 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 to him a 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. Fierce in marking and determined when it was time to join the attack. As he was nearing the end of his teenage years, that was snatched away from him when he was 17. At that time, he was already training with the Los Andes first team, which had players the likes of José Tiburcio Serrizuela. In 1981 he was called up for military service, and he ended up losing that year. In March ’82, he was discharged and returned 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 back home: “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 battle

They were monotonous days, with different guard shifts. Out of nowhere came the sounds of planes and bombs, and the fear began to grow bigger and bigger. 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 in a 5x5 room all piled on top of each other, anti-aircraft machine guns started firing. Waking up was chaos.” Terror and screams took over the place; the enemy began attacking the airport. In the middle of the darkness, in a surprise attack, it was Luis Escobedo’s baptism of fire.

That was when they truly became aware of where they were: “What hurt me most at that moment was that the General Belgrano had been sunk and many soldiers died.” That changed their mentality, because 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 and drop a bomb. There was no other option. You couldn’t do anything. It hit you or it didn’t. That’s how cruel the days were in the Malvinas Islands. Besides, there was no communication. There wasn’t even time, not even to feel fear: «I didn’t have those sensations there. I became aware of it here over time, reading the letters I wrote saying goodbye to my relatives. They received my letters, but none of theirs ever reached me.»

Anger toward the military leaders of the time

Argentina is letting veterans tell the true story of the war slip away. Luis Escobedo says explicitly: «I never felt deceived. In 2012 I returned 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 improvisationally. 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 at the entrance to the city. During 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 on the hills they were defending. They knew the British’s next step would be them, the city entrance: «We prepared all that night, and the next morning at the barricades we were going to face the English. Other wounded soldiers were already arriving; it was all chaos. At midday, when we were ready for the confrontation, the order came that hostilities were ceasing and the surrender was arriving. 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 boys die? With his voice faded by 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 so much, what would it have been like if we had had more planes, more ships, more technology. You end up thinking about so many things that could have been but weren’t.”

However, 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 when in 2019 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 afterward. They suffered a lot in the postwar period and had many emotional problems. In other words, the suffering is mutual; we feel the same.”

Regarding the Chileans, Luis Escobedo makes a distinction between the military and ordinary people: “I was lucky enough to play in Chile and I have many friends there. Every time I go, they make that known to me. Not long ago they sent a journalist from a Chilean channel 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: «We Argentines are very particular and triumphalist. We lost a war, and the politicians here are to blame because they do not remember or 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 have to remember are those boys who gave their lives so that today Argentines can have this democracy. Here, the real heroes we must remember 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.