Twenty men meet in a backroom in the Argentinian provincial capital La Plata every Tuesday evening. They greet each other with kisses on the cheek and hug as if they hadn't seen each other in years. Then they sit down around a long table, set with dishes made of tin. The meals are simple -- pasta mostly, with cheap wine and lemonade.
None of the men ever forget the weekly dinner. It's been their ritual for more than 20 years. Their experiences in the Falklands War unite them. They fought together on the Malvinas -- as the archipelago in the southern Atlantic is called in Latin America.
Dug into muddy trenches, they fought over every rotting biscuit. They secretly stole sheep from the islanders and, unable to make a fire -- it was wartime, after all -- they devoured the meat raw. "The months on the islands have marked us for life," says 45-year-old Norberto Santos.
Argentina's dispute with Britain over the Malvinas continues to this day. On the eve of the anniversary of the war Argentina suspended a cooperation agreement with London on oil exploration around the islands, announcing that such cooperation could only continue if Britain agreed to "renew dialogue over sovereignty."
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