After 23 years, Alicia Mabel Reynoso is (officially) a veteran of the Falklands War: this was determined by the ruling of Chamber II of the Social Security House and approved of the benefit that had been denied to her. Judges Nora Dorado, Walter Carnota and Juan Fantini ruled that it is for Reynoso to collect a “special bonus” or salary bonus approved in 1998 for former combatants who participated in the war actions carried out in the South Atlantic between April 2 and June 14, 1982.
Reynoso is one of the “forgotten women” of Malvimas. She was an Air Force nurse along with dozens of women who served the fighters. Like many others, Reynoso asked to be paid a special bonus for services rendered during the Falklands War. The Air Force denied him this right and in 2010 he went to Social Security Justice and obtained a favorable ruling in 2018, but from the Force they appealed. In June 2019 the file entered Chamber II of the House and now, with the vote of the three cameramen, the first-degree sentence was confirmed. Not only was justice done for Reynoso, it also offers the opportunity for the rest of the nurses to access this benefit.
The Air Force argued that nurses did not engage in war and, in the face of that, the cameramen argued that Decree 886/05 states that they should be granted to “conscript soldiers, officers and non-commissioned officers of the Armed forces and Security forces who have been stationed at the Falkland Operations Theatre (TOM) or effectively entered combat in the area of the South Atlantic Theatre of Operations (TOAS) and civilians who were performing service and/or support functions in the above-mentioned locations.” In turn, the cameramen say that “thinking about physical combat only, and excluding the work of the nurse not only leads to the invisibilization of her contribution to the war effort, but in turn prolongs the pervivience of stereotypes in society. There are many ways to ‘participate in combat’. Reynoso did so from her role as a nurse who must be counted when assessing the provenance of the Social Security benefit she claims.”
