Natalie. Mayo

In 2012 on the thirtieth anniversary of the Malvinas war, a muted celebration of remembrance was taking place in Buenos Aires. A band called Mayo were performing a gig and highlighting their new album. With songs of peace and above all else, a song about three missing teens from 1981. The singer was a middle aged woman called Natalie.

 

She was a very remarkable lady. By all accounts she should have been dead. Her final flight, with near total blood loss, in a crippled A-4B Skyhawk had passed into aviation legend. Even her former enemies had recognized her courage in making it back to base after being wounded. How she managed to rendezvous with the Hercules tanker was anyone’s guess. Maybe Nat had a guardian angel and her job wasn’t war but peace.

 

“I’m Natalie. Most of you know my story. How I love music and flying. And how I still follow those two passions and also a third one. That is PEACE. It was only after the fall of the junta that I learnt of the fate of my three friends. How they were abducted by the authorities, tortured, drugged and put on a Navy plane. Then flown an hour out to sea and thrown out, naked, from thirteen thousand feet. All perished.”

 

A huge crowd stood in silence, listening. Most were young, born after the junta years and Malvinas war and The Disappeared. However, their parents and older people remembered and many of these cried, remembering tens of thousands who were murdered. Most were innocent, a few guilty. All were killed.

 

“I could have stopped this by bombing the leadership. Now I know it would have been a suicide mission and they would have been replaced but people could have rose up and brought revolution. I never flew that mission. I was ordered to bomb British ships, this I did. The junta knew of my band Mayo and of my music. I believe they thought I’d be killed. I very nearly was. I lost a leg and have inner scars of those years. This song is for my three murdered friends. They are called Filipe, Anetta and Mahalia. I’d also like to dedicate this to my old enemy, whose men I killed and maimed. And to my own countrymen who were led to their deaths, especially young Roberto who never did make his films. For peace my friends, this song is for you...”