Mariano Lobos is a Navy petty officer, an old acquaintance of Antonio Portet from their years of service, who in a port bar gets Antonio his FN FAL rifle “Natalya” and ammunition.
| Type | Character (Navy petty officer) |
| Era | 1966 |
| Place | Port bar, Buenos Aires |
| Spanish entry | Mariano Lobos |
Role
He belongs wholly to the realistic surface of the gesta — Operativo Cóndor and the military infighting of 1966 — and never goes down to the islands. Through him Antonio recovers his weapon after the Borda.
Their conversation is laden with the split in the Armed Forces of those years, Azules against Colorados, the same fracture that got Antonio discharged. Mariano speaks with resentment and nostalgia of the days when “we slept with the rifle beside us” and a petty officer answered to no one for a FAL. “Now you have to ask permission even to remember.” He stays in the bar, unaware that the FAL will end up firing in a lighthouse at things that appear in no Navy report.