Falklands or Malvinas?: 25 years of sovereignty struggles for islands

by Kaitlin | April 3, 2007 at 10:05 am

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Twenty-five years ago, British PM Margaret Thatcher sent her country's navy to one of its colonies, the Falkland Islands, to oppose Argentina's fascist dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, who was trying to seize the islands for his Argentina. At the time, the action by Galtieri was seen as a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from Argentina's economic strife. Overall, 913 people died in the ensuing battle, including three Falkland Islanders.

Now, twenty-five years later, Argentinians are celebrating a renewed desire for sovereignty over the islands--which they call Las Malvinas.

Spain's EFE news agency reports that many Argentine towns and cities marked the war's anniversary with events whose common theme was a reassertion of Argentina's sovereignty claim over the islands. In public statements, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana "insisted" that Britain has "repeatedly declined" to enter into a dialogue about just who owns the islands. (That may be because, as successive governments in London have seen it, what's to discuss? For them, there really has been no question about who controls the Falklands; they've all regarded the island group as a British territory. Current British Prime Minister Tony Blair has even indicated that, had he been PM at the time, like Thatcher, he would have gone to war, too.

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