‘Luhansk and Donetsk remind us of the Malvinas’: What Argentinians think of the Falklands now

For a month, José Luis González endured bombardment from British jets and ships as he manned a machine-gun post, perched in a freezing, waterlogged trench, overlooking Port Stanley.

When the teenage conscript eventually returned to Argentina, after a brief stint as a prisoner of war, he had frostbitten toes, shrapnel in his knee and was so traumatised, he needed psychological support.

Now, 40 years later, González remains convinced of two things – that attempting to take the Falklands by force was a terrible mistake, and that the islands were, are and always will be Argentine.

“The Malvinas are one of the few things that unite all Argentines. Maybe the only other one is watching the national football team,” says the 58-year-old.

“When I was sent there, it was completely unexpected. But I was filled with pride. I felt fear and a little bit of craziness, but there was no doubt that it was a just cause,” he added.

Such views are held across Argentina, where street names reference Las Malvinas, the Castillian name for the remote archipelago, and where neighbourhood walls are adorned with murals depicting the islands in the sky blue and white of the Argentine flag. Along with the late Diego Maradona, the Falklands are also a favourite tattoo for many working-class Argentines.

One poll last year found that 81 per cent of Argentines wanted Buenos Aires to continue its efforts to recover the Falklands from the United Kingdom. Equally, Argentines today overwhelmingly agree that the campaign should be pursued exclusively through peaceful, diplomatic channels.

Carlos Ruckauf, a former vice president and foreign minister, compares the UK’s acquisition of the Falklands to Russia’s seizure of rebel enclaves in eastern Ukraine. “For Argentines, Luhansk and Donetsk remind us of the Malvinas,” he says.

That belief is rooted in geography – with the islands located on a continental shelf 300 miles from Argentine Patagonia but 8,000 miles from the UK – and history. The Falklands were first discovered, uninhabited, by a British expedition in 1690. They subsequently passed through British, French, US and Spanish hands, with Madrid controlling the islands when Argentina declared its independence in 1816. The UK then occupied them in 1833, expelling a Hamburg-born trader who Buenos Aires had charged with exploiting the islands’ resources.

The history resonates so much, says Carlos De Angelis, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires, because Argentina’s borders have remained relatively unchanged since independence. British sovereignty of the Falklands is perhaps the most significant perceived foreign intervention during the nation’s 200-year history.

That context is something all Argentines are taught at school and is often repeated by politicians, especially the former president and current vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, of the Peronist party. In a typically symbolic move, Peronist politicians last month proposed renaming Rivadavia Avenue, one of Buenos Aires’ principal thoroughfares, “Argentine Malvinas Avenue”. They claimed the move was a tribute to the 649 Argentine servicemen who died during the Falklands conflict and even greater number of veterans who subsequently took their own lives.

On the anniversary itself on Saturday, president Alberto Fernández led a ceremony with veterans and families of the fallen at the recently-opened Museum of the Malvinas in the Argentine capital. “The Malvinas are Argentine and also Latin American,” he said.

The Falklands can also be used in Argentina to attack rivals. Last year, the opposition politician Patricia Bullrich, who had been a minister during the 2015-2019 centre-Right presidency of Mauricio Macri, which had downplayed the Falklands claim, made the mistake of joking about the islands, suggesting Buenos Aires use them to secure Pfizer Covid vaccines. She was forced to apologise after national uproar.

“In school, they place a lot of emphasis on 1833. It’s a watershed. The islands are a feeling, an idea that unites all Argentines,” says Juan Bautista, 24, an international relations student at the Catholic University of Córdoba.

He also draws parallels between Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and the decision by Galtieri’s military dictatorship to invade the Falklands in 1982: “In both cases, an authoritarian government sought to revindicate itself through a nationalist military adventure.”

Yet Argentine curriculums do encourage independent thinking, says Gabriel Luna, 21, a film student at Buenos Aires’ National Arts University, who is more indifferent about the Falklands. “I just don’t like nationalism, or shouting your beliefs in other people’s faces,” says Luna. “Nationalism is harmful.”

The Falklands war had profound consequences for Argentina – most obviously in hastening the fall of the junta.

The dictatorship was already in serious difficulties when it launched the invasion, having presided over an economic collapse – including a 10-fold devaluation of its currency – and under increasing international pressure for its brutal, paranoid suppression of dissent, “disappearing” thousands of real and perceived political opponents. Just days before Argentine troops’ amphibious assault on the Falklands, an estimated 30,000 demonstrators gathered in Buenos Aires to protest – at the time, an unprecedented show of bravery against the dictatorship.

The national mood was turned, briefly, on its head by the grab of the Falklands. Two days after Argentina had seized the islands, some 100,000 cheering, flag-waving citizens crowded into the Plaza de Mayo, the square that had previously become the venue of the lonely protests of the mothers of the disappeared.

The euphoria was not to last. As swiftly as the British Armed Forces proved their superiority over their Argentine counterparts, the mood in the country turned to fury against a military government that had even proven incompetent at what was, supposedly, its speciality, namely fighting wars.

“The invasion was like the grasping of a dying man,” says Dr De Angelis. “But it backfired completely. These generals and admirals were seen as not even able to organise a military campaign, as opposed to dealing with unarmed Argentine civilians.

Veterans of the war were also treated as a national embarrassment. Mr González, who eventually forged an eclectic career working the lights in a theatre, as a security guard and teacher, recalls how prospective employers would see the stamp denoting that he was a veteran on his national identity card and then decline to hire him.

“Employers didn’t want veterans. They thought we were trouble, difficult. They never said that to your face, but you knew,” he says. Four decades on, his life remains marked by that brutal month he spent on the Falklands, including occasional stabbing pains in his toes.

“For me, it was a war between two governments, not against the British people. It’s clear the junta were criminals. They did unforgivable things – kidnap, torture, murder.

“I think the British are a civilised people, with their mistakes, of course, like any other people. When I was captured, I was treated in a gentlemanly way. But I still believe in the Malvinas, and I don’t have any doubt that sooner or later, they will be Argentine.”