Argentina’s claim to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands It has been a state policy unchanged in four decades of democracy and one of the few causes that does not divide Argentine public opinion. Throughout the country there are streets, squares, avenues and municipalities baptized “Argentine Malvinas”. The presence of these South Atlantic islands is mandatory on any official map and every April 2nd commemorates the beginning of the war waged – and lost – against the United Kingdom in 1982 to recover them. Javier Milei caused a first short circuit before reaching the Presidency, when expressed his admiration for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcherthe woman who defeated Argentina. Now, his Government is facing a new storm due to the dissemination of an official statement that identified the archipelago as Falklands, the British name. After a exchange of mutual accusations between the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense, the latter ended up admitting its responsibility. The head of the portfolio, Luis Petri, warned that they will identify the person responsible and fire him.
“This will be known because here whoever manipulated the data left traces attached. The system records who entered and had access to the modification of the note,” Petri said on Miter radio. “We want to expel the bastard responsible who committed this malicious act,” he stressed.
The statement of the controversy reported on the meeting held last week by the Argentine Foreign Minister, Diana Mondino, and the vice president of the International Red Cross, Gilles Carbonier. They both talked about identification program for corpses of combatants from the Malvinas wara process begun in 2012 by which names have already been given to 121 victims who had been buried under the legend “NN Argentine Soldier only known to God.” Mondino received Carbonier “to discuss the resumption of negotiations on the Third Plan of the Humanitarian Project, aimed at the identification of Argentine combatants who fell in the Falklands/Malvinas Islands,” could be read in the first statement published on the Argentine Government’s online site. . When the scandal broke, that statement was deleted and replaced by another in which the word Falklands had been deleted.
At first, all the criticism was directed against the Foreign Ministry and, especially, against Mondino. The minister, who He has been on the tightrope for months due to statements that have caused more than one diplomatic problemquickly came out to deny responsibility: “It is absolutely false that a statement has been issued from the Foreign Ministry calling our Malvinas Islands by another name.”
The suspicion was then transferred to the Ministry of Defense. There was silence and, later, a tweet that confirmed it and anticipated retaliation: “(Petri) instructed that an urgent summary be carried out on the person responsible to immediately remove him.”
The authorship of the statement remains under lock and key, but the Minister of Defense reconstructed what happened. According to his version, Colonel Jorge Zanella, who is in charge of the Malvinas War Veterans Coordination, considered the meeting between the Foreign Ministry and the Red Cross to be of great interest and requested that the document be published on the website of Argentina.gob.ar. “The Coordination asks that the note be uploaded and, when it is uploaded, there apparently the original newsletter has been manipulated, the text has been changed and this inappropriate name for Malvinas has been incorporated. With which we are initiating all investigations to bring down the person responsible and apply the maximum sanctions,” he indicated.
The controversy revived criticism of Milei’s approach to the British authorities. Just a week ago, Milei received former Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Casa Rosada and the latter came out to greet the balcony of the government headquarters. According to local media, Johnson promised to introduce him to his musical idol, Mick Jagger, the singer of the Rolling Stones.
Petri assured that the name Falklands “does not reflect the positions” of the Government of Javier Milei. “We vindicate the heroes of the Malvinas, we make them march in parades, we vindicate the sovereignty of the islands,” he concluded.
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