On February 12th at Casa Rosada, Buenos Aires, I sat in a media center within the palace walls and made a brief statement about my meeting with President Kirchner. I am ambassador at large for the Haitian government and CEO of the J/P Haitian Relief Organization, and our meeting focused entirely on the co-ordination efforts of countries like Argentina that made, and continue to make, significant contributions to a newly hopeful Haiti.
As my statement came to an end, I felt it appropriate to address my personal belief in the necessity for diplomacy to resolve a deeply held Argentinian conviction of ancestry and sovereignty that was being denied an international forum. Given that I was a guest in this country, whose own voice on an intractable UK position had been so nominally heard internationally, it seems to me that the fair respect from a gracious visitor was to comment.
The issue at hand was the fact that despite the encouragement of the UN, and despite our world's recent and evolving lessons of cultural sensitivity and economic equitability, the UK has refused to return to diplomatic efforts regarding the status of UK and Argentinian claims to the Malvinas Islands, commonly referred to as the Falkland Islands. The manifestation of the islands' names themselves betrays a vague history written by victors and viscounts. Malvinas, a name inspired from the French; and Falklands, that associated with a colonial leader of the British empire.
This is not a cause of leftist flamboyance nor significantly a centuries-old literary dispute. But rather a modern one, that is perhaps unveiled most legitimately through the raconteurism of Patagonian fishermen. One perhaps more analogous to South Africa than a reparation discussion in South Carolina. As a result, we must look to the mutual recognition of this illusive paradigm by both countries, when in the 1970s, the United Kingdom and Argentina were indeed involved in open-minded diplomatic negotiations for claims on the Malvinas/Falkland Islands.
It was not until the US and the UK supported the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile and an oppressive military leadership in Argentina had sought to distract populist attention from the plight of its own desaparecidos and their families domestically, that diplomatic efforts were shut down. The junta staged a ludicrous invasion of the islands in 1982, though residents were resolutely British subjects. Still, the very people who suffered and fought most enduringly against this military junta in Argentina are the ones who today lead that country, and on behalf of their people seek simply a fair and re-established diplomacy in issues of the disputed islands ranging from immigration to natural resources.
The UK's pause in diplomacy is an understandable one, but any lack of will to re-engage is a clear exploitation of losses already suffered. It is dismissive of a country and continent whose sacrifices and dignity have too long been neglected. As an American citizen whose position (or even any right to a position) has been called into question by a transparently corrupt and non-diligent propaganda machine that is much of the British press, my words of 12 February as well as my follow-up on 13 February in Montevideo, Uruguay, were, despite a complete video record, regurgitated through excerpt and flagrant manipulation.
Here is what needs to be known: the principal re-sculpting of my remarks by irresponsible journalism was to encourage the inflammatory notion that I had taken a specific position against those currently residing in the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, that they should either be deported or absorbed into Argentine rule. I neither said, nor insinuated that. The UK and General Augusto Pinochet (with ultimately timid support from the US) along with the diversionary invasion by the former Argentinian regime, did a fine job of leaving little room for that argument on today's world stage.
However, the legalization of Argentinian immigration to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands is one that it seems might have been addressed, but for the speculative discovery of booming offshore oil in the surrounding seas this past year. So when I used the term "archaic colonialism" in my remarks, it was not, as so ubiquitously misreported, a call for the repatriation of British subjects, but rather to question the deployment of Prince William to that area of operations where many British and Argentinian mothers and fathers had lost sons and daughters. With the deployment of the prince, whose task is helicopter search and rescue missions from an island colony with a population of about 3,000, there is the automatic deployment of warships. It is difficult to imagine that there is no correlation between the likely discovery of offshore oil reserves and the message of preemptive intimidation being sent by the UK to Argentina.
Let's recap: the UK was indeed engaged in diplomatic resolution discussions with Argentina until the Argentinian people were themselves betrayed by their own leadership's diversion, and the UK's unfaltering support of a dictator who had live rats inserted into female genitalia and electric probes placed on the testicles of men in Chile simply because they had elected for a life, identity, and leadership of their own choosing.
The "Falklanders'" slogan is "Desire the right". Indeed this is a human desire and not the exclusive domain of Falkland Islanders. And it is the same desire for which so many Chileans and Argentinians suffered and ultimately triumphed. The recognition that the diplomatic process of the 1970s gives to some of the legitimacy of Argentinian claims should not be dispelled or denied by the great United Kingdom through the exploitation of a more recent past, or for the greed of superpowers desperate to control the natural resources of the world. God save the Queen.
This editorial was originally published in The Guardian on February 23, 2012.
Sean penn, Mr Madonna to many, has always been against human rights.
Whether it was his support for Castro, who banned gays from going to university, becoming teachers, or playing music, to his support for Gaddafi who tortured women and bombed children.
Penn will do anything for attention, anything.
a visitor who actually was gracious would have.
having displayed a remarkable, albeit characteristic, lack of judgment, perhaps you should refrain from complaining about other people "re-sculpting" things
I read that Latinos will become the predominant group in the US, by the reasoning of those supporting British imperialism below, if they desired to annex to say, Mexico, they will support the US should to become a province of that country.
If people broke into your house while you are out traveling, you should relinquish your house to them if they claim they had settled there while you were out, especially if they outpower you with their weapons...
Is that you, Sean?
No Argentineans live there and the islands have been in British hands since before Argentina was created.
Jewett, the one who made the original Argentinian claim docked at the islands (there was already a dock) to complete repairs on his ship before declaring that the islands belonged to the United Provinces of the River Plate. Odd considering that his entire crew numbered several dozen, which was considerably less than the thousand or two transient American and British sealers that regularly stopped at the island. Argentina didn't even find out about the claim until a year later.
All of the other efforts by Argentina to apply their government to the islands after Jewett collapsed under their own weight.
When a British ship came to the Falklands in 1833, it expelled an Argentine garrison that had been illegally landed two months earlier, but it didn't expel any civilians. There was a colony of only about 28 civilians there at that point, of all nationalities - all that remained of a colony founded by Louis Vernet in 1829 with both British and Argentine permission. 4 of them voluntarily left and accepted a ride to Buenos Aires on the British ship; the records even show their names. The other 24 stayed and the current population of the islands includes their descendants.
The UK government has at least twice offered to the Argentine government to let an international court rule on the sovereignty issue, but the Argentine government apparently doesn't want that. I wonder why?
Sean, please go back to acting.
Someone is playing at imperialism here, and it's not who you think...
Maybe in your circle. But don't bet on it. You might be surprised.
What happened, and keeps happening, to Haiti, to Latin America, to other places..... And done in the name of those..... "most Americans" you speak of...... Well...... It does bother most - other - Americans. Everywhere.
During WWII, when Argentina supplied the Axis with beef and produce, Britain continued to man the islands as part of its war effort. Argentina COULD have assisted in that effort but chose to remain neutral. They have neither a legal nor a moral right to press for return of the Falklands, now that it's apparent there's seas bed resources to exploit.
If the Argentinians want those islands, they are going to have to try to take them again. I suspect the results will be the same... only much more painful for all of Argentina.
Are white(and latino) Americans to return to europe ?
Are white/latino Argentinians to return to europe ?
The wishes of the Islanders are paramount .