The Islands

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In nearly four decades of journalism, few articles have proved more challenging than the one I was obliged to write in the early hours of 2 April 1982, when Argentine forces occupied the British South Atlantic colony of the Falkland Islands.

Typing in my office near Avenida Corrientes, my only point of reference was an editorial by the English-language Buenos Aires Herald, the newspaper that, during the worst periods of Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ following the military coup of 1976, had religiously published daily lists of the ‘disappeared’.

The Herald discerned an element of tragicomedy in the news that the Argentina junta had ordered a full-scale military invasion of the Falkland Islands. The colony was better known for its penguins and other wild life than for any member of its tiny population: just over 1,200, sheep farmers mainly. Yet the junta invoked a 150-year-old disputed sovereignty claim to justify its action and in the process divert domestic attention away from its appalling human rights record. The ensuing war lasted just 74 days and led to the death of over 1,000 soldiers, more than 600 hundred of whom were Argentine. Mrs Thatcher emerged victorious. Humiliated in defeat, the junta disintegrated.

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