decided on a surprise invasion of the British
Falkland Islands, claimed by Argentina as Las Islas
Malvinas. The Falklands had come under British
occupation in 1833, and the sparse population of
some 2,000 overwhelmingly wished to remain
British. Under international law, the Argentinians
had a doubtful case, but successive British gov-
ernments would still have preferred a solution
that satisfied Argentinian national pride. The
main obstacle to a settlement proved to be the
British Parliament which understandably would
not hear of any diplomatic solution that might
hand British citizens over to an authoritarian
Argentinian regime. There was no chance of any
peaceful outcome once the Argentinians launched
an invasion of the islands on 2 April 1982. The
British governor and his guard of a few soldiers
could offer only token resistance. The United
Nations and other intermediaries, including
General Alexander Haig, the US secretary of
state, attempted to find a peaceful solution,
before the British military and naval task force
being assembled 8,000 miles away could reach
the Falklands. One of the most controversial
events in the war was the sinking by a British sub-
marine of the Argentinian cruiser, the Belgrano,
on 2 May with great loss of life, at a time when
the Argentinian navy was on its way home. Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher was accused at the
time of having deliberately torpedoed a promis-
ing peace plan that had only just been proposed.
It is more than doubtful that the generals would
have withdrawn the force from the Falklands,
which was the minimum British requirement. In
a short conflict the untrained Argentinian con-
scripts were no match for the British profession-
als, but the Argentinian air force, with its modern
fighters and up-to-date weapons, inflicted severe
casualties on the task force. On 14 June 1982
Port Stanley was recaptured and the Argentinian
commander surrendered.
In Britain there was no feeling of enmity or
hatred for the young Argentinians caught up in
the conflict. At the ‘victory’ church service in St
Paul’s Cathedral, prayers were said for both the
British and the Argentinian dead. It was the most
unnecessary war of modern times, and could per-
haps have been prevented had the British govern-
ment listened in time to warnings of an impend-
ing invasion. Instead, inadvertently, the wrong
signals were sent to Buenos Aires. The invasion
itself had been greeted in the Argentinian capital
with wild enthusiasm, though the British residents
were not in any way molested – to that extent, at
least, it was a civilised conflict. A deep chord in
Argentinian nationalism had been touched, and
the generals were heroes. The let-down of defeat
was bound to be traumatic. The one good result
was that the military junta could not hope to stay
in power much longer. The military made way for
civilian rule in October 1983. Raúl Alfonsín and
the Radical Party won the subsequent election.
Alfonsín inherited appalling economic prob-
lems exacerbated by his inability to end the state
of conflict on the basis of accepting British sover-
eignty over the Falklands. After the casualties the
British had suffered, a compromise of that princi-
ple, possible perhaps before the invasion, had now
become unthinkable. The Argentinian economy
did not recover, which made Alfonsín increasingly
unpopular at home, but the president, a lawyer by
profession, restored the rule of law, and human-
rights violations ceased. This earned him inter-
national recognition and goodwill. Those in the
military responsible for torture and murders dur-
ing the ‘dirty war’ were brought to trial, a devel-
opment unprecedented in Latin American history.
A handful of the military, as well as the leaders of
the junta, were sentenced to various terms of
imprisonment in 1985. But Alfonsín was not
really strong enough to come to grips with the
many criminals in the army, which remains a
potential power in the state. The most serious and
immediate threat to democratic institutions in
Argentina, however, has been the perennial prob-
lem of the economy. When Raúl Alfonsín became
president in December 1983, the inflation rate
had reached 2,000 per cent, and foreign capital
had fled from the shattered economy. Alfonsín’s
conservative economic measures and his wage and
price controls stabilised the economy only for a
time, and did so at the expense of the workers’
standard of living.
In 1986 the Peronist General Confederation of
Labour called strikes against the economic pro-
gramme and in the following year the Peronist
1
THE WORLD OF LATIN AMERICA 697
