Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
17
1974, I sabel r eplaced him. N either as
strong as her husband nor his pr evious
wife, Isabel could not hold onto the coun-
try for v ery long. S he took on the nick-
name Isabelita, to bring back the memor y
of her predecessor, and, as an occultist, she
supposedly held séances o ver the coffin of
Evita in order to absorb her power. Despite
her efforts, terrorism and economic insta-
bility persisted during her short reign, and
on March 24, 1976, she was deposed in a
military coup.
colony beginning in 1828, was part of the
Spanish Empire that Argentina conquered
when it won independence. Argentina 's
early militar y riv als for po wer o ver the
islands included both B ritain and the
United States. Argentina proved to be too
young a nation with too little po wer to
control such a r emote region: The British
seized the islands in 1833 by simply send-
ing warships and a gentlemanly note to
the Argentine commander in charge, J osé
María Pinedo.
The taking of the F alklands had always
been a sticking point among Argentines.
In the early 1980s, Argentine P resident
Leopoldo G altieri assumed that inv ading
the F alklands would be easy and bring
much needed suppor t to his go vernment.
Galtieri believ ed the inv asion would go
almost unnoticed by the United Kingdom
(unbelievable in r etrospect) because the
U.K. didn 't r eally want the islands and
would not tolerate a loss of life to pr otect
its far-flung tur f. A t the U nited Nations,
Argentina had made sev eral attempts to
bring up their claim to the F alklands
before the inv asion, without any r esponse
from Great Britain.
The Argentines tested the waters b y
first inv ading the S outh G eorgia I slands
on March 19, 1982. O n April 2, G altieri
launched the full-fledged inv asion of the
Falklands. The inv asion was ill-fated, ill-
planned, and tragic; nearly 900 people
died in the shor t war. Most of Argentina's
military for ces r emained on the Chilean
border out of concern that B ritish ally
Augusto Pinochet of Chile would use the
war as a reason to invade his eastern neigh-
bor. Losses were heaviest on the Argentine
side, including the sinking of the battle-
ship
General B elgrano
with nearly 300
sailors aboar d. O fficially, neither side
THE DIRTY WAR &
ITS AFTERMATH
The regime of J orge Rafael Videla, estab-
lished in the junta, carried out a campaign
to weed out anybody suspected of having
Communist or Peronist sympathies. (Iron-
ically, it was in this period that E vita was
finally laid to r est in her curr ent tomb in
Recoleta Cemetery.) Congress was closed,
censorship imposed, and unions banned.
Over the next 7 years, during this “Process
of N ational R eorganization”—a period
now kno wn as the G uerra S ucia (D irty
War) or El Proceso—between 10,000 and
30,000 intellectuals, ar tists, activists, and
others w ere tor tured or ex ecuted b y the
Argentine go vernment. The mothers of
these
desaparecidos
(the disappear ed ones)
began holding Thursday afternoon vigils
in front of the pr esidential palace in B ue-
nos Aires's Plaza de Mayo as a way to call
international attention to the plight of the
missing. Although the junta was o ver-
turned in 1983, the w eekly protests con-
tinue to this day in B uenos Air es and in
other large cities in the countr y.
With the Argentine population gr ow-
ing increasingly vocal about human rights
abuses and the incr easingly worsening
economy, the military dictatorship sought
a patriotic distraction.
Argentines have long laid claim to the
Falkland Islands, known locally as the Islas
Malvinas. The basis for the claim is that
the territor y, which was used for a penal
2
declared war on the other during the
entire dispute. While no other po wers
contributed to the military effort, much of
Latin America sided with Argentina, while
