Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Argentine troops were ill equipped and poorly trained when asked to defend the occupation of
the Islas Malvinas against the British.
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the rights of the British citizens who tended sheep there. The Malvinas
nonetheless appeared on every schoolchild's map of Argentina, and
patriotic pride was always just below the surface, even when politicians
had solicited British investments during the liberal age, a century and
a half before.
Although diplomatic right may have resided with the Argentines,
General Galtieri miscalculated. On the evening he issued the order to
invade, Galtieri had called his “good friend,” President Reagan. The
U.S. president was appalled that Galtieri expected him to uphold the
Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century canon that stated that an attack
by any European power on any American republic would be consid-
ered an act of war toward the United States. It approved of Argentina's
fight against “communism,” but the Reagan administration wanted
no disagreement with Britain, least of all over some South Atlantic
islands of such minuscule importance. The American president and the
British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, had deep ideological affini-
ties. Rather than supporting Galtieri, Reagan gave his moral support
to Thatcher as she quickly outfitted a British task force to retake the
islands.
Galtieri and his fellow junta members appointed General Mario
Menéndez, a prominent member of the hard-line faction, as military
