Kirchner’s Falklands Folly

In thinking about Argentina’s unpopular President Kirchner and her present actions over the Falklands I’m minded of some lines from Henry IV Part II, the deathbed scene where the old king is giving advice to his son;

Therefore, my Harry,
Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days

Oh, how she is attempting to busy the giddy minds, not just in Argentina, but right across the whole giddy Latin American world. She has wisely eschewed any form of military action, counting instead on regional solidarity and diplomatic pressure. At a wave of the wand the solidarity has been conjured up: she has won the support of the leaders of thirty-two countries in the Caribbean and the Americas, another grand and bogus gesture.

As it says in a leader in The Economist, Argentina is convinced that it has geography, history and international law on its side; that the position should be returned to 1833 when the British ended what in their terms was an illegal occupation. Yes, by all means let’s go back to 1833. Then Patagonia was independent under its own indigenous leadership and Argentina was little more than an enclave around Buenos Aires. Let’s go back to 1833 across the whole Continent, let’s kick the hornets’ nest! But, as I said in my previous Falklands blog, none of this matters. Here history and geography count for nothing. All that matters is the wishes of the people of the Falklands, and as yet they have no desire to be placed under the management of the incompetent Kirchner.

For Kirchner oil’s clearly the thing, not the right of the inhabitants of the Falklands to self-determination, a greater right in international law I find difficult to imagine. But while she may do wonders for the domestic Botox industry she’s not quite so good when it comes to the black stuff. There is a strong possibility of a big oil-strike in Argentine waters but she and Nestor Kirchner, her husband and predecessor, have pursued policies so hostile to private initiative in the energy industry that Argentina’s output of oil and gas has fallen for three years in succession.

This is just part of the country’s economic decline in the hands of the Kirchners. Inflation, once again, is taking off; Argentina, once again, is slipping into the third world, is slipping into the kind of situation that brought the generals onto the streets in times gone by.

The crazy thing is this woman, much given to empty political posturing, is clearly too blinded by short term political considerations- her own tenure of office - to understand that a major oil strike in the Falklands would be of enormous indirect benefit to the Argentine economy. Incurring none of the capital costs involved in exploration, Argentina could become the main onshore base for the Falkland’s oil industry. Its own weakened energy industry could only benefit from the know-how this would create. But, no; bring on the machismo, bring on a tantrum tango and let’s see how far she gets with that particular dance.

If oil is discovered, and discovered in quantity, there’s one other possibility. In 1771, shortly after the very first fracas over possession of the islands, Dr Johnson wrote a pamphlet called Thoughts on the late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Island, in which he said that a colony here could never be independent because it would never be able to maintain itself. At last that situation may be about to change.

To have and to hold

I enjoyed William Langley’s profile of President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, the Botox Evita, in the Sunday Telegraph. Actually I think the parallel here should not be with the great Evita but more with Juan Peron’s second wife, Isabel, also one-time president of Argentina, the unlamented Isabelita. Or, considering her present posturing over the Falkland Islands, she might best be seen perhaps as the Botox Galterei.

I’m exaggerating, of course; nobody could possibly be as stupid as Leopoldo Galtieri, the man who embarked on an ill-advised military adventure to shore up the crumbling popularity of his murderous military junta. I don’t honestly think that the people of Argentina have the stomach for another fight, no matter how they shout about Las Malvinas. But Kirchner, increasingly unpopular, has decided on a spot of Argentinean machismo, imposing what amounts to an economic blockade on the Falklands.

Yes, she is drawing on a sense of grievance, on wounded national pride. The 1994 constitution, created after the end of the dictatorship- for which they have the British to thank – declares the recovery of ‘Las Malvinas’ to be “a permanent and unrelinquished goal of the Argentinean people. Recovery; that’s such an emotive word, don’t you think? Irredentism, the argument that lands should belong to the country to which they are ethnically or historically related.

There was a brief and questionable Argentinean occupation of the Falklands in the late 1820s, when a penal colony was established; but that’s it, that’s all. More than that, there is absolutely no ethnic link with any native Patagonian settlers; there never was. Besides, many of the natives of Patagonia itself were wiped out in the 1870s in an episode known in Argentinean history as the War of the Desert, by which control spread southwards from Buenos Aires to the areas adjacent to the Falklands. The very use of the word ‘desert’ gives some idea of how the native tribes were perceived.

Still, this is all quite arcane, really only of historical interest. The simple fact remains - a point I made on another blog - that the people of the Falklands are British and wish to remain British. British soldiers fought and died preserving their freedom from a brutal foreign aggressor, good at killing its own people, not so good at fighting wars. As long as the people of the Falklands want no change in their present status it is our duty to stand by them, no matter how much hot air is generated in Buenos Aeries. The only lift Kirchner is likely to get is from her continuing use of Botox.

Argentina and the Conquest of the Desert

There are some interesting parallels between the 'frontier experience' of the United States and that of Argentina. For both countries the issue became of growing concern during and after a major war; in the case of the United States the Civil War, and in the case of Argentina the War of the Triple Alliance. Also in both cases the growing conflict with the indigenous peoples began with measures concerning the distribution of the 'virgin' lands;

America introduced the Homestead Act in 1862 and Argentina the Land Act of 1867, the effects of which were to be similar in both cases. Moreover, relations between central government and the the natives was marked by bad-fath and broken promises, and the usual weary pattern of reprisals and counter reprisals. And in Julio Roca Argentia was blessed with its own version of Philip Sheridan. Roca, who led the successful campaign against the Indians in the Conquest of the Desert, declared in 1879 that "In the struggle for existence...the weaker race must perish in the face of the one favoured by nature."

However, for Argentina the 'problem of the frontiers' was, if anything even more acute. In the 1870s the Indians controlled a far greater proportion of the country. From the core of settlement around Buenos Aires, there were effectively two frontiers, one to the north and the other to the south. Argentina's European population was considerably smaller than that of the United States. During the 1850s, a time of internal political strife, the provinces of Buenos Aires, Sant Fe and Cordoba were particularly badly hit by Indian raids.

What was worse, the Ranqueles and the Araucanians, and other tribes, were ignoring the lines of territorial demarcation, previously agreed in a treaty with Juan Manuel Rosas in 1833. The outbreak of the war with Paraguay in 1865 forced the government to temporise by a process of appeasement. Encouraged by concessions on the frontier the tribes became that much bolder. In one particularly serious raid in Cordoba province in 1868 the Indians made off with 200 captives and 20,000 head of cattle.

At the end of the Paraguay war in 1870 Argentina was able to turn its large army towards a resolution of the internal problem. The 1867 Land Act, passed by the government of Bartolome Mitre, in allowing public land to pass into private hands, was more than enough motivation for 'rolling back the frontier.' The huge cattle industry, demanding every greater amounts of pasture, also required an immediate solution to the Indian problem. Added to this, growing immigration from Europe was creating new pressures.

The final spur to action, if any such were needed, came in 1876, when Chief Mariano Rosas of the Ranqueles penetrated the frontier defences at three points, before raiding and devastating a huge area of the settled countryside. The hardliners now had all the excuse they needed for the final conquest of the vast lands of Patagonia.

Viva Evita!

There were two essential elements to Perónist propaganda; first, the usual thing that one most associates with this activity: posters, speeches, publications and promotions of all kinds; and second, the practical work carried out by Eva Peron, the President's wife, in the Eva Perón Foundation, the charity she founded and managed, even at a micro-level. It would be difficult to underestimate the impact of this, and the personal contact it afforded many people with Evita, which was to sanctify her, both living and dead, and, for a time, shore up the authoritarian regime established by her husband. Her work in promoting Perón was also furthered by the establishment of the Female Peronist Party, shortly after women gained the vote in Argentina in 1947. Faithful cadres were sent across the country, everywhere promoting the Perónist message. It was a highly effective, election-winning machine.

Apart from party publications promoting the actions, and more important, pushing the image of the President and his movie-star wife, the normal press channels were also subject to a high degree of control and co-ordination. Opposition newspapers were intimidated into acquiescence, or closed down altogether, as was La Prensa in 1951. Evita also bought her own paper, Democracia, which presented news in an attractive, photo-rich and Perónist light. Radio broadcasts also served the same purpose. Official publications, like The Argentine Nation: Just, Free, Sovereign, were essentially photo opportunities, punctuated by text celebrating the regime's achievements. Others catered for the growing personality cult, with titles like How PERÓN gets it done, A Happy People Acclaims Perón , The Social Mystique of Eva Perón, so on and so forth.

But the most significant work of all was that carried out among school children, which included the publication of school books and stories like Little Cachito. In this an eight-year-old boy who comes from a family too poor to afford to buy Christmas presents but eventually gets a football thanks to the generosity of Evita and her foundation, which ensures that all the children of Argentina receive gifts, and no-one is left in tears! Children learned to read by pronouncing the names of Evita and Perón. After Evita's death in the summer of 1952 the following little prayer was included in the second-year reader;

Little Mother, who art in heaven, good fairy smiling among the angels, Evita: I promise to be as good as you could wish, respecting God, loving my country, loving General Perón, studying and being in every way the child of your dreams; healthy, happy, educated and clean-hearted. Looking at your portrait, like one who swears an oath, I make this promise to you. Even more, I ask you: have confidence in your child, Evita!

It was in this area that the work of Perónist propaganda had its greatest impact, outlasting the overthrow of the regime by the military in the 1955 coup. By the 1960s the regime was under sustained attack from radical youth, from the very people who had grown up with the image of Saint Evita and the omnipotent General Juan

Cry for me, Argentina

I saw Evita when I was about ten years old, the movie with Madonna in the title role, and fell in love with the character, with the glamour of the character; the politics came later.

Eva Duarte-Perón was a remarkable woman, so admirable in so many ways; a woman who pulled herself up from the most unpromising of circumstances to become a national icon in Argentina, important even today. I put some flowers at the Duarte family tomb in La Recoleta when I was in Buenos Aeries, a simple mark of respect followed by many others.

How could I possibly do such a thing? After all, she and her husband, Juan, were fascists, were they not? No, they were not. Fascism has become such a meaningless word, a simple insult thrown around without discrimination to label and damn anything and everything one happens to hate. So many people are seduced by shallow thinking and second-hand notions that, once lodged, are impossible to shift. I offer the following appraisal of the Peróns for those with eyes to see and ears to listen.

To begin, insofar as it is possible to define fascism at all, it existed as an alliance between radical middle-class elements and traditional power elites, usually in some kind of common front against organised labour. Is this true of Perón? Not in the least. His first presidency was constructed with the support of the Argentinean labour movement, not in opposition to it, in a common front against the traditional elite, known in Perónist parlance as the 'Oligarchy.' Bizarrely, Peron was a 'fascist' who was overthrown in 1955 by 'Catholic Fascists'. What kind of 'fascism', moreover, could unite radical left-wing and radical right -wing in opposition to military dictatorship as Perónism did after this coup?

I should make it clear that I do not deny that Perón took some of his political style from Mussolini's Italy, where he served for a time as a military attaché, but Peronism is a far more complex Latin American and Argentinean movement to be fitted comfortably within a European straightjacket. He was a Caudillo, a strong man, one of many across the Continent, with roots going back to the nineteenth century.

Evita herself had no interest whatsoever in ideology. Her politics were practical; she dealt with real issues and real people. She was loved by the ordinary people of Argentina because of the work she did through the Sociedad de Beneficencia, the so-called Eva Perón Foundation. It was also because of this love that she was hated; hated by the right and hated by the Marxist left.

In Perón and the Enigmas of Argentina, Robert Crassweller wrote;

Almost lost among the memories of Evita that have caught the imagination of the world there was another that has been little noted but whose importance is considerable: the legacy of incomprehension. Her brief and dazzling years were so successful because, in good part, she was so profoundly of the ethos. 'I have the body and the soul and the blood of the people.' But it was the ethos of the old, Hispanic-Creole tradition, born in the interior out of Lima and nurtured on the Pampas. Like Perón, she was wholly indigenous in origin, formation, and spirit; like him, she was distrusted and misunderstood in the Argentina of the Liberal System and in the outside world that knew only that Argentina.

Evita will always be among my heroines, marked less for her politics than for her simple humanity.

The choice was yours and no one else's

You can cry for a body in despair

Hang your head because she is no longer there

To shine, or dazzle, or betray.

How she lived, how she shined

But how soon the lights were gone.