In early 1986, shortly after arriving in the
Falkland
Islands for my dissertation research under a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, my
wife and I took a hike into the hills west of
Stanley,
the Islands’ capital and only town. Hoping to glimpse the panorama of Stanley
Harbour and the
East
Falkland countryside, we ascended the flanks toward the summit of the
1093-ft (333m)
Mount Kent
but, as we approached, we found our way blocked by polite but firm British
squaddies.
After the 1982 conflict in which
Argentina
invaded the Falklands, only to be dislodged after 74 days, the mountain had
become home to a Royal Air Force radar station that was not open to the public.
Whether the squaddies would have been quite so jovial had
they known my wife was an Argentine – she traveled to the Islands on her US passport
– I rather doubt. Still, I couldn’t help thinking of that when, as I read
Graham Bound’s
Fortress
Falklands, the author bemoaned his lack of access to the British
military command and the RAF’s
Mount Pleasant
facilities, which also serve as the Islands’ international airport.
It’s not as if Bound might be an Argentine agent – Falklands-born,
though he now lives in London, he’s served as a military correspondent for the
BBC and has worked in far riskier environments such as Afghanistan. Certainly
he has the credibility to make judgments on the Islands’ defenses without
giving away any confidential material but, as the sensitive 30th anniversary of
the Argentine invasion approached, he apparently got stonewalled and had to
rely on retired military contacts and his own online research for that specific topic.
That’s unfortunate, but it barely detracts from a book which,
despite a rather sensationalist subtitle (“Life Under Siege in Britain’s Last
Outpost”) focuses as much or more on a distinctive people who have inhabited
their insular homeland for up to nine generations. In fact, he is one of them,
descended from a family that arrived in the 1840s; he founded
Penguin News, the Islands’ only
newspaper, and there’s probably nobody better qualified to present an insider’s
viewpoint while simultaneously providing an outsider’s critical observations.
He is also a longtime acquaintance of mine; though I haven’t seen him
face-to-face since 1995, when he made a speaking tour to present the Islanders’
case to Argentines (as pictured below, with fellow Islander
Janet Robertson in
Buenos
Aires), we have remained in somewhat irregular communication.
Since the 1982 war, the Falklands have become a prosperous
place, thanks to maritime fishing licenses, tourism and (potentially) oil, but Argentine
president
Cristina
Fernández de Kirchner’s irredentist jingoism continues to trouble a population
that would welcome a constructive engagement with a country that, among other
measures, has prohibited charter flights over its airspace, harassed Islands-bound
cruise ships, and withdrawn from marine conservation efforts that were mutually
beneficial.
At the same time, he even-handedly discusses both the
achievements and weaknesses of local society, where the standard of living has
risen dramatically since the 1980s but, while some local entrepreneurs have
earned previously unthinkable fortunes and unemployment is virtually
non-existent, there is growing economic inequality. As the traditional rural
way of life on sheep ranches has declined, the lifestyle has become more
sedentary, and health problems such as obesity are becoming a concern. The oil
industry is a potential threat to the abundant wildlife and maritime resources,
but the Argentine government’s withdrawal from fishing agreements menaces the
migratory
Illex squid
stocks on which the Islands’ prosperity depends.
Until the
recent
selection of Pope Francis I in Rome, last week’s
Falklands
referendum in which Islanders overwhelmingly affirmed their desire to
continue as a “self-governing British territory” made huge headlines in
Argentina, where president Fernández and her administration went out of their
way to dismiss its legitimacy – to the point of declaring that Falkland
Islanders did not even exist. In his book, Bound stresses Islanders’ concerns that
Argentina will continue to make things difficult and could even take military
action; certainly, the Argentine government is deaf to the worries of a people
who were outnumbered at least five to one during the 1982 occupation. To get an
idea what the Islanders experienced, try to imagine Argentina occupied by the
entire population of
Brazil.
It’s not just solidarity in the face of occupation by
a brutal military dictatorship that suggests the Islanders are a
people. In one chapter, Bound posits a “soul of the Falklands” to describe an
hospitable lifestyle that, despite the dramatic changes since the 1980s, still
survives. That began to change when I lived there, as some farmhouses became
guesthouses for tourists intrigued by penguins, elephant seals and other
wildlife - until then, it would never have occurred to anyone to charge a guest
for room and board.
I would have liked to see him analyze some ethnographic traits that
characterize the Islanders such as, for instance, their distinctive accent. While
not everybody speaks with a thick
Falklands accent,
there’s no doubt it’s unique: one Islander who worked on ships around the world
told me that people often inquired about his accent, but no one was ever able
to guess his origins. Difficult even for some native English speakers from
other countries, it’s probably closest to New Zealand or Australian speech, but
even that’s misleading, and there’s a local vocabulary that takes some
learning.
As it happened, Islanders voted by a margin of 1,513 to
three to continue their current political status. On the basis of my own
experience there, I would say this was no surprise, even if it led to
speculation or even gossip, in a small community, as to the dissenters’ identity.
It’s worth adding that “No” votes not did not necessarily favor Argentina –
rather, the voters in question may believe in independence or some other option.
Personally, I know quite a few Islanders, some of them
mentioned by name in the book, and I consider the near-unanimous results
credible. In fact, I can think of at least two Argentine residents (with dual
nationality) who I would be pretty sure voted “Yes.” The last time I was in
Stanley, there was even one Argentine woman in the local police force.
While some Islanders and Bound himself consider Argentina a
military threat, I am less convinced. President Fernández mistrusts the
armed forces and has reduced the budget to a shoestring, to the point where
one
mothballed warship recently sank at the Bahía Blanca naval base.
According
to the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, a congressional report has noted than fewer
than 20 percent of its air force planes are in flying condition. On one expat
newsgroup, I read the following sardonic assessment of Argentina’s military
capabilities: “For
all practical intents and purposes, Argentina has no military. Yes, it has the
legal entities representing the Army, Navy and Air Force, respectively, but
that is it. Those are just empty shells. Its ships can't sail, its planes can't
fly and its army has no ammo or fuel.”
Even given the obvious hyperbole, I view any Argentine
military action as improbable and, in a recent email, Bound agreed that he may
have overstated the possibility of another invasion. Argentina
will continue to try to isolate the Islands, though, perhaps even withdrawing
permission for the weekly LAN Airlines flight from Chile (Bound mentions a surprising
local proposal to seek an alternative airlink from Miami, which could avoid
overflying Argentine air space).
