Cristina’s damp squib

The build-up was great: for the first time in many years, opposition politicians were invited to the Pink House to listen to a presidential statement, along with the usual crowd of diplomats, Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants, Supreme Court judges, youngsters who presumably represent the general public, business lobbyists and even the lorry-drivers’ chieftain Hugo Moyano. Something big was clearly brewing. Or was it? Perhaps Cristina really had intended to provide the world with something startling to get on with. If so, at the last minute she changed her mind.

To the evident disappointment of just about everybody who listened to her ceremonial address to the Nation, whether in the Pink House itself or in front of a television screen, Cristina did not declare war on perfidious Albion or even announce the cutting of air links between the Malvinas Islands and the South American mainland in order to deprive the inhabitants of fresh fruit, vegetables and, in the case of Chileans, Peruvians and Argentines living there, contact with their relatives. Instead, she limited herself to saying that the already well-known Rattenbach Report on the military’s handling of the 1982 war would be officially declassified, quoted John Lennon by asking the “English” prime minister to give peace a chance, objected strongly to the presence of Prince William on the islands and, presumably alarmed by the impending approach of HMS Dauntless that, according to the warship’s boosters, could make short work not only of what is left of Argentina’s air force but also of those of the rest of Latin America, said she would ask the United Nations to do something to stop the “militarization” of the South Atlantic. And that was pretty well that.

So, what was it all about? For the usual political reasons, Cristina thinks it would be a good idea to promote the UK to the top of her long list of nasty enemies, relegating the previous holder of that distinction, the IMF, to a place lower down, but she seems to be aware that it would not be in her interest to overdo it. Thanks to the disastrous efforts of the military regime almost thirty years ago, many Argentines take it for granted that when a government decides to resurrect a conflict that has been going on for almost two centuries, it is because it wants to distract attention from more urgent matters. There are also signs that some suspect that it might be better to show the islanders, the only people who have a genuine, rather than a merely emotional, stake in the outcome of the sovereignty dispute, a bit more respect. As Cristina’s favourite British philosopher, Lennon, put it, “speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”

Though David Cameron cannot be blamed for the belt-tightening that is in store for much of the population now that the consumer binge has petered out, the notion that in some way Argentina’s problems have to do with the Malvinas Islands has by no means lost its appeal. As we are seeing in Greece and other European countries, economic hard times are prone to stimulate rudimentary nationalist feelings. Such outbursts may not solve anything, but they do allow people to let off steam by shouting insults against foreign malefactors, burning foreign flags and congratulating themselves on their own patriotic fervour.

Not only government spokesmen but also many commentators here have convinced themselves that Cameron is using the terrifying Argentine threat because he too is in deep trouble back home. That is unlikely. If a distraction is called for, the “English” PM has many far bigger fish to fry, especially in the Middle East where a major war involving his country could break out at any moment. As for the UK’s economic woes, they have not dented his popularity, which has risen of late thanks to his reluctance to have too much to do with the imbroglio affecting Euroland and to the widespread feeling that “austerity” is virtuous. In any event, neither he nor any other British leader would think of abandoning the Falkland islanders to their fate unless they expressed a wish to be ruled from Buenos Aires. Once upon a time, they might well have done just that, but since the events of 1982 they have no choice but to stick to their guns.

None of this is going to change any time soon. After a couple of generations of friendly contacts, with intermarriage, student exchanges and the like, the islanders might conceivably come round to the idea that all things considered a closer relationship with the mainland would not be unbearable, but for that to happen Argentina would have to become a very different country, one in which politicians and “intellectuals” were rather more willing than they have been to take into account the sentiments of other people and less inclined to subordinate everything to abstractions. The emotional force behind the irredentist claim has far more to do with what the islands have come to symbolize than with any particular need to get hold of whatever raw material resources may be found in them or under the adjacent waters, let alone the ecological impact fishing or looking for oil may have. In any event, if Cristina and other members of her Cabinet really cared about the environment, by now they would have done something about the toxic waste exuded by the Riachuelo that harms millions of people living in Greater Buenos Aires.