To not understand why some Argentinians seem to want the Falkland Islands so much?

Brazilians are cool anyway. If the Isle of Wight was part of Brazil and the people on the Isle of White all happy with that arrangement it would be fine. Super easy and accessible way to experience Carnival for instance

Who had ever heard of the Falklands until the war broke out, ffs!

Yes, me too!

Except that the Isle of Wight is 6 miles from the UK and the Falkland Islands are 300 miles from Argentina, we have been there since 1833.

My husband managed to distract them by talking about how great Argentina are at football

I know next to nothing about football, but from what I've picked up from the news over the years, Argentina's proudest ever moment in football was when one of their players blatantly cheated to win the big match. Even in the recent World Cup, they were accused of cheating again.

It would be the equivalent of Jamaica glorying for decades in Usain Bolt having smashed the records and repeatedly winning the title for them... but if he'd openly used a motorbike instead of using his actual talent.

The country was built on European immigration. Far less black people there because black people exist in tbe region due to slavery, mainly seen in Brazil and Colombia

I'm not going to repeat myself but this absolutely is not correct. Argentina like the US of America and many South American countries like Brazil and Columbia, was in its early days very much "built" with the labour, in part, of enslaved Africans.** The fact that black Argentinians left less of a genetic legacy than in other parts of South America does not mean they did not exist.

The rather loaded references to being built by Europeans does echo my earlier point about a narrative that tries to paint Argentina as being morally superior to it's neighbours (implying they didn't do slavery) while also echoing some dodgy ideas also popular with MAGA. It's unusual to do both at the same time.

**And of course other groups as well. White Europeans would indeed form later waves of immigration but that doesn't mean indigenous people and black Africans never existed.

You’ve missed the point. But probably best to leave it at that.

Need to reply when I am home and not on mobile data. It’s not loading all the pages. Like @whatalunaticI also lived there and have many friends from my time there. There is nuance in the situation of course, as there is with anything, but the amount of nonsense on here is nuts.

Ok. Well, think whatever you want to think. I lived there for many years and visit regularly. Just reducing it to 'posturing' doesn't cover it. Not by a long shot.

And the rest is absolutely correct.

The penguins....... 🐧 🐧 🐧

There was slavery and there were black people in Argentina. Buenos Aires was the main arrival point- between 1587 and 1640 approximately 45,000 African slaves arrived there and by the end of the 18th century, one-third of Argentina’s population was Black.

How the black population went from 33% of the country to between 0.6% and 3% (depending on whether it's measured by asking people or testing DNA) is a very.... Interesting question. One explanation is deliberately putting black soldiers at the front lines in Argentina's wars with neighbouring countries so that almost all were killed. A less dark explanation is that it was mostly a deliberate redefinition of what counted as black that reduced the number of people identifying as black followed by a very deliberate encouraging of white migration into the country. Black genes were basically diluted and bred out. This isn't a conspiracy theory- whitening the country was a deliberate policy.

Argentina were not the only country to have slaves and do terrible things to the ethnic and black populations they had power over. But what is unusual is the insistence on Argentina's whiteness that both allows (some of) them to claim a false racial superiority** while also trying to claim moral superiority by arguing they just never had slaves unlike those naughty Brazilians etc. They did and they were real people who suffered and honestly I find that whitewashing (literal) of Argentina's history more irksome than the "Los Malvinas" narrative. Though both have their roots in the same soil.

**False because obviously whiteness isn't superiority.

What empire? The only imperialists there were the Spanish colonisers of South America, who made a new country called Argentina.

Well before the Spanish colonists seceded from the Spanish Empire to create Argentina, the Falklands, an unoccupied group of islands 300 miles away from South America, were being squabbled over by several European nations who all wanted control of them. Britain won. Why should their British descendants be summarily handed over to another country 300 miles away, or deported to a country on the other side in the world?

Argentina also claim ownership of a slice of continental Antarctica. Who are the Imperialists here?

Most of your post may or may not be true. But the last paragraph is obviously wrong.

There’s nothing complex about Argentina’s ambition to take over the Falklands. There’s no basis for their claim at all. It’s just posturing.

This idea that you can just look at a map and intuitively decide where everyone should shuffle to brought us the partition of India, the creation of Israel/Palestine, most subsaharan African countries, etc.

This armchair division of politics and people by others far away eyeing a map had a lot of negative consequences. It was driven by good intentions, ignorance and hubris. Kind of like a lot of posters on this thread.

You cannot be serious? Any remnants of empire need to fall. We are thousands of miles away. If they 'feel British' let them move to the UK

But...there wasn't much of an indigenous population in Argentina at the point Spain arrived. The Incan Empire did reach as far as Tucuman but very much the edges of the Empire. Not the same as Peru or Bolivia or Ecuador. The country was built on European immigration. Far less black people there because black people exist in tbe region due to slavery, mainly seen in Brazil and Colombia They are whiter in Argentina, collectively, than other South American populations as a result.

They are proud of their origins. Absolutely they are disliked for their arrogance across the region but that's who they are. It is a beautiful country with varied landscapes and proud people with traditions and culture born of multiple influences. Buenos Aires was a beautiful city (bit shabby these days in my opinion) and isn't known as the Paris of the south for nothing.

The Falklands/Malvinas is complex. They are not getting past it because you think they should.

We were at a tourist site and the children were there as part of a school group. They were very keen to find out where we were from, then as soon as they heard the hint of a British accent they zoned in on us. The girls wanted to compliment us on our accents, practice their English and talk about wanting to come to the UK to study. The boys went with "who owns the Ilhas Malvinas?" as their opening line. My husband managed to distract them by talking about how great Argentina are at football but there was one in particular who was being quite pushy. The teachers stood by and were completely unbothered.

Course, they aren't the only settler colonial state in Latin America nor the only country that's perpetrated genocide in the region. Not by any means. It's just the others haven't attempted to colonise the Falklands.

I don’t think Brits hate their own nation. I think we’re baffled about the why. The Falklands is nowhere near the UK. Most people in GB can’t even understand why Northern Ireland is part of the UK when it’s clearly part of the landmass of Ireland, and yet thousands of lives have been lost over it, and it’s less than 50 miles away at its narrowest part.

The Falklands are 300 MILES from Argentina. Isle of Wight is TWO MILES from the mainland of Britain.

Ludicrous comparison.

@Jane3212

As has been said, Argentina want The Falklands for its close proximity to oil reserves.