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

@montysmaw "Why does Britain want them so much?"

Why does Argentina want them so much? They never belonged to Argentina and they're 300 miles from them. Their "claim" is based on a papal-sanction and medieval Spanish colonial conquest. Rather ironic don't you think that a republic would seek to justify ownership of a territory with no indigenous population or even connection through this entirely risible link? The Falkland Islanders, who have been there for 200 years, do not want to live under Argentinian rule - and quite frankly I doubt many people would blame them.

Right now, it would appear to be the prospect of oil.

Historically, it would appear to be somewhat more complicated than that.

Well you were pretty ignorant of the world then.

I think you've misunderstood the poster

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.