In a new exercise in rhetorical gymnastics aimed at reversing the roles of perpetrator and victim, sectors of the Malvina Islands archipelago and the British tabloid press have come out to denounce an alleged "economic offensive" by the Republic of Argentina. Our country's sin, according to the islanders' narrative, is not facilitating the logistics of their own plunder.

The theory of "comfortable looting"

The note The British newspaper The Express reports testimonies from islanders who are "outraged" because Argentina does not authorize a second flight from the mainland (specifically from Brazil) or because supposedly obstacles are imposed on the fishing industry that operates illegally in the waters of the Argentine continental shelf.

What these sectors call "economic warfare" is nothing more than the application of national law and the defense of sovereign interests. For the usurpers, the "development" they demand consists of the Argentine state becoming even more complicit in their own dispossession, providing connectivity and services to an implanted population that systematically ignores the Argentine Constitution.

The blind spots of the British narrative

The Express article rests on three axes that border on the absurd:

1.   Logistical victimhood: They complain that for medical or commercial transfers they must depend on Argentina's goodwill or resort to triangular routes through Uruguay. They deliberately omit that the anomaly is not the lack of flights, but the presence of a foreign military base in the South Atlantic that impedes the natural integration of the territory.

2.   The "lack of trust": A local guide states that "the Argentine government cannot be trusted," ignoring centuries of British expansionism, non-compliance with UN resolutions (such as 2065), and the breaking of communication agreements when these do not exclusively serve their colonial consolidation interests.

3.   The plundering of the seas: They refer to Argentina's targeting of high seas fishing as an "attack." What the British newspaper conceals is that this fishing is, in reality, illegal fishing in disputed waters, which finances the standard of living of a colony at the expense of the biological heritage of 46 million Argentinians.

A decaying empire that claims to be "besieged"

It is paradoxical that the heirs of the empire that decimated populations in Africa and India, and that maintains colonialism in the Americas, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean, speak of "war" when civil controls are imposed upon them. Argentina is not waging an economic war; it is exercising its inalienable right to administer its territory and to exert diplomatic pressure on the United Kingdom to comply with international law.

The "stubbornness" attributed to us is, in reality, our memory and persistence . As long as the colonial enclave tries to live with its back to the mainland, yet demands the benefits of its proximity, it will find itself facing a country unwilling to subsidize its own usurpation.