At the beginning of 2025, British embassies in South America promoted the United Kingdom as a global leader in soft power through their official social media channels.
Let's start from the beginning so as not to assume certain definitions. Hard power refers to the coercive means a nation uses to impose its will on another. Generally, when we talk about these types of means, we tend to refer to the military power of a state that directly impacts the material reality of another country (territories, natural resources, etc.). A clear example in recent Argentine history was the outcome of the South Atlantic Conflict in June 1982, in which the United Kingdom, through the use of force, not only reoccupied the Malvinas Islands archipelago but also expanded its colonial rule over Argentine maritime spaces to 200 nautical miles around each island. Other elements of hard power, in addition to the classic military ones, could be those linked to intelligence or counterintelligence operations or coercive actions involving measures related to the economy, international trade, and even scientific and technological development, which directly impact the partial or total material reality of a nation.
What, then, is soft power, and how does it differ from hard power? As its name suggests, the objective of domination is maintained, but the means employed seek to interpellate people's subjectivity so that they comply with certain actions without the oppressive feeling that coercive means of hard power generate. We have many examples of this, but the most prominent are diplomacy in all its breadth (traditional, scientific, artistic, sports, etc.), education, and culture as elements that ultimately consolidate a worldview that structures a perception of space (geography) and time (history) aligned with their interests.
Soft and hard power are in constant dialogue with each other . The former is what operates permanently in times of peace, and the latter is what emerges "from time to time" as a warning and erupts violently and explicitly in times of war.
As the title of this article suggests, these lines are not intended to discuss the Malvinas War, the constant and systematic reduction of our defense budget over the last 40 years, or the economic consequences of the British occupation of Argentine maritime spaces in the South Atlantic. Rather, we will discuss the mechanisms of British soft power operating in Argentina and its impact on the debate over the Malvinas and cognitive national sovereignty.
The de-Malvinization and the universities
The de-Malvinization phenomenon began in the immediate post-war period, specifically in June 1982, when the last dictatorship decided to hide our soldiers returning to the mainland from the battlefronts of the Islands. It is supported by two major pillars from the State: the first was the systematic disregard of our veterans and heroes of the Malvinas Islands. The second was the reduction of public policies aimed at restoring the archipelago's full sovereignty, from the implementation of a strategy and vision of a foreign policy functional to British colonialism in the South Atlantic to economic measures that negatively impact our national defense, industrial, scientific, and educational capabilities. After the crisis of 2001, the peak of de-Malvinization, the opposite phenomenon began to oppose it, which we call re- Malvinization , especially from July 2003 onwards. Both opposing and sequential processes developed slowly and their effects (adverse in de-Malvinization and virtuous in re-Malvinization) have been belatedly made visible as long-lasting harvests.
Universities were not immune to this process, which had a severe negative impact on the entire national education system. On the one hand, Argentine professionals, researchers, university professors, and secondary school teachers have been trained with curricula that reproduce a British colonial vision forged in the postwar period. On the other hand, they have contributed in many areas to the construction of a "common sense" that "the Malvinas were lost in the war, " that thanks to the British "we regained democracy in 1983," and that nothing more can be done because "the islanders, who own the islands, want to be English." These messages, which for a long time were strategically and surgically replicated in certain media outlets, are currently being replicated in cyberspace through social media and our cell phones.
The issue of universities is not minor because they are spaces for the production of both scientific and popular knowledge. But to avoid an abstract analysis, let's briefly break down the sensitive areas where British soft power reigns supreme, aiming to alter our spatial and temporal perception and fulfill their desire to abandon our claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands.
Geography and the dispute over space
The Argentine bicontinental map began to be designed in the mid-1930s and was definitively incorporated into the official cartography of our country in the late 1940s, alongside the mandatory inclusion of the Malvinas and Antarctica issues in school curricula. Unfortunately, the map declined after the 1955 coup and was briefly revived during the South Atlantic Conflict of 1982. It then fell into disrepute as a result of the post-war de-Malvinization until it was finally restored to its mandatory inclusion in the education system through Law 26,651 of 2010, which was unanimously passed by all political parties.
The Argentine bicontinental map is essential because it is our Argentine roadmap in the 21st century : it will be up to us, intergenerationally, to make this map a reality and not remain merely a beautiful cartographic design of the National Geographic Institute. The Argentine bicontinental map is contrasted with the map illustrating the British colonial occupation of Argentine maritime spaces usurped after the Malvinas War, where we reached the sad figure that at least a quarter of our total territory (insular and maritime) and its natural resources are in British hands.
Now, faced with what could be an image that encapsulates the will and destiny of a people throughout the century we are now entering, there was no shortage of detractors from the scientific community who attacked the map, accusing it of reviving a "sick nationalism."
However, the aforementioned article published in the newspaper Clarín in 2010, curiously, has no byline or author. But in February 2015, a much more enlightening article appeared in La Nación, presenting a married couple opposed to the bicontinental map: Carlos Reboratti (geographer) and Hilda Sábato (historian). Both senior researchers at CONICET ( National Institute of Statistics and Census) are said to be the main protagonists of the struggle against Argentine sovereignty in Antarctica, arguing that, since our country signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, it would not be exercising sovereignty over the white continent . Two things are particularly striking: first, that Reboratti and Sábato live off of Argentine state funds to confront the interests of...the Argentine state itself. The second is that, as researchers of the highest rank in the field of social sciences in our country, in their stubborn fight against the bicontinental map, they display their absolute ignorance of international law, undermining the most precious asset a scientist has: their prestige derived from their knowledge.
We take advantage of these lines to clarify two things that are constantly reproduced in social networks and that put at risk the quality of the political debate on Antarctica: 1) The Antarctic Treaty DOES NOT EXPIRE IN 2048 nor does it have any expiration or maturity date and 2) The signing of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, contrary to what is believed, not only does not imply a renunciation of Argentine sovereignty in Antarctica but in turn is the instrument that preserves those rights that are protected in Article 4 of the Treaty.
In short: the Bicontinental Map is correct, both under international law and domestic regulations. Curiously, its detractors say little or nothing about British colonial cartography and even less about the occupation of our sea and natural resources in the South Atlantic.
History and the dispute over time
Never in the history of Argentine historiography has the country's territorial sovereignty been relativized. It has always been clear that the starting point was the boundaries of the former Viceroyalty. But territorial sovereignty aside, our country was characterized by passionate debates about Argentine history on any topic. The bicentennial was a decade (2006-2016) that I can attest was conducive to rediscussing our identity as a nation. It also served to bring the British historiographical paradigm created in the wake of the post-Malvinas War into the spotlight, widely disseminated on social media and cheerfully reproduced by some local historians.
“Argentine territorial evolution” according to English users on the social network “X/Twitter”
The paradigm consists of clinging to an "ideal" type of unitary nation-state, endowed with a national constitution, a consolidated centralized government, national armed forces, and a single currency. Amusingly, some local historians conclude, along with their British counterparts, that Argentina only approached this idealized type in "real terms" by 1880. Therefore, if Argentina was born in 1880, everything that existed before 1880 (1806-1879) was a non-Argentina . Some, "more generous" ones, dispute this paradigm by suggesting that it is wrong to propose 1880 as the starting point; the true starting point would be 1860, when Buenos Aires swore the National Constitution. In both "nuances" (1880/1860), the conclusion is the same: neither Saavedra, nor Mariano Moreno, nor Manuel Belgrano, nor San Martín, nor Güemes, nor any federal leader would be Argentine. Including them on banknotes or in school textbooks is completely wrong. Those we believed to be our heroes are no longer. But not only do humans no longer belong to us, but neither does the territory.
The Malvina Islands were occupied by the British in 1833. In response, the British claim that, "since Argentina did not exist in 1833 , " they "should have no right of sovereignty over the Islands." This is made even worse when, in addition to wanting to strip us of our island territories, they attempt to relativize our sovereignty in Patagonia by drawing maps showing that Argentina ends to the south at the Salado River and what lay beyond that is like an "independent state" that was forcibly occupied by "Argentine imperialism" (?).
Every time I mention this to a fellow countryman, they sensibly tell me to ignore it, calling it simply "English nonsense." The problem isn't the delusional English, but the "Argentine" scientists who present British colonial claims on our territory as irrefutable truth. This is combined with two strategies: relativizing both the Argentine people and territory from the period 1806-1879, denying all sovereignty south of the Salado River, and attributing the return of contemporary democracy to the British victory in the Malvinas War in June 1982.
Some historians, such as Roy Hora, argued in April 2023 that the April 2 holiday should be removed and that, luckily, "Argentina lost the war." Others, such as Federico Lorenz , director of the National Malvinas Museum during Macri's time (2016-2018), went a bit further and argued that "the holiday should be June 14, which marks the beginning of Argentine democracy." It goes without saying that both of them, sadly, are researchers at CONICET.
However, unlike before (2015-2022), what could have been an "intuition" that there was some alignment between certain positions or even paradigms of historians with the British colonial status quo , we find ourselves faced with the reality that the British embassy stopped having "subtle approaches" to having a greater explicit role in wanting to infiltrate Argentine education and culture. Between April 10 and 12, 2025, the British Community Studies Program in Latin America held a meeting entitled "200 Years of the Treaty between Great Britain and the Río de la Plata" sponsored by the British Embassy and the Argentine-British Chamber of Commerce (BRITCHAM). The sessions were attended mostly by social scientists graduated from public universities and even active researchers from CONICET. The title, more than suggestive, raised the idea that in 1825 "Argentina did not exist" and that the bilateral link inaugurated from that year onwards was between Great Britain and... the River Plate, that is, not with a sovereign and independent nation like Argentina, but with a freshwater course.
The meeting was personally attended by the ambassador, who was thanked for her support of the event and for her expertise in "historiographical issues" as an " archaeologist . " Of course, and to avoid offending the British Embassy as host and organizer of the event, the presentations were far from harshly critical of colonialism (especially current colonialism), not to mention artificially sugarcoated, lacking any honesty and professionalism one would expect from "Argentine academic historians living in Argentina." There were also some, such as "The Kelper Press on the Centenary of the Colonization of the Malvinas Islands." Not even the general strike of the CGT on Thursday, April 10, could prevent this presentation, whose title is a clear nod to the islanders as a "third party in the dispute" and therefore entitled to "self-determination."
The economy
On June 14, 2023, while the British in the Malvinas celebrated “Liberation Day” exactly 41 years after the end of the war, a non-governmental organization called FUNDAR burst onto the scene with the publication of what promised to be its “star report,” approximately 150 pages long, called “Towards a Possible Productive Transformation in Tierra del Fuego.” On the social network “X,” Roy Hora was one of the first to share the report under the slogan “very good initiative.” Did Roy have advance information about what was going to be published? Was he able to read the 150 pages so quickly that he rushed to describe the report so positively?
Regarding the report itself, we already responded to FUNDAR with the Fuegian economist Juan Pablo Deluca , so the purpose of these lines is to address another issue. In short, FUNDAR 's publication was split into two: an introduction of a few paragraphs written by Martín Reydó , the NGO's executive director, which outlined a political line that was reproduced in major media outlets. Ironically, or not , some of the premises of said introduction were largely refuted by the internal content of the voluminous report itself. The strategy was very clear: to reproduce in the media the ephemeral introduction "supported by a 150-page report" that, in fact, no one was going to read. To this day I wonder how the authors managed to write such a large number of pages about the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands without once mentioning “Malvinas” , “United Kingdom/Great Britain” , “Colonialism” , “NATO” .
However, despite his position, Reydó is far from being the president or "owner" of FUNDAR . On the contrary, he is Sebastián Ceria . For those unfamiliar, Ceria is a mathematician who graduated from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and a successful businessman living in London. From England, he decided to create FUNDAR . While its objectives are varied, they are actually characterized by recruiting scientists to conduct studies and reports primarily on the Argentine economy. Therefore, in this scheme, Martín Reydó plays the role of local foreman of the NGO. Needless to say, Argentina has many economic problems (fiscal and quasi-fiscal deficits, falling activity levels, unemployment, informal employment, tax evasion and avoidance, difficult-to-pay debt interest, etc.), but for the "omniscience" of Sebastián Ceria , who sees everything more clearly 14,000 kilometers away in England, the country's biggest problem is... Tierra del Fuego's economic promotion regime.
The regime established by Law 19,640 was created not only to populate the island, but also to ensure Argentina's expansion into Antarctica and prepare the economic conditions of Río Grande (industrial) and Ushuaia (tourism) for the return of full sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands. There are many examples worldwide of economic development in a space that is closely linked to a nation's geopolitics, with Manaus (Brazil) and Shenzhen (China) being the best known and most studied. But then, if the Tierra del Fuego economy is intimately linked to national sovereignty, why does it have detractors, and why do their voices happen to be the most frequently repeated in the media?
Juan Carlos Hallak , a CONICET researcher and one of the authors of the FUNDAR report, hit the nail on the head in a tweet about Tierra del Fuego in July 2024: “geopolitics is not an issue.” That is, the promotion regime “should always be analyzed” without the Malvinas, without colonialism, without Great Britain, without the 1982 war. The unscientific bias is clear: molding the object of study so that the premises agree linearly with the (pre) conclusions.
In an act of journalistic courtesy and professionalism, Mariano Boettner published an article in INFOBAE on the eve of April 2nd entitled “Tierra del Fuego: the promotional regime, its associated costs and products that are up to 60% more expensive in other countries.” In this article, Boettner introduces us to the anti-Fuegian coalition led by FUNDAR , the Civic Coalition , Margarita Stolbizer , the former vice president of the BCRA and current advisor to the Ministry of Deregulation headed by Federico Sturzenegger , Lucas Llach and the Freedom and Progress Foundation (Agustín Etchebarne).
Fuente: X-Twitter
The interesting thing is that FUNDAR is placed in the same place as an openly pro-English radical who proposed that the English also occupy Tierra del Fuego (Lucas Llach), a political party that has openly participated in political operations of the British embassy linked to the exploitation of our natural resources (Civic Coalition) and Margarita Stolbizer , who occupies the role of visible face "against the regime" , and who in turn, is a colleague of Facundo Manes , who proposes environmental protection measures to benefit illegal British fishing in the South Atlantic (yes, literally as it reads).
Environmental Policy or Eco-colonialism?
In March 2023, a plane belonging to the NGO Solidaire, led by its founder, filmmaker Enrique Piñeyro , departed Buenos Aires. The coverage of the flight was analyzed in detail in a story from the same period by Nicolás Canosa and Franco Metaza .
In the authors' note, we can clearly see that, in contrast to what was presented in the media as a "disinterested" initiative by a Buenos Aires philanthropist distressed by the vulnerability of the Argentine Sea's ecosystems, there was a hidden international political maneuver aimed at pressuring Argentina to adhere to an instrument regulating fishing beyond mile 200 off our coast, which is overcrowded with factory ships mainly from China. However, despite our chagrin, it is perfectly legal.
The flight's entourage, lacking one, included three ambassadors: the Japanese ambassador, the United States ambassador, and…the British ambassador, Kristy Hayes.
Fuente: X/Twitter
The British ambassador's participation is no coincidence, given that Argentina's accession to a regulatory instrument of this nature would mean seating the American coastal states projected in the South Atlantic—Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and...the United Kingdom—at the same table on equal terms. In other words, the British government is proposing that Argentina internationally recognize the United Kingdom as a "South American and South Atlantic" state, obviously, since the illegal colonial occupation of the Malvinas Islands.
The flight received "striking" media coverage and, coincidentally, was "perfectly timed." None of the reports mentioned, precisely, the true illegal fishing carried out by the British government in our Malvinas Islands. Of course, the plane reached the 47th parallel south at the height of Santa Cruz. Why didn't it go further south? Because that's precisely where our British-occupied islands were located. The only way for that aircraft to fly a little further south was with explicit authorization from the British government. Could the philanthropist Piñeyro have asked the British ambassador mid-flight for permission to fly over Malvinas airspace? The only thing we know for sure is that it didn't happen.
But every aerial operation is usually accompanied by a maritime operation. In that fateful year 2023, some of us found ourselves with a new "crowning of glory" : Nicolás Marín Benítez , an Argentine photographer, was chosen as the best nature photographer in the world for 2023. Our chests inflated with pride quickly deflated when we learned that said winner was one of the "chosen ones" - almost in messianic terms - to participate in the " Darwin 200" project: a maritime voyage that sought to recreate the navigation of the British Navy ship HMS Beagle , commanded by Admiral Fitz Roy and accompanied by the honored naturalist and scientist of the British government, Charles Darwin . The project was widely covered by the BBC in London, whose independence from the British government is identical to that of Public Television with respect to the national government.
Of course, the HMS Beagle 's itinerary included the Malvina Islands, in addition to the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. We begin by clarifying that there is no way the picturesque Darwin 200 wooden vessel, a replica of the Beagle , could have even approached the shores of our islands without the permission of those illegally occupying them. Not content with this, the images of the land voyages, particularly on Soledad Island, reveal that it had support from the British Royal Air Force. Yes: the same British soldiers who conduct military exercises on our islands, sometimes with Ghurkas from Nepal or soldiers from Kosovo, are the ones who ensured part of the land-based travel for the young people fighting for nature , including the award-winning Argentine photographer. After completing his tour in the Malvinas Islands, upon returning to the continent, Marín participated in intensive campaigns with the slogan that "the time has come to protect the oceans" to contribute to the "30 x 30" plan, which consists of protecting "30% of the planet by 2030."
And this is where environmental influencers and communicators step aside, and the real politics and roles emerge. Just as within the Civic Coalition, Representative Juan Manuel López is the spokesperson against the Tierra del Fuego regime, and Representatives Mariana Zuvic and Maximiliano Ferraro were the "political" face of Enrique Piñeyro 's departure, we also have the aforementioned Margarita Stolbizer as the anti-Fueguino spokesperson, accompanied by her fellow House member Facundo Manes, who is the visible national face for fulfilling the goal of "protecting 30% of Argentina's oceans."
But while Zuvic and Ferraro seek to regulate fishing beyond mile 200 and have Argentina sign an agreement recognizing the United Kingdom as a coastal state in our own territory, Manes proposes the creation of six Marine Protected Areas within our Exclusive Economic Zone to prevent Argentina from fishing for Argentine fish resources . This would not only destroy the national fishing industry, but would also directly force our country to refrain from taking any action at sea to preserve (and pay attention to this!) illegal British fishing from the Malvinas. One of the NGOs promoting Manes' project is called the Wild Conservation Society (WCS), which owns two Malvina Islands donated to the organization by an American philanthropist.
British occupation in the South Atlantic, where Enrique Piñeyro 's flights failed to reach, but where the illegal fishing that Manes seeks to preserve is found. Source: A Nation at Sea, OCIPEx Editions, 2022.
Colonial tourism
In one of the videos for Nicolás Marín's ocean protection campaign, renowned actors play reporters desperately seeking a statement from the photographer, as if emulating a press conference. In addition to the familiar voices of Julián Weich and Boy Olmi , the voice of a young journalist named Celeste Giardinelli is added in the background.
Celeste, like Marín, is also a member of the Darwin 200 project , only, unlike the famous photographer, she followed the course through the Pacific, specifically on Easter Island. Giardinelli gained some notoriety on social media in the summer of 2025 for having traveled to the Malvinas with funding from the British embassy as part of a contest called “Meet our neighbors in the Malvina Islands” (SIC), whose application requirements include being a young university student and being active on social networks such as X, Instagram, Facebook and/or TikTok.
The contest is held annually, in which the British Embassy selects one person per country from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina (mainland) to travel to the Malvinas for a week, see its impressive wildlife, and meet the colonial authorities. The objective, of course, is that when these carefully selected individuals return to the continent, they will publish their experience on social media. There is a common thread running through the selected individuals and their posts: they have a large following, and their publications focus on landscapes, penguins, and ecological diversity, far removed from any issues related to colonialism, the expulsion of the Argentinians in 1833, illegal fishing, and offshore hydrocarbon exploration (also illegal).
This contest is held annually, and the embassy itself publishes the names of the nominees and those selected. But these trips are also joined by other, entirely discretionary, trips by communicators and journalists from the continent, without having to comply with the cumbersome terms of the contest. In a recent example, travel journalist "Loli del Río" repeated the scripted approach to promoting tourism on her Instagram profile (152,000 followers) without any question. In addition to her "sweetened" impressions of the Malvinas under British occupation, there were also stories explicitly thanking the British embassy for funding her trip.
But the list doesn't end here, and just a week after Celeste traveled, TN journalist and Blender YouTube channel panelist Agustina López arrived in the Malvinas Islands, also accompanied by the British Embassy. When she returned to the continent and recounted her experience in Blender , she referred to the Malvinas Islands, in a nod to self-determination, as "a country and a people mixed together" and that "the island is self-sufficient, it has its resources," omitting of course the occupation of the Argentine Sea carried out after the Malvinas War. Agustina had already had a previous contact with the Malvinas Islands, which was the publication of a book about the cemetery where our heroes rest on Soledad Island. Of all the possible titles she could have chosen for her publication, she preferred "Darwin, a history of the Malvinas." Plain and simple, as you can see. Neither "Argentina," nor "Soldier Known Only to God," nor "Cemetery"/"Argentine Cemetery," nor "identification," nor "heroes," nor "sovereignty," nothing. Here, it seems to have something in common with Celeste , who, in addition to being part of the Darwin 200 project, presents herself as a profound "admirer of Darwin." If it weren't for the photo of the cemetery on the cover, "Darwin, A History of the Malvinas" could well be the title of a recreation of the English naturalist's journal.
Shortly after, López became the narrator of the podcast Anfibia Magazine launched on Spotify , titled "Argentina and the Sea," sponsored by the Rewilding Foundation . It discusses unregulated Chinese fishing beyond mile marker 200, of course, without once mentioning the Malvinas or illegal British fishing. Of the six episodes, 80% feature guest specialist Valeria Falabella, a representative of WCS , the NGO sponsoring the Manes Marine Protected Areas project.
Personalities from other disciplines were also present on these trips. The most emblematic case is that of Beatriz Sarlo , a graduate in literature. In 2012, she had co-authored the widely requested "Malvinas: An Alternative Vision," along with other aforementioned intellectuals, such as Hilda Sábato and Luis Alberto Romero . The document openly called on the Argentine government to "abandon the agitation for the Malvinas cause" and to proclaim the "founding value" of "self-determination."
Source: Facebook
Sarlo traveled in 2013 to cover the fake self-determination “referendum” and later published it in his travel book “From the Amazon to the Malvinas” (Seix Barral editions). He finally concluded in 2021: “The Malvinas are British territory.” In justifying his Anglo-American premise, Sarlo repeated without any reflection what the historians cited in the previous sections say: “claiming lands that, apparently, belonged to Argentina in the 1830s… That is, when Argentina wasn't yet called Argentina. When it wasn't yet unified as a country. When it didn't yet have a Constitution.”
But the Seix Barral publishing house has another author in its catalogue who travelled to the Malvinas, and this is the case of philosophy graduate Tamara Tenenbaum :
Fuente: X/Twitter
According to his social media posts, he traveled to the Malvina Islands in December 2019 and limited himself to publishing only two photographs on Instagram: one of them depicted the remains of the Argentine helicopter near Mount Kent under the (erroneous) caption "An Argentine helicopter shot down in 1982, no victims" and, as part of the script for the sponsored trips, the second showed two yellow-crested penguins with a video entering the sea without much description. The case of the downed helicopter, it never hurts to clarify, marked the baptism of fire for the Gendarmerie's Alacrán group in an attempt to infiltrate the mountains already occupied by the British on May 30, 1982. The downing itself, although it did not cause immediate fatalities, a few minutes later the fire of the helicopter and the subsequent explosions of its cargo claimed the lives of six gendarmes.
Returning to the graduate in question, in the context of Oliver Galak 's birthday, she recalled her trip to the Islands with the phrase "I miss our graduation trip to the Malvinas, please organize another one for us."
Geography, History, Literature, and Philosophy. While at National Universities and other faculties of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), their academic communities are working hard to incorporate the Malvinas Islands and the issues of the South Atlantic into their undergraduate and graduate curricula, at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature on Puán Street, we affirm that only the Library Science, Anthropology, Arts, Publishing, and Education Sciences programs remained untouched by British soft power . I wonder, in the case of Tamara Tenenbaum in particular, and given that she was only 30 years old when she traveled at the expense of the embassy, would she have agreed to travel through the colonized portion of her country with the colonizing state's own money if she had had even a minimal understanding of the Malvinas Islands during her university studies?
The Malvinas Museum vs. the Malvina Island Museum
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at the inauguration of the Malvinas Museum. Source: Télam
Let me share a brief anecdote that I personally witnessed, but which serves to better illustrate this article and help us understand a possible origin of the aforementioned colonial flights.
On June 10, 2014, the Argentine State inaugurated the Malvinas and South Atlantic Islands Museum in Buenos Aires, within the Space for Memory and Human Rights (formerly ESMA). The objective was clear: it was not enough for Argentine diplomacy to advance our claim to sovereignty with strategic diplomatic support (UNASUR in 2011, the African Union in 2013, and the G77+China, to name a few examples) if the Argentine people remained trapped in the inertia of de-Malvinasization that had been felt since June 1982.
The museum itself was a three-story Malvinas factory located in one of the 20 metropolitan areas with the highest population density in the world, home to 35% of the country's population.
But far from being limited to its original project of being a Memorial that aims to remember and pay tribute to our heroes, the Museum has Sovereignty as its main axis, a reason that led it to have a script that included the Spanish sightings, its role within the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata and finally, once independence was declared on July 9, 1816, how the Argentine-Malvinas people were consolidated, who were then forcibly expelled by the British in 1833 and the consequent long but constant journey of claiming sovereignty, having as its main milestone United Nations resolution 2065. From July of that year, a period of overcrowding of the Museum began until the beginning of December 2015, which resulted in an average of 5,500 visitors per day.
Of course, when the British learned of the existence of a national State Museum that would address the Malvinas Cause as a whole and place special emphasis on sovereignty, they decided not to sit idly by, and strange situations began to appear in the Museum. During the period from June to August 2014, we had a large number of English-speaking visitors. That is, people who spoke Spanish with difficulty, but who made no secret of the fact that their native language was English. Some presented themselves as "researchers" without further clarification, others as "former journalists" (literally). They came several times and looked at and took notes on everything: the timeline on the ground floor, the writing on the panels in the rooms, and the content of the videos. The highlight was when I witnessed one of these “former English-speaking journalists” stand next to a teacher to listen to her explain the Museum’s journey to an elementary school, particularly in the room that tells the story of “the gaucho” Antonio Rivero .
By September, we had no more Anglo-guests, and then we learned why. On September 6, 2014, the Malvina Island Museum was inaugurated in Puerto Argentino. (Coincidentally?) It has the same museum structure as the one inaugurated in Buenos Aires in June of that same year. In other words, in response to the Argentine State's decision to have an educational and cultural tool related to sovereignty, the United Kingdom responded with the same colonial device in the Malvinas Islands, primarily intended for foreign tourists. The script is the same, except that instead of talking about Hernando de Magallanes , they mention John Davis ; instead of referring to Luis Vernet , they highlight the role of Richard Moody ; and instead of remembering the gaucho Rivero , they dedicated an entire room to the HMS Beagle expedition, starring Charles Darwin and Robert Fitz Roy .
Princess Anne of the United Kingdom visits the counter-museum in the Malvina Islands in 2016. Source: tracesofwar.com
Coincidentally, after the inauguration of the Museum, the British Embassy increased its funding of trips for Argentine journalists and communicators, and then took a qualitative leap with the regional competition "Getting to know my neighbors in the Malvina Islands" in 2019, complemented by a British stand in favor of self-determination since 2017 at the Expo-Prado in the city of Montevideo, Uruguay, and, starting in 2022, at the World Travel Market Latin America fair in São Paulo, Brazil.
The impact, of course, also reached British museums. They went from ignoring or barely discussing the Malvinas War to reformulating and expanding two exhibitions in London and Manchester in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the conflict. Compared to the small, previously limited exhibitions that contained a merely "descriptive" or "neutral" narrative, in 2022 they moved to a much more subjective and colonial update based on the already tired premise that "Argentina invaded the Islands."
We close this short section with another anecdote. When Macri took office in 2015, his Minister of Culture, Pablo Avelluto, proposed "de-ideologizing" the National Museums by recruiting "professional historians." From February 2016 to September 2018, the Macri government appointed Federico Lorenz (who said we owe democracy to the British victory in 1982...) to manage the Malvinas Museum.
In those two and a half years, Lorenz merely modified the large timeline on the ground floor of the Museum . The "professional" changes seemed dictated from London: the English invasions of 1806 and 1807, the Anglo-French invasion of 1845, and United Nations Resolution 2065 were completely erased . Curiously, it was proposed that scientists, in Lorenz 's image and likeness, should have greater relevance in the history of the Malvinas. The result? The new protagonists to be considered were going to be (guess what!) the active members of the HMS Beagle voyage: the young naturalist Charles Darwin and Admiral Fitz Roy.
The British soft power response
Getting back to flights, many of you may be wondering who Oliver Galak , alias "the coordinator of Tamara 's graduation trip ," and therefore, of all the trips to the Malvinas Islands, is. Well, this Argentine-born journalist is none other than the communications director of the British Embassy in Buenos Aires . On Twitter, he has shared notes and exchanges with Nicolás Cassese , current editor of La Nación . His biography, published on the website, states that he completed a master's degree in Latin American Politics at the University of London with a Chevening scholarship from the British Council.
Cassese 's introduction is not insignificant, considering that he was the one who edited journalist Hugo Alconada Mon when he traveled to the Malvinas Islands in April 2022 as part of the 40th anniversary of the War. In an interview, the journalist mentioned that Elisabetta Piqué was originally going to go, but in the end she couldn't go because she was covering the war in Ukraine, and secondly Cassese who "was the ideal person because she had been there several times and has developed contacts there" but that due to vaccine issues and COVID-19 restrictions, Alconada Mon himself ended up being chosen—by default?
Fuente: X/Twitter
For those who don't know what the Chevening scholarship is, it is one of the main instruments of soft power and "...it is awarded by the British government to young Argentine professionals who have the profile of future leaders, opinion formers or decision makers, who want to complete their master's degree at any university in the United Kingdom and commit to returning to Argentina to contribute to its development."
Not coincidentally, the scholarship program was announced in 1989 and began implementation in 1990 in the wake of the famous Madrid Agreements , which marked the resumption of bilateral relations between Argentina and the United Kingdom following the South Atlantic Conflict.
Oliver Galak at his award ceremony with the ambassador in May 2024. Source: Perfil newspaper
Returning to Galak , his performance in British foreign policy was so prolific that in May 2024 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire by King Charles III himself, in the words of the British ambassador , "for his careful handling of the issue of the fortieth anniversary of the South Atlantic Conflict." He was not awarded for "freedom , " "democracy , " "dialogue," or "human rights," but for serving British colonialism in the Malvinas . Therefore, when addressing Galak, one would have to use the title of Member of the British Empire (MBE).
When giving his acceptance speech in the form of a comedy monologue, Galak joked about the Anglo-Argentine link “…but there is one issue in particular on which there are profound differences between the two countries (…) I know that there are several who are thinking about that word, that name that begins with 'M'…Yes, it's 'Maradona', it's 'M' for 'hand', 'M' for World Cup or for Mexico” .
National cognitive sovereignty: Argentina, a bicentennial and bicontinental nation
Pope Francis holding an Argentine national team jersey
It's clear that soft power is important to the British. Otherwise, their Foreign Office wouldn't be boasting about it on social media, and the King of England himself wouldn't have decorated a coordinator of "graduation trips" to the Malvinas for his services, thus reproducing his colonial vision.
The question from Argentina is: what can we put before this British soft power structure from which systematic actions emanate?
Let's start with our recent great milestones as a Nation in this quarter of the 21st century: the first Pope born on the American continent in the history of humanity (Francis I), champions of the most important sporting event in the world (World Cup 2022), two-time champions of the Americas (2021/2024) and once again counting on the best player in history (Lionel Messi).
But were these achievements, which we feel are our own, deliberate? Were they planned in some secret, sunless office in Buenos Aires or in some Argentine embassy abroad? Did Argentine diplomacy secretly intervene in the outcome of the March 2013 conclave that elected Mario Jorge Bergoglio as Pope?
Clearly, the answer is no . But we have to be honest: it's not as if there weren't attempts to systematize, even if only in embryonic form, Argentina's soft power . Between 2003 and 2015, the Foreign Ministry created "commissions for dialogue on the Malvinas Islands" to strengthen our claim through contact with universities in other countries and Argentine residents abroad. Scholarships were also proposed for Malvinas islanders to study on the mainland, as had once happened before the 1982 war, and the Pampa Azul project was proposed to end Argentine scientific cooperation with British colonialism in the Malvinas Islands and begin studying the Argentine Sea from a sovereign methodology . We could reflect freely on the scope and results of these measures. What we do know is that both the Macri and Milei administrations shut down these projects, reorienting the nation's leadership away from the Malvinas Islands without any evaluation or design of public policies aimed at strengthening our claim to sovereignty.
We will remain far from the Malvinas if we fail to consolidate a structure of systematic actions, equivalent or superior to that currently sustained by the persistent, now anachronistic, and unprecedented British occupation of our territory. We will remain far from our desire for sovereignty if the vital forces of our nation are scattered and at the mercy of interests opposed to our own.
English power must necessarily be countered by an Argentine power that has Foreign Policy, Defense, and Scientific and Technological development at the forefront, and Education and Culture in the rearguard , and as a connecting vessel between the two fronts, Economic development that would guarantee the execution and materiality of this structure.
To achieve the goal of geopolitical realization of our country, as the recovery of the full exercise of sovereignty in the Malvinas and the South Atlantic, we necessarily have to start from the premise that Argentina is a bicontinental Nation in space and bicentennial in time , as an indispensable paradigm that leads us to a correct methodology of theoretical analysis, and therefore, to a praxis in the sovereign action of our effective reality.
Juan Augusto Rattenbach is a lawyer (UBA), with a Master's degree in Applied Economics (UTDT), university professor, content advisor to the National Museum of the Malvinas (Malvinas), and compiler of the books A Nation at Sea and City of Sovereignty.
