Poster for the Orinoco Tribune's interview with Argentinian activist Clara Varnet. Photo: Orinoco Tribune.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—There is plenty of evidence supporting Argentina’s historical rights over the Malvinas Islands and the islands of the South Atlantic, territories that Britain has been illegally occupying for close to two centuries, said Argentinian journalist and educator Clara Vernet in a special interview with Orinoco Tribune.
“The Malvinas was part of the national project of Argentina, even of the incipient Argentina, as seen from the earliest documents of the First Junta in 1810, just five days after the Revolution of May 25, which for Argentina and Argentinians marks the beginning of the emancipation process, the liberation from Spanish rule. Consequently, everything that belonged to the Viceroyalty of the RĂo de la Plata became part of this emerging Argentina,” she explained, highlighting the countries historical and legal rights over the islands.
Clara Vernet holds a degree in Social Communication from the National University of La Plata (UNLP). She is a descendant of Luis Vernet, the first political and military commander of the Malvinas Islands and adjacent areas of Cabo de Hornos, who remained in that position until the British empire forcibly occupied the region in 1833. She conducted documentary research for, and is the co-editor of the book Malvinas, Mi Casa: VĂsperas, Diario de MarĂa Sáez de Vernet y Apostillas by Marcelo Luis Vernet. She was a petitioner before the Special Committee on Decolonization (C-24) of the United Nations in 2022 and 2023. Currently, she is a member of the national coordination team of the movement Cuidadores de la Casa ComĂşn, which seeks to create dignified work opportunities for young people in Argentina’s working-class neighborhoods.
Clara Vernet’s family was part of the history of Malvinas, as her ancestor, Luis Vernet, was appointed the political and military commander of the Malvinas Islands and adjacent areas of Cape Horn in 1829. “It was not only the Malvinas Islands but also all the territory that roughly corresponds to what is now the Argentinian province of Tierra del Fuego, excluding Antarctica, of course, which at that time was barely conceived, if at all,” she added.
“Notice that just five days after [the Revolution], a budget was allocated for the Malvinas, including the payment of salaries for the troops stationed there, making it part of the United Provinces of the RĂo de la Plata,” Clara Vernet remarked on the history of the region. “From 1810 onward, various acts of government followed that legitimized Argentina’s possession” of the islands, such as the raising of the Argentinian flag there in 1820 and the issue of a decree from Soledad Island, announcing that from that moment “anyone wishing to fish along those coasts and in the southern sea should notify and request authorization from the government in Buenos Aires. This decree was published in the main newspapers of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and other northern countries, which, having depleted the resources of the North Sea, were coming to the South Sea in search of natural resources, not only fishing but also marine mammal hunting for fuel.”
She also referred to letters from the Liberator, JosĂ© de San MartĂn, who during the crossing of the Andes asked for reinforcements from soldiers stationed in the Malvinas. Thus, when the British invaded the islands in January 1833, it was not an empty land but there were Argentinian families settled there, who were expelled from the territory to make way for an implanted population from the United Kingdom that occupies the islands to this day.
Argentinian settlement in Malvinas and British colonialism
According to Clara Vernet, from the early 1820s, the Malvinas became part of Argentina’s “collective strategic geopolitical projects,” considered as a “strategic enclave—a zone rich in natural resources, with a strategic position in the southern seas to facilitate the bi-oceanic passage as well as to promote South-South relations between Africa and South America.”
Luis Vernet’s connection with the Malvinas began in 1826, when he proposed to the government of the United Provinces of Buenos Aires a business venture to establish a cattle ranching system there. As “rural workers and gauchos” from continental Argentina started going to the Malvinas to work in the ranches, the government, through a decree in 1828, established the political and military command of the Malvinas, and appointed Vernet as the political and military commander, with the commitment that he would establish a settlement and populate the islands within three years.
“On June 10, 1829, when Luis Vernet took charge, he also set up the residence of the commander on the islands, that is, he went to live there with his wife, MarĂa Sáez, and their three children,” Clara Vernet recounted. “MarĂa was pregnant when she traveled to the islands; she gave birth there, on the islands, to a girl who would be the first girl to be named Malvinas… Vernet was also accompanied by about 30 families, who went there to join an already existing population.” Thereafter, on August 30, 1829, “the Day of Santa Rosa de Lima, patron saint of America, Luis Vernet proclaimed an edict … declaring the possession and sovereignty of Argentina over the islands, and he did so on behalf of the countries of South America.”
Vernet further explained that since the year before, Emilio Vernet, Luis’s brother, was living in the Malvinas, and he lived there until 1831. He left a diary, “spanning from 1828 to 1831, containing daily record of the inhabitants and what they were constructing and experiencing, the visits, the port records.” Similarly, MarĂa Sáez de Vernet also left a diary, “a personal journal where she recorded the day to day of this people and this project—the names, the births, the marriages, the disputes, the trades, the work, everything. So the Malvinas was not a barren land, dead land, or irrelevant or non-strategic for Argentina, even during the foundational period of the country.”
Vernet emphasized that these records and documents are crucial for Argentinians to dismantle the British narrative that the Argentinian claim over the Malvinas and the South Atlantic is “a falsehood perpetuated by Argentina, and that they even invoke the concept of self-determination of the peoples, an element of international law that peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East have used precisely to free themselves from British colonialism—is deeply cynical for them to use this concept in their claim on the Malvinas, and it is truly worthy of the English. There was indeed a people in the Malvinas, a people completely tied to a national project, a sovereign nation-state project, and a continent.”
She further highlighted the US-British collusion in robbing the Malvinas islands from Argentina. In 1831, the United States shelled the Argentinian settlement in the islands, in retaliation against Luis Vernet having seized two US schooners fishing illegally off the southern coast of Argentina. “This precedent generated the effective possibility of the British occupation in February 1833,” she remarked.
Malvinization and de-Malvinization
The Malvinas War of 1982, taking place while Argentina was under the rule of one of the bloodiest Plan Condor dictatorships, allowed Britain to exponentially expand its occupation in the South Atlantic, covering the Malvinas, the South Georgia, and the South Sandwich Islands as well as taking control of 200 nautical miles surrounding each island group. However, inside Argentina, the end of the war “marked the beginning of a strong period of ‘de-Malvinization.’ There was an obscuring, a silencing, especially regarding the soldiers who had fought in the war,” Clara Vernet explained. In fact, during the two post-war decades, the number of Malvinas War veteran suicides surpassed the number of fallen in the war.
“It was a very dark period for Argentina—we were confronting the trials of the military juntas and the horror of torture and disappearances committed by the dictatorship. Amidst this fog, our islands and one of the most heartfelt causes of our people remained obscured,” she continued. “This process of de-Malvinization—the numbing of the cause and the proliferation of the sense of defeat, this idea that with our loss in the war our claim was lost—was surely fueled by the interests aimed at perpetuating this colonial settlement well into the 21st century.” This de-Malvinization continued throughout the neoliberal period of the 1990s, although the administration of Carlos Menem brought back the Malvinas issue to the Argentinian state’s diplomatic policy.
Nevertheless, there exists the parallel process of “Malvinization,” going back to the very start of the British occupation of the islands in 1833, “one of the few consistent state policies that continues until today—192 years of uninterrupted political decision of the state not to forget the Malvinas,” according to Vernet. In 1945, the government of President Juan Domingo PerĂłn made Malvinas part of the mandatory school curriculum, ushering in a “strong process of Malvinization … Through public education, our children could learn the history and understand what is at stake in the Malvinas.”
With the arrival of NĂ©stor Kirchner to the presidency in 2003, Malvinas returned, reinforced, not only to government policies but also to culture, science, and popular consciousness, Vernet explained. “The Malvinas Museum was established in Buenos Aires, a museum that tells the complete history of the Malvinas, a history that has so often been deceitfully fragmented. The policy of Pampa Sur was initiated, where we began looking at the southern seas and their resources, considering the possibility of thinking about Antarctica as well. It was about strategically positioning ourselves through science, culture, and policies on a regional and global level, seeking alliances worldwide, knowing that alone we cannot succeed … The administrations of NĂ©stor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner [2003-2015] launched a strong international policy, placing the Malvinas at the heart of South America, in the agenda of the Global South, and within Mercosur. Malvinas began to feature in the agendas of our sister nations as well. Efforts were made to build South-South alliances, generating committees and forums worldwide for friendship with the Malvinas.”
She also highlighted the bicontinental map of Argentina, which was made the official map of the country by law in 2010, as an important aspect of the Malvinization process of the Kirchner administrations. The map depicts an Argentina that includes the British-occupied islands, the Argentinian-administered Orcadas del Sur islands, as well as the continental shelf and its continuity with the Antarctic continent, in addition to the South American continental projection in Antarctica, thereby underlining the Malvinas question as a Latin American issue. In this regard, Vernet invoked a chant of the ex-combatants during the 80s: “We will return to the Malvinas hand in hand with Latin America,” pointing out that the bicontinental map precisely embodies this sentiment.
Thereafter, although the far-right Mauricio Macri government and the current one of Javier Milei have abandoned and attempted to dismantle a lot of these policies, these “periods of de-Malvinization have not managed to put the national sentiment to sleep, for it is anchored in a sense of grave injustice that moves people to act, and there is always a popular resistance that upholds our banners.”
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Diplomacy is the path to recover occupied territories
When asked about how Argentina could recover its occupied territories, Clara Vernet emphasized that diplomacy is the way forward. “A strong, solid, permanent, non-negotiable foreign policy on this issue, and a continuous process of Malvinization—we believe that this is our way back to Malvinas,” she said.
In this regard, she discussed some of the historical negotiations and exchanges between Argentina and the UK, focused on the decolonization of the region. From the 1940s, there were educational initiatives “promoting exchange between the islands and the mainland,” she said. “We made economic efforts also: our national corporations, such as the state oil company YPF, operated in the Malvinas. The landing strip in Malvinas was built by the Argentinian government … Likewise, many residents of Malvinas, of the implanted population there, came to the mainland to study, and here they would learn this history, and they would realize that the islands belong to Argentina, to South America.”
Such exchanges and diplomacy advanced to an extent where “the UK offered a solution to the sovereignty issue during the third government of PerĂłn, in 1973—a proposal for joint administration between the UK and Argentina at that time, with alternating governors from each country,” Vernet added. Although the 1982 war put an end to this possibility, the efforts continue on two fronts: diplomacy and Malvinization.
“Malvinas, I insist, is not just a national cause, it should be understood as a regional cause, a global cause,” she reiterated. “We are convinced that we will return to Malvinas, because we have the rights, the law is on our side, and we are driven by an unshakable conviction that we cannot keep building worlds where the interests of a few and the power of the strongest dictate the destiny of millions. So, we will keep constructing wherever we can, in whatever contexts we find ourselves, and we will remain firm, work, build, and reflect, until we are able to create a possibility of return.”
“So I call on everyone to ‘Malvinize’ and to pass the torch to these other Malvinas that surely exist in different corners of the world—or not so hidden corners,” she said, stressing the importance of everyone being aware of the history of Malvinas. “We share this struggle for the recovery of our territories, our dignity, the dignity of our peoples, and for the end of colonialism, this 21st-century colonialism.”
Special for Orinoco Tribune by Saheli Chowdhury
OT/SC/JRE
Saheli Chowdhury
Saheli Chowdhury is from West Bengal, India, studying physics for a profession, but with a passion for writing. She is interested in history and popular movements around the world, especially in the Global South. She is a co-editor and contributor for Orinoco Tribune.
