Before the Falklands War, Islanders and Argentines Were Neighbors

Beyond the War: Argentines and Islanders in an Unknown Falklands, by Sebastián Carassai, Cambridge University Press, 372 pages, $50

Pamela McLeod and her husband, Reynaldo Reid, set off for Buenos Aires for a belated honeymoon in November 1970, likely hoping for a little privacy, relaxation, and time together. They got anything but.

Their marriage, it turned out, was politically irresistible. McLeod was a Falkland Islander, and Reid was Argentine. This was gold to an Argentine press eager to present the couple as evidence of the bonds between the British-held islands and Argentina. When the couple arrived in Buenos Aires, reporters and cameramen were waiting. The honeymoon became a 15-day publicity tour through television studios, ministries, and political offices.

The growth of Argentine nationalism, and Britain's increasing separation of the islands from the mainland, eventually allowed "the relationship between countries to displace the relationship between neighbors," writes Sebastián Carassai in Beyond the War. Carassai's book reminds us of the relationships between Argentines and Falklanders that existed beyond—and were eventually eclipsed by—their governments' competing nationalisms. (Those who side with Argentina would call the islands the Malvinas.) … [Subscribe to continue reading]