Malvinas and dissidence

The vindication of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands is sustained by a huge majority of Argentina’s citizens. There exists a legal-political and diplomatic dispute with the United Kingdom, a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations urging both sides to negotiate their differences and a transitory clause of the National Constitution ratifying our sovereignty over the islands and the corresponding maritime spaces, committing Argentines to peaceful efforts to recover the islands.

We signatories of this statement accept the existence of this international dispute, considering it as such in its basically diplomatic and legal dimensions. We do not need to agree totally among ourselves over each one of these dimensions. Some of us believe that the current inhabitants of the islands are adequately protected by the constitutional commitment to respect their lifestyle, while others consider that the islands should be active participants in the eventual negotiations. Some of us deem cooperation between the two sides to be convenient, even when advances over the underlying territorial question are very difficult, while others believe that the negative attitude of the other side towards that underlying question makes it advisable to respond with a negative attitude towards cooperation. Some of us interpret the content of the transitory constitutional clause one way and others differently, etc.

Nevertheless, we warn that a long time ago the Malvinas question ceased being basically a dispute to become a presumed national cause, something completely different. And this is happening in a country which sincerely believes that we all think the same way over this issue and even that “the Malvinas is the only thing uniting us.” In Argentina today, the Malvinas cause, the unanimity of the presumed national cause, covers everything and does not admit relevant dissent in any dimension, including the conviction that no Argentine can feel alien to it on pain of being considered a bad Argentine. And thus we say: “Las Malvinas son argentinas.”

In 1982, the military dictatorship dragged us into war. But the condition for that catastrophic decision was that the cause had already been firmly installed in society from a long time back. So much so that the occupation of the islands enjoyed impressive popular support maintained for several weeks with an overwhelming triumphalism. The war strengthened the cause, which nowadays has extended to everyday life in the neighbourhoods, to sport, to specialised offices and to political discourse, even with disturbing outbursts of militarism. The omnipresence of the cause perhaps explains the national government acting today in the Malvinas question with flagrant opportunism.

We Argentine citizens signing this statement wish to express our dissent with emphasis – we do not accept being absorbed into the collective consecration of the cause, where we are abused by the state and society every time its promoters claim to speak in the name of all Argentines. A cause authorising them to take sometimes unprecedented and always excessive decisions in the name of national unanimity, of whose existence the partisans of the cause have convinced themselves. The national cause is, in summary, an abuse of state, political, social and cultural authority. It is no coincidence that the Defence of National Sovereignty bill (centred precisely on the Malvinas) seeks in its Article 111 to establish a vague criminal status to penalise dissent.

We signing this statement differentiate very clearly between the dispute, which permits us the freedom to make discrepancies in liberty, and the Malvinas cause, which seeks to engulf us in a collective, uniform and purely imaginary unanimity. We adhere to the republican values in the Constitution, the commitment to justice, the equality of rights, duties and opportunities, all of which presupposes that there is much to be done, from public, political and cultural life, from democratic controversies, the most pressing things which enmesh us in the mandates of the past, present and future proposed to us by the cause.

Our country needs to express its social and political plurality via a political and cultural pluralism in real life. As for the Malvinas, all we ask is that the unanimity ceases speaking in our name. The dissidence is not so small or fragile and hopes that the cause does not continue to seek speaking in the name of all Argentines.

Signatories

Pablo Alabarces, Rogelio Alaniz, Lucas Almada, Carlos Altamirano, Nélida Archenti, Mercedes Assorati, Pablo Avelluto, Martín Bauer, Silvia Boniface, María Teresa Brachetta, Beatriz Bragoni, María Braun, José Emilio Burucúa, Marcelo Cavarozzi, Rubén Chababo, Isidoro Cheresky, Nicolás Cherny, Celia Corti, Alejandro Cowes, Liliana de Riz, Mauricio Devoto, Gustavo Dufour, Carlos Erlich, Teresa Fara, Germán Feierherd, Graciela Fernández Meijide, Leonardo Filippini, Emilio García Méndez, Roberto Gargarella, Viviana Gauna, Guillermo Genta, Pablo Gerchunoff, Ricardo Gil Lavedra, Mario Gluck, Lidia Gonzalvo Assorati, Adrián Gorelik, Enrique Groisman, Claudia Hilb, Roy Hora, Ricardo Ibarlucía, Victoria Itzcovitz, Elizabeth Jelin, Zunilda Jotale, Adriana Karszenbaum, Alejandro Katz, Juan Carlos Korol, Santiago Kovadloff, Mariano Llinás, Mirta Zaida Lobato, Andrés López, Federico Lorenz, Carlos Malamud, Lucas Martín, Ricardo Mazzorín, Federico Merke, Guillermo Merlino, Adriana Montes, Carlos Mundt, María José Navajas, Marcos Novaro, Andrea Oelsner, Jorge Ossona, Oscar Oszlak, Vicente Palermo, Victoria Pérez Esteban, Mariano Plotkin, Hinde Pomeraniec, Hugo Quiroga, Carlos Reboratti, María Fernanda Ricci, Jesús Rodríguez, Luis Alberto Romero, Hugo Russi, Hilda Sábato, Gabriel Salvia, Catalina Smulovitz, Nancy Sosa, Facundo Suárez Lastra, Patricia Tappatá, Lucrecia Teixido, Marcela Ternavasio, Cristina Tommasi, Hugo Vezzetti, Natalia Volosin, Carlos Zurita.