día de las malvinas

Posted by Ryan (Kaohsiung, Taiwan) on 2 April 2007 in Architecture.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the start of the War of the Malvinas (or Falklands, as the rest of the world knows them). Argentina celebrated it by denying Britain the ability to do exploratory drilling in the South Atlantic near the islands, looking for oil. It's still a very sore point - hundreds of lives were lost in the two-month-long battle. We missed the big ceremony being out of town, unfortunately. You can read more about the whole thing here.

It's also a point of contention with Chileans, as Chile allowed the British to land their planes there. You think Canadian-American relations are bad? Chilean-Argentine personal relations are non-existent (on a governmental level, the countries get along OK). I'm talking pure hatred and name-calling just on the mention of the word Chile. Bizarre.

*edited for clarity and also to point out that the picture is the torre de las ingléses (the English Tower), which, after the war, they tried to rename the Malvinas tower. I guess it didn't take, as the Malvinas memorial is right across the square from the tower, and the tower's name remains the English Tower.

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