4.2 Article

'The Dagger of Dispossession Will Be Ripped Out': The Malvinas/Falkland Islands in Argentine Song (1941-82)

Journal

JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
Volume 53, Issue 4, Pages 717-740

Publisher

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X21000766

Keywords

popular nationalism; popular culture; Malvinas; Falkland Islands; Argentine twentieth-century history; civil-military relations

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This article analyzes Argentine songs about the Malvinas from 1941 to 1982, revealing long-standing ideas in the national imagination of sovereignty usurped and captive islands awaiting redemption. While most Argentines viewed the war over the Falkland Islands as an absurd adventure by a declining military dictatorship, the songs reflected an 'emotional community' around the Islands, offering insight into the evolving ideas about the territory and its recovery.
In April 1982, Great Britain and Argentina went to war over the Falkland Islands/Malvinas. On 14 June, the defeated Argentine military began the evacuation of the Islands. Most Argentines came to view this short war as an absurd adventure entered into by a military dictatorship in decline trying to cling on to power. Yet by analysing Argentine songs about the Malvinas from 1941 to 1982, this article shows that the national imaginary had long included ideas of sovereignty usurped and captive islands awaiting redemption. Argentine songs about the Malvinas, I maintain, can be analysed as expressions of an 'emotional community' around the Islands. By examining the emphases, constants and changes in the songs emerging from that community, we get a clearer picture of how ideas about the territory and its recovery changed over time.

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