Milei backs self-determination for Falkland Islanders: ‘We hope one day they will vote with their feet’

Javier Milei has overturned Argentina’s historic claim to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and acknowledged the right of the “Malvinenses” — as he recognized the archipelago’s inhabitants — to choose their nationality. On Veterans and Fallen Day, which commemorates the war that pitted Argentina against the United Kingdom 43 years ago, the far-right president decided not to participate in the main homage. Instead of traveling to Tierra del Fuego, where Vice President Victoria Villarruel — a political rival of his — had traveled, Milei stayed in Buenos Aires and led a brief ceremony, surrounded by officials and a vast police deployment. The speech he delivered generated widespread criticism for weakening national demands to recover the islands.

“Today, we remember those heroes who gave their lives for the homeland. Today, we honor them by reaffirming, with genuine determination, the claim for Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas [the Argentine name for the archipelago],” were Milei’s first words in Plaza San Martín Wednesday, a public holiday in Argentina. But then his speech veered off course, and he took the opportunity to advocate for downsizing the state, vindicated the Armed Forces and attacked the political “caste.”

“Sovereignty does not mean that the state has many companies, or that it finances the film industry, or fourth-rate recitals, or similar things. Believing that the larger the state, the greater the sovereignty is an Orwellian concept through which politics has tried, throughout history, to hide its dirty business,” he enthused, and then expounded on his idea: “That is why we have embarked on the liberating path we are treading, so that Argentina may be the freest country in the world, once again have the highest GDP per capita in the world, and so that all the citizens of the world may fantasize about the Argentine dream.”

Milei then delivered his controversial proposal, which adds to other gestures of rapprochement with the United Kingdom: “When it comes to sovereignty over the Malvinas, we have always made it clear that the most important vote of all is the one made with our feet. We hope that the Malvinas people will one day decide to vote with their feet for us,” he said. “That is why we seek to make Argentina such a power that they will prefer to be Argentines and that we will not even need dissuasion or convincing to achieve it,” he emphasized.

Argentina’s official position has always been to reject the Falklanders’ right to sovereign self-determination, a right defended by the United Kingdom and the islanders themselves. Until now, Argentina has argued that this right is not applicable because they are a population established by the country that colonized part of its national territory.

The change in Argentina’s stance implied by Milei’s statements generated widespread criticism. Former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) considered it “very serious” and a manifestation of “sepoy thinking,” from “someone who supports foreign power to the detriment of the interests of the country where he was born,” she wrote on social media. “No president of any government has reached this level of cooperation with the British,” noted Guillermo Carmona, former secretary of the Malvinas, Antarctica, and the South Atlantic in the previous Peronist administration. “When territorial integrity is compromised, the decisions of those who occupy the territory on behalf of and at the behest of the colonial power don’t count,” he added. Santiago Cafiero, foreign minister from 2019 to 2023, echoed this sentiment: “There is no self-determination after occupation and expulsion. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 defined that it is not applicable. Milei is aware of this, and it affects our sovereignty, for which our Malvinas heroes fought.”

The leader of the Radical Civic Union (UCR), Martín Lousteau, asked: “Did Gandhi ask the British in India if they preferred to be Indians, or was he simply demanding that they leave their territory? Are we now asking the representatives of the colonial power if they would prefer to be Argentines?” For the UCR senator, the president’s remarks were “an insult to the veterans.” Representative Gabriel Solano of the Workers’ Left Front called Milei “a traitor to the country” and stated that his speech “is equivalent to the renunciation of Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas.”

Disapproval of Milei’s speech was also expressed at the official event for Malvinas War Veterans and Fallen Soldiers Day, held in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, the province to which the islands belong under Argentine law. “I just heard the president say that we must listen to the inhabitants of the islands say they want to be Argentine, something similar to self-determination for peoples, which is not at all appropriate because they are not an Indigenous people, as we all know,” said Juan Carlos Parodi, a representative of the local Malvinas War Veterans Center. The audience applauded him.

While the war initiated by Argentina’s last military dictatorship, in which 649 Argentine soldiers died, is a traumatic memory for the country, the Malvinas issue is one of the few causes that unites most of the political and social sectors. Milei has previously clashed with that consensus. Before becoming president, he admitted his admiration for former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher — in fact, in his office at the Casa Rosada he has a portrait of the woman who led the war against Argentina in 1982. Last year, the government was heavily criticized when an official communication identified the islands as the “Falklands,” their British name.

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