Media, colonialism and "the islands"

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Media, colonialism and “the islands”

After my last piece at The Guardian’s CiF about David Cameron, many media outlets (including the BBC and Sky News) have contacted me with the intention of generating a bit of “media polemic” over my views. Also, from people who have contacted me, it seems the piece has been widely quoted and referenced in Argentina’s media, especially as a counter part of another article that The Guardian’s Observer published yesterday on the topic.

The piece at The Observer is written by another fellow Argentinian, who seeks to prove that the islands should be granted independence because, according to him, “nobody in Argentina cares about them”. He goes on to cite two very divisive figures in South American media, Beatriz Sarlo and Jorge Lanata. It’d be too long and quite unnecessary, for me, to write extensively about my disagreements with these two (and with the writer of the piece). However, I do have something to say about my position regarding the islands, especially given the fact that people are now writing to me either to express agreement or fury over my words.

Here is the thing, the dispute over the Malvinas/ Falkands islands is, for me, part of a larger historical continuum and my very strong anti colonial stance that is a core of my overall ideological positions. I cannot, under any circumstance, isolate the struggles for the islands from previous acts of European and British colonialism and the severe consequences they carried for the peoples and territories of the Global South. Colonized subjects still carry the burden of these actions several centuries later (descendants of those who were part of the slave trade, genocide over First Nations in the American continent, social and political issues in contemporary India and African nations, to name just a few). Now David Cameron makes outlandish claims of “reverse colonialism”, but such claims would require an equal balance of power (which obviously is not such) and a swift erasure of this historical continuum and the weight of the aforementioned consequences.

It is not difficult to find people willing to engage in colonialist apologia within certain South American and Argentinian groups. The colonialists always relayed on such people to legitimize their power. That now I find myself in the unwitting place of opposing such people is not new. Actually, I’d be shocked if I ever found myself in agreement with them.