Revista electrónica arbitrada, con frecuencia de publicación continua, que editan la Universidad Nacional de La Plata en articulación con la Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur. Fue creada en 2022 y se edita, desde entonces, en soporte electrónico (e-ISSN 2953-3430).
Acorde a estos términos, el material se puede compartir (copiar y redistribuir en cualquier medio o formato) y adaptar (remezclar, transformar y crear a partir del material otra obra), siempre que a) se cite la autoría y la fuente original de su publicación (revista y URL de la obra), b) no se use para fines comerciales y c) se mantengan los mismos términos de la licencia.
Pampa Azul Initiative: Post-normal science for coastal and marine stewardship
The future of humanity is closely linked to the ocean, whose importance is being accentuated by the growing demand for resources and by the decrease of land-based sources. Studying the Argentine Sea is key for developing conservation policies within the framework of sustainable development. The Pampa Azul Initiative (IPA by its acronym in Spanish), which was launched in Argentina in 2014 by seven national ministries and then was called off in December 2023, was aimed at integrating scientific research, technological development, and innovation in coastal-marine areas. Its focus was on the sustainable stewardship of estuarine, coastal, and marine zones, applying the Post-Normal Science principles. A key example of IPA’s work is the Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) process, the first of its kind in Argentina and in the Southern Cone. The MSP process described in this work demonstrates the complex challenges of managing marine resources, in a context where facts are uncertain, values are contested, stakes are high, and decisions must be taken urgently. Pampa Azul was an innovative approach for scientific research and sovereign technological development, driven both by knowledge and responsibility towards the national social and environmental needs of the 21st century.
Copyright (c) 2025 Juan Emilio Sala https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Colonialis extintio or the Duty to Decolonize
This essay reflects on international law as a tool of foreign policy, drawing from the Argentine experience, with the aim of considering the possibility of constructing an international norm to contribute to the resolution of the sovereignty dispute over the Malvinas Islands. In an essayistic manner, it proposes the construction of a principle called colonialis extintio, or the duty to decolonize. The proposal is framed within Amitav Acharya's concept of “norm subsidiarity” (2011), which acknowledges the capacity of peripheral actors to generate international norms. The paper reviews historical milestones in which Argentina acted as a rule maker, such as the Calvo and Drago Doctrines, its contribution to the Antarctic system, the human rights regime, and the law of the sea. It argues that the colonialis extintio principle can serve as a normative foundation to revitalize Argentina’s sovereignty claim and strengthen international consensus against persistent colonial situations. In a context where contemporary international law allows for greater participation of non-hegemonic states, the initiative represents a legitimate and timely path to address the pending cases of decolonization.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luis Maximiliano Barreto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Review about the book by Pablo Andrés Vassel (Coord.), Malvinas y Derechos Humanos. Historia de la investigación por torturas a los soldados argentinos en las Islas Malvinas (2023), Resistencia, Librería de la Paz, 224 pages.
Reseñas de libros, revistas, tesis y/o eventos científicos o artísticos
Copyright (c) 2025 José Federico Witkowski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Trauma, Identities, and (Re)appearances of the Malvinas War Veterans
This article analyzes the play El Visitante (2017), written by Marcelo Galliano and produced by the Grupo Estable del Teatro El Popular, in which the theatrical representations of trauma and the identities of the ex-combatants of the Malvinas War are addressed. Making using an interdisciplinary approach, the study examines how the dramatic text and the staging create a family atmosphere marked by the persistence of trauma, the impossibility of mourning, and the presence of the ominous. The play unfolds a narrative in which the boundaries between the real and the fictional are blurred, exploring the supposed return of the missing soldier through the figure of Enrique-El Visitante, an ambiguous character who challenges the limits between memory, identity, and absence. The analysis focuses on three main axes: the representation of trauma and the "frozen" mourning through staging and character construction; the configuration of the ominous and the fantastic in the identity of Enrique-El Visitante; and the overlap between the (re)appearances of ex-combatants, both fictional and real, in the stage space.
Copyright (c) 2025 María Luisa Diz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Antarctic Territorial Interests of United States: Location and Geopolitical Sense
In the 1959 Antarctic Treaty signed in Washington, the United States established its position of not recognizing any claim of sovereignty and of reserving its rights over the entire white continent. This stand, maintained until the present, expresses the existence of territorial interests that, unlike formal claims with established delimitations, remain hidden. With the methodological presupposition that in Antarctica the activities —even if they are scientific— reflect territorial interests, the cartography and official documents of the scientific investigations carried out between 1956, the beginning of the uninterrupted Antarctic presence of the United States, and the austral summer of 2024-2025 are analyzed. In search of a spatial pattern along the temporal line, the location of the scientific deployment carried out in the period 1956/2024-2025 is systematically contrasted with the declassified secret operations planning document of 1955, reconstructed by the author from two archives, which delineated an area of territorial interest. The article concludes by defining the Antarctic territorial interest of the United States and the geopolitical sense of it.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mauro Queirolo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Commentary on the book by Ariel Hartlich, El ojo austral. De Guamán Poma de Ayala a Perón. Una historia de la geocultura del Sur de Nuestra América, centrada en Malvinas y la Antártida Suramericana (2024), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Sb, 339 pages.
Copyright (c) 2024 Gustavo Gabriel Vallejo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Volunteers, Argentinians and Foreigners, during the Malvinas War: Statistics and Motivations
The conflict that confronted the Argentine Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain over the Malvinas Islands, in 1982, aroused the support of a large number of people, who fervently embraced a cause – their own or someone else's – that had deeply affected their representations and imaginaries. The purpose of the present work is to offer a dimension of the adhesion of Argentines and foreigners, men and women, who volunteered, during the South Atlantic Conflict, in 1982. From the analysis of the documentation and letters addressed to military authorities, it was possible to reconstruct a quantitative and partially qualitative overview of the volunteers who made themselves present to take a place in the historic act and a first approximation of their motivations and actions carried out. Its result exposes the magnitude of what the Malvinas Cause represented not only for Argentines, but also, for a large number of Latin Americans who did not hesitate to offer themselves for whatever Argentina decided, when the definition of recovering sovereignty over the unredeemed territory since 1833 was taken.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alejo Miguel Díaz, Laura Broilo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Las Aspirantes: (In)visible Women of Malvinas
Interview conducted in May 2024 with Gretel Suárez, director of the documentary Las Aspirantes (2017), and Nancy Susana Stancato, one of its protagonists. In the documentary, Gretel narrates the experience of a group of naval nursing trainees during the Malvinas War. Most of them, minors, in addition to assisting the wounded and providing care during the conflict, faced abuse and mistreatment by military authorities. Nancy, one of the trainees in the Naval Nursing program, provides a comprehensive testimony that allows for a sensitive approach to the history of the women of the Malvinas War.
Copyright (c) 2025 Pablo Francisco Gullino, Melisa Antonella D'Alessandro https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Defensive, but Active and Revisionist Defense for Argentina
For Argentina, national defense is essential to recover effective sovereignty over the Malvinas, South Georgia, and South Sandwich Islands. The essay argues that the country's defense policy must be structured based on the colonial, military, illegal and illegitimate presence of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the South Atlantic Islands. Based on this, it is argued that Argentina's defense policy must be defensive, active and revisionist. At the same time, it is indicated that the key to this orientation is to increase the costs that the colonial power has in order to maintain the military occupation of the usurped territory. The article explores three dimensions of defense policy. Firstly, its place in the Argentine objective linked to the recovery of effective sovereignty of the South Atlantic Islands. Secondly, the asymmetric political attention that the South Atlantic receives from Argentina and the colonial power. Thirdly, the role of the interest in Argentina's definition of allies. The essay concludes with the presentation of the central reflections.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ezequiel Magnani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Antarctic Agenda During the Alberto Fernández Government
This article aims to analyze the Foreign Policy of the Alberto Fernández administration (2019-2023) towards the Argentine Antarctic Sector within the framework of a long-term policy that sought to strengthen the permanent and uninterrupted Argentine presence on this continent since 1904, consolidating as a bicontinental country. Accordingly, the Argentine agenda prioritized the development of Science and Technology, and International Cooperation as main axes. In this context, different Annual Antarctic Plans were implemented, which include research projects and cooperation with Antarctic Programs developed by other members of the Treaty, accounting for the continuity of the long-term bicontinental policy.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lilian Berardi, Martina Mántaras https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Interview with Jorge Taiana, politician and sociologist that served as National Defence Minister (2021-2023), Nacional Senator (2019-2021) and Foreign Affair, International Trade and Worship Minister (2005-2010), among other positions held.
Copyright (c) 2024 Julián Bilmes, Juan Manuel Cisilino https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands receive scant attention in academic literature, yet they are an integral part of British power schema in the South Atlantic and crucial to its Antarctic projection. This article seeks to demonstrate, through the analysis of official sources and transnational organizations, statistics, journalistic and academic articles, that Great Britain has a policy of appropriation of the space and resources of the subantarctic islands, with two facets. One of them, clearly conservationist, is based on the creation and expansion, unilaterally, of Marine Protected Areas in the Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, in search of legitimizing the occupation of these spaces under a preaching of environmental protection of ocean environment. The second facet, along with the first, is aimed at expanding, also unilaterally, the provision of fishing licenses, especially to fleets from the British Overseas Territories, trading partners and the Commonwealth, which has brought conflicts with historical allies such as the United States. Although the extraction of species of fish is quantitatively lower than in waters adjacent to the Malvinas, this practice contributes to the support of the British occupation in the region.
Copyright (c) 2024 Federico Ezequiel Ortega https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Divergent Memories in the Argentine Narrative about Malvinas (2012-2023): The Itinerary of a Possibility
The Malvinas War in the field of literature has been a recurring theme in recent years. Specifically, the productions of children's and youth literature and recent fictions about the war published between 2012 and 2023 have generated controversies, criticisms and contradictions in the field of literature. Today, 40 years after the conflict, the relevance and need to recover certain remnants and scars from the traumatic past of that warlike event can be condensed into two essential aspects. On the one hand, the ability to give rise to the testimony and narrative of the past from different perspectives based on complex scriptural strategies. On the other hand, the will of the writers to collect from each experience different moments of history to transform them into a modern literary artifact, and thus, capture an open wound in the collective memory of a country. In this sense, this work not only intends to be an approximation or survey that begins a type of literature that, throughout the writing, we will call divergent, but also a space full of questions, doubts, contradictions.
Copyright (c) 2024 Enzo Matías Menestrina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Malvinas War —occurred between April 2 and June 14, 1982, product of the decision of the government of the Military Junta headed by Lt. General Leopoldo Galtieri— deserves to be analyzed within the political context of the last civil-military dictatorship and the actions of the de facto government in its attempt to legitimize, perpetuate and sustain itself in political power. It is common to refer to the war from the perspective of a national historical deed or as heroic deed, just as it is customary to refer to those who fought on the islands as heroes. However, these are representations in which not all social sectors participate and that obscure the density of the Malvinas narratives and the disputes over the meaning of how and what to narrate about the war and the identities of those who have participated in the conflict. Although the claim for national sovereignty and the legitimate belonging of the Malvinas Islands to our territory is inalienable, it is necessary to analyze the war from a human rights perspective, recognizing its particularities and the disputes of meaning that exist around the representations that the different social actors formulate about the Malvinas.
Copyright (c) 2024 Pablo Cristian Fanelli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
During the Malvinas war, June 14th, 1982 is named as the day of the Argentine “surrender”, the “capitulation”, the “ceasefire”, but also as the day of “the maximum resistance”. How officers, non-commissioned officers and conscript soldiers of the Argentine Army experienced it, how the decision was made and how it was presented by the military and the British government, are the topics that are studied here. The sequence of communications between the de facto president General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri and the governor of the islands General Mario Benjamín Menéndez is analyzed through Argentine and British bibliographic and documentary sources. The main corpus of this research is constituted by the testimonies produced within Voces de Malvinas (Vassallo, 2022) project and during the eleven seasons of the radio program Malvinas Causa Central (Natalizio, 2012). Generally, four axes are repeated in the testimonies of the combatants: the impact of the ceasefire news, the delivery of weapons and the review by the British, seeing the national flag lowered and/or the British flag waved, and being prisoners of the English.
Copyright (c) 2024 María Sofía Vassallo, Juan Francisco Natalizio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Political Guidance in the Report of the Commission for the Analysis and Evaluation of Responsibilities in the South Atlantic Conflict (CAERCAS)
This paper analyses the report of the Commission for the Analysis and Evaluation of Responsibilities in the South Atlantic Conflict (known as Informe Rattenbach), focusing on the evaluation of the political guidance. The text starts by asking what political issue was evaluated and how, and what underpinned the determination of the secret nature of the Report in 1983. It begins by setting the scene for the CAERCAS's work in order to understand the arguments that led to the search for military and political responses to the war. The report is analysed, paying attention to the statements, types of questions, evaluation and assignment of responsibilities and, finally, it reflects on the distances between this and other reports produced by the Armed Forces —especially the Army— which evaluated the war, showing the fundamental differences with the one produced by the CAERCAS. The aim of this study is to consider the place of the Malvinas War in the process of democratic transition in Argentina.
Copyright (c) 2024 Luis Daniel Chao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Subsoil of the Homeland: a Reading of Los pichiciegos
Forty years after the Malvinas War, when the novel Los pichiciegos was written, the present text proposes a rereading of this fundamental contribution to the post-dictatorship literature in Argentina. The corrosion of the premises of nationality stands out in Fogwill's novel, and thus the war, depicted, without any judgement of value or trace of epic, becomes delegitimized as a heroic national feat. In this way, the question arises how that statement, that of the Pichis, determines the space and how it contradicts to other stories of the (war) space. By means of the invention of a deserter’s voice, an entire world emerges, the vocabulary becomes dislocated and there is a redefinition of language that makes the implicit, the supplementary, the postponed appear, that until then remained unsaid, such as the "flights of death". One of the proposals of this work is to grasp the sound of Los pichiciegos, different from "challenge" or "mourning", the two traditions or matrixes of our culture that appeared always we wanted to write down the passions of the homeland (Ludmer, 2000).
Literature of the Argentine post-dictatorship
Copyright (c) 2023 Verónica Engler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
In this article we propose to provide an analysis of the Malvinas issue, postulating that the United Kingdom has promoted over time a situation of isolation of the islands in relation to the mainland as a strategy for the preservation of the colony. It will analyse how the dynamic of articulation between the islands and the mainland was artificially impeded by the colonial administration, although there were times when a fluid exchange flourished, which was cut short by the war. Since then, the United Kingdom reinforced a situation of artificial isolation as part of its strategy to sustain the islands as a British Overseas Territory.
Copyright (c) 2023 Mariana Alejandra Altieri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Review and notes about the book Malvinas. La trama psicológica de la guerra, by Alejo Díaz
These article revolve around the book Malvinas. La trama psicológica de la guerra (2018), by Alejo Díaz. Although it partly represents a review, it is also nourished by remarks on psychological warfare, propaganda and some readings that frame the work, with the idea of ​​providing elements that collaborate in its analysis.
Copyright (c) 2023 Pablo Augusto Bonavena https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
By the end of the war between Argentina and England in the South Atlantic on June 14, 1982, the demalvinization process began during Reynaldo Bignone’s dictatorial rule. This process found justification in the need to slowly and systematically promote the reestablishment of the bilateral relations between the Argentine and the British States, laying the foundations to determine the real and effective conditions to the cessation of hostilities and guaranteeing the system of economic and financial british interests in the region. This was materialized in the Madrid I and II Agreements, signed by Argentina and the United Kingdom, between October 1989 and February 1990, during the presidency of Carlos Menem and with Domingo Cavallo as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in the law 24,184 as well. In the following article, we propose to examine the Madrid Agreements in detail, dealing with the document called “Joint Declaration of the delegations of Argentina and the United Kingdom” and the law 24,184, with the purpose of revealing the political and economic consequences of them for the sovereignty of our country.
Copyright (c) 2023 Federico Mizrahi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The commemoration of the First Anniversary of Malvinas in the Argentine Magazines Somos and Gente (1983)
This article describes and analyzes the commemoration carried out by the Argentine magazines Somos and Gente in 1983 on the first anniversary of the landing of Argentine troops in the Malvinas. Operative categories of socio semiotics and discourse analysis are used to analyze journalistic discourse in the thematic, rhetorical and enunciative orders, from the point of view of its production conditions. The results show that, although they activate and configure similar memories, each publication validates the position adopted during the conflict. The main conclusion drawn is that, even belonging to the same publishing company and presenting similarities from the point of view of content about what is remembered and what is omitted about the war, the editorialization is different in each case.
Copyright (c) 2023 María Paula Gago https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Critical review of the book of short stories compiled by Victoria Torres y Miguel Dalmaroni, La guerra menos pensada. Relatos y memorias de Malvinas (2022).
Copyright (c) 2022 María Ayelén Bayerque https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Malvinas Issue: A (Personal) Analysis of “Cuando cayó el soldado Vojkovic” by Gustavo Caso Rosendi
The following essay presents an analysis carried out from the perspective of cultural studies and with the perspective of human rights, sovereignty and peace of the poetry "Cuando cayó el soldado Vojkovic" by Gustavo Caso Rosendi. The purpose of this essay is to provoke some reflections in the readers and the Argentine citizens on the Malvinas issue, on the dispute and production of meanings and on the importance of the multiplicity of voices.
Copyright (c) 2023 José Manuel Gerez Torcello https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the war, paradoxically, has given us the opportunity to stop assimilating the Malvinas signifier with that of war. Looking up, we analyze the 190 years of illegal British usurpation to get out of the labyrinth that the dictatorship left us with its international diplomatic swings. On one hand, they took a just cause into bastard hands and at the same time committed another crime of the military dictatorship, breaking with a state policy that was ensuring that sooner or later, the Islands would be under national sovereignty. Dates and anniversaries are resignified. People make popular struggles their own and transform events and facts that could have been contradictory, but that at the same time condense the utopias that point out the path of emancipation. With the proposal to rebuild and strengthen the Week of Memory, we reflect on the place April 2nd occupies in the official ephemeris, its relationship with other events close in time and sentiment, as well as the acceptance -or not- of that date in popular memory.
Copyright (c) 2022 Mariano Emilio Ameghino https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
This article analyzes a set of opinion pieces published in the main Argentine newspapers La Nación, Clarín, La Voz, Perfil and La Capital, from the enactmentof national Law 26651 in 2010, that established the bicontinental map as the new Argentine official cartography. The strongly critical tone that predominates regarding the new map includes as a common denominator questions about two dimensions. On the one hand referring to technical aspects centered on the concepts of scale and implementation of cartographic symbols, that would configure a virtual country rather than a real one. On the other hand it focuses on the ideological premises that would sustain the new cartography, linked to territorialist nationalism of a retrograde and sickly nature, according to the terminology used. These arguments had gravitation on geography teachers who tended to resist their use, resorting to those same considerations. This analysis challenges such assertions from an epistemological perspective, bringing to bear the tools of contemporary geography in its political and cultural shift. It is possible to generate a rupture both with the conception of cartography assumed as a mimesis of reality and with the explicit attempt to inscribe the bicontinental map within an authoritarian political matrix.
Copyright (c) 2022 Ernesto Dufour, Ariel Hiram Triulzi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The literary representation of the Malvinas territory poses many difficulties: it is a territory that few Argentines know, at least by direct experience. Therefore, most authors base their descriptions on earlier references. In addition, it has the singularity of being a reality essentialized in a few elements that have already become clichés. For all these reasons, Malvinas is more of an absence than a presence and most of the written texts, and they privilege the design of war scenarios, of conflict, spaces of suffering and humiliation suffered by Argentine soldiers in 1982. This article analyzes the representation of the Malvinas space in texts that provide configurations of the island scenario according to the three possible types of world model proposed by Tomás Albaladejo (1992): that of an effective reality; that of the plausible fiction and that of the non plausible fiction, with the different variants that are registered in relation to the represented space and, above all, the different intentions to which each form of literary reconstruction obeys. It is thus expected to make a contribution that enriches the social representations of Malvinas, based on spatiality.
Copyright (c) 2022 Marta Elena Castellino https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The San Luis. Memories of an Argentinian Submarine in the Malvinas War
Between April and June of 1982, the South Atlantic conflict took place between Argentina and England. On April 2nd, Argentina recovered the Malvinas Islands, after almost 150 years of British usurpation. In response, England sent a huge air-naval contingent to the South Atlantic. The combats took place both by sea and air and land. The maritime battle had one of its most painful chapters when on May 2nd, a British submarine sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano. 323 Argentinians died during this attack. This event resulted in the withdrawal of the National Navy's ships to its port. Only one Argentine warship did not fit into that logic: a small conventional submarine. This submarine remained in the combat zone, not only threatening and attacking the Royal Navy, but also managing to escape the threat posed by the British naval power, the true experts in anti-submarine warfare. That vessel was the ARA San Luis submarine. This is its story. The approach will be made through first-hand sources, seeking to get closer to the actions of this submarine, as well as the war experience of its crew.
Copyright (c) 2022 Pablo Javier Melara https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Malvinas and the Building of Sovereignty Policies
The activities developed from the National University of La Plata in general, and particularly at the Malvinas Institute, about the Malvinas Issue and the sovereignty policies as transverse axes in order to devise an Argentina with national sovereignty are presented here.
Copyright (c) 2022 Mario Volpe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
To Deepen the Scientific Investigation and the Technologic Development to Strengthen the National Sovereignty in the Southern Atlantic and the Antarctic
The diverse dimensions addressed from the natural science related to the Malvinas Islands and their inextricable relationship with La Patagonia, the Southern Atlantic and the Antarctic are presented here. The relevance of these dimensions in the investigations from the universities and the scientifictechnologic Argentinean system to contribute to the discussion about the country‟s project and to consolidate the national sovereignty in the Southern Atlantic is exposed.
Malvinas, Patagonia, Southern Atlantic and Antarctic
Copyright (c) 2022 Daniel Fernández https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
It is presented here the relevance of the Malvinas issue for the national defence. The activities that the University of National Defence performs on favour of those two main topics for the Argentinean Republic are addressed as well.
Copyright (c) 2022 Jorge Battaglino, Carla Morasso https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0