MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Gibraltar represents a road map

By Jose C. Moya (*) - The recent referendum’s near unanimous support for British rule seems to leave little space for negotiations. The passing of Thatcher -- who was seen as a liberator by most Islanders -- will, if anything, harden their position by reviving memories of the war. And the position of the Argentine population is equally hard, if the recent revival and political use of the issue by the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is any indication.

Britain and Argentina had a close relationship and with time should be able to find common ground over Falklands’ sovereignty.

The situation in the Falklands/Malvinas dispute differs from that of Hong Kong in various ways. The two parties do not even agree on what to call the region and both terms are taken by the other side as rigid political positions. The population is mainly British in ancestry so the culture of the Islands is more akin to New Zealand than to former British colonies in Asia or Africa. Therefore local support in Great Britain for the “Kelpers” will likely be stronger and more intransigent than for the residents of Hong Kong, who were mainly Cantonese. And Argentina does not have the economic, political and military power of China. So more than a Hong Kong moment, the actual confluence of events seems to be making a solution less likely, at least in the short term.

But the longer term prospects look more promising. There are no unbridgeable cultural or sectarian divisions between the British and the Argentines. On the contrary, the relationship between the two countries has been amicable more often than not. The Islands have only about 3,000 inhabitants and given their geographic situation, they would be better off with normalized relations with Argentina. Gibraltar may present a more applicable comparison and a better road map for an eventual resolution: a situation in which the mutual benefits of interaction for all parties become so evident that the ultimate question of sovereignty becomes less heated and thus easier to solve.

(*) José C. Moya is a history professor at Barnard College and a senior fellow and former director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of “Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires” and the editor of ”The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History”.