The Malvinas are a poor, remote archipelago 543 kilometers from Río Gallegos, an object of Argentine sovereignty claims and the landing place of the hijacked plane of the Operativo Cóndor on 28 September 1966.
| Type | Place (archipelago) |
| Capital | Port Stanley |
| Distance | 543 km from Río Gallegos; 4–5 days by ship |
| Spanish entry | Malvinas |
Geography
The bedrock is among “the oldest of all” rocks, Mesoproterozoic or Archean, geologically connected to the mesocraton. Over it lies an infertile layer, useless for crops but good for grass, which feeds sheep. Part of the coast is sea-lion rookery, and there is fishing.
There are no trees and no shelter from the wind. Houses are low and isolated, tens of kilometers apart; roads are half-marked. There is no formal airstrip: planes land on “a sort of racetrack… but without stands”.
The land is “almost all flat”; some islands are completely flat, others have relief. Scattered hills, “not huge”, stand out on the plain. Around Port Stanley the ground is flat, with some high bridges. Stone rivers cross the surface: beds of scree where a current of water may remain, “but underneath and glacial”. Hills and stone rivers are the only landmarks for overland navigation, and reading them takes someone like Irene, “the one who knows rocks and maps”. A study with a detailed map of the islands exists.
Climate
Cold, with strong wind: “unbearable, you’re stuck in water, cold, lots of wind… not a fucking tree”. The cold comes in through open doors even in spring and grows at dusk. Summer nights are short: at two or three in the morning there are still two or three hours of darkness before dawn.
The interior
Some 20–30 km inland from Port Stanley lies a place reached by a half-marked route that “does not reach the exact place”. At least one isolated house there is inhabited by Betsy Ann Clark, who points out the place on the map. The recorded population is sparse: fishermen, a governor, the governor’s house. Betsy Ann Clark says of the fishermen: “They mix. They are wicked. They hold very wicked cults” — her claim, not established fact.
Sovereignty
The issue is “a national problem”. The name comes from Saint-Malo, the French port the settlers left when the islands were a French colony. The Argentine claim goes back to the May Revolution, when figures such as San Martín asserted sovereignty over the islands.
A 1965 United Nations resolution — given as Resolution 2065, of December that year — addressed sovereignty (“they said it must be decolonized”), and the question was discussed further in 1966. About two months before September 1966, a rear admiral was appointed governor of Ushuaia, the South Atlantic islands and the Malvinas, though he did not actually govern. In practice a governor lives in the governor’s house; during the operation the titular governor “is in England”. Taking the governor’s house is convenient, but it is “the sellout’s”.
September 1966
On 28 September 1966 a plane was hijacked in the Operativo Cóndor, named “for the condors”. Its participants, such as Dardo Cabo “el taco”, were later arrested. The plane landed on the racetrack.
Other threads
- Geology: the islands’ link to the mesocraton was the subject of “the real investigations Harrington did”, the source of samples of “a rare stone”.
- Radio: the islands’ name appears in radio transmissions alongside anomalous geographic references, “a place like Cape May”.
Open questions
- The inland place has no recorded name, and how the last stretch past the route is covered is not stated.
- The resident governor and the appointed rear admiral are unnamed.
- Population and number of settlements beyond Port Stanley are not recorded.
- Why the Malvinas are heard alongside Cape May in transmissions is unknown.
- The results of Harrington’s research are not recorded.