Esteban Bullrich, Minister for Education of the city of Buenos Aires, announced today that he has no
intention of engaging in negotiations directly with the students who have now taken over 34 schools
in the capital.

The Buenos Aires school students requested to meet Bullrich in order to discuss his proposed changes to
the education system.

“We are not going to engage in dialogue with the students, because engaging in dialogue with them
would lead to a chain of formal communication, taking away authority from the directors of our
schools.”

“This is not something we wish to do as we trust them,” Bullrich told Radio Continental.

Students have been taking over their schools throughout the past week in protest of proposed
curriculum reform. Takeovers are expected to continue next week, following a meeting of
representatives from all the occupied schools on Monday.

The students of Otto Krause, one of the occupied schools, issued a statement to clarify that whilst
the school had been taken over, “any teacher who wants to come and lecture can do it, we will
welcome you with open arms”.

The students of 21 high schools in the city of Buenos Aires are continuing with the take over their establishments in protest at education reform proposed by the city government. The student movement behind the protest, Corriente Estudantil de Base (CEB), is also organising a march for Thursday.

The protests started last week in technical high schools around the city in response to proposed changes to the curriculum. On Monday 17^thSeptember the city minister of education, Esteban Bullrich, hosted a meeting where he presented measures that would bring about significant content changes in technical schools. The plan includes a reduction in the number of technical subjects and increased classes dedicated to languages, mathematics and literature.

Bullrich stated that the key objective of the reform, which is set to be implemented at the start of the next school year in March 2013, is to bring technical studies in line with the national level. However, the students say the reform would reduce their labour opportunities and lower the quality of the education they get.

One of the official student voices, Sofía, explained their position to local press: “Our goal is to suspend the tragic curricular reform…we don’t want to be objects of reforms that we cannot participate in,” said the student. The students are demanding that the reforms be delayed until 2014, allowing for an extensive period of debate and consultation over the proposed changes.

Another student, Juan, from the Monte Castro school, agrees that the city government is implementing the reform without taking into consideration students’ opinion. “Among the other changes we found out about the suppression of the late evening hours, which would challenge a big number of students who work and study,” he told Télam.

By the end of this week the protesters are planning to have 40 high schools taken, unless the city Ministry of Education reopens the discussion.

Minister of Education Alberto Sileoni defended the proposal that would allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in a speech given before the Senate this morning. The gathering of speakers and politicians began at 9am at the Palacio de Congreso, and is the first public debate regarding the controversial bills.

Introduced by ruling party Frente Para la Victoria (FPV) senator Aníbal Fernández, the proposed bills would grant the right to vote to 16-year-olds as well as foreigners who have lived in Argentina for at least two years. At the moment, voting is mandatory for Argentines over the age of 18 and optional for those over 70.

Sileoni was the first of 61 guests invited to speak this morning, in a debate that is projected to last until at least 8pm tonight. Other speakers include Secretary of Human Rights Martín Fresneda, National Electoral Director Alejandro Tullio, representatives from various student and youth groups, as well as psychologists and sociologists.

“The expansion of rights is a victory, never a step back,” Sileoni said. He asked lawmakers to trust in the youth and their capacity to participate in the political process.

“We believe that our young people, who are struggling to have greater participation, are ready to do it,” he affirmed.

Although FPV officials believe that the bills will pass easily in October, there are those who remain skeptical of the law’s practicality. In August, the principal of Buenos Aires National School (a high school affiliated with the University of Buenos Aires) expressed doubt, stating “they [16-year-olds] are still being formed as citizens and have a lot to learn.”

Sileoni countered these arguments, stating that the bill – which makes voting optional for 16-17-year-olds – “does not presume that all youths have political vocations, however it makes it desirable that they get involved in politics”.

If passed, Article 7 of the Electoral Code will have to be amended to allow Argentines who have reached the age of 16 to enjoy full political rights under the Constitution. The 2013 elections would see an additional 1.5 million young people eligible to vote, or about 4.6% of the total population that voted in 2011.

With over 140 guests expected to speak, the debate will most likely continue in Congress next Wednesday, 26th September.

Film writer Wendy Gosselin attends the premier of a three-year film project that questions the education system worldwide.

There were two long lines of people waiting to get into the Buenos Aires premier of the documentary film ‘La Educación Prohibida’ (The Prohibited Education). Young people were drinking mate and lighting one another’s cigarettes; older people studied the crowd to try to greet someone they knew. The woman standing next to me was involved in production and very excited to talk more about the film with me. “It’s about the difference between schools and education, about how schools fail children in so many ways, making them into obedient subjects who are capable of little more than reciting what they’ve heard in class. It films educators discussing these issues in eight different countries.”

From what I gauged at the premier, there are two critical aspects of the project ‘La Educación Prohibida’. The first is the way this documentary film was made and distributed and its determination to continue on past the actual screening of the film. The idea was born three years ago when the young and clearly charismatic director Germán Doin (before the film was even shown, he received a standing ovation when he got up to speak) decided to do a short film and post it on youtube. Doin was plagued with what education should mean and what schools actually provide. His video was an invitation to others to pose similar questions, conduct interviews and come onboard the project. The final result is an audiovisual project involving a total of over 150 crew members, actors, filmmakers and artists and 704 co-producers worldwide. Monday marked the film’s premier at 151 independent screening rooms across the world. According to Doin, on Monday alone, 18,000 people had seen the film, a true achievement for a film project of this kind and a triumph for independent productions worldwide.

The second and, in my view, least interesting aspect of the project is the film itself. First of all, the film drags out across an astounding and unnecessary two hours seventeen minutes of fictional interludes, interviews with educators and textbook-like animations. As would be expected of a film with 704 co-producers, the film covers a range of topics that is too broad, covering everything from the history of humanity (rounded off with the classic depiction of the monkey standing up straighter until he at lasts takes on the form of a human male) to the history of education, with stops along the way to include comparisons of babies with tree seedlings (seedlings, it seems, take all the light and water they need from their environment; children would be best left to do the same).

For Doin and his co-producers, apparently, there is nothing worthwhile in today’s mainstream schools, which are basically enormous day care centres. The fictional interludes depict two high school students who claim that their education has taught them nothing and are willing to say as much at a school function, with renowned actor Gastón Pauls as their frustrated but somewhat sympathetic teacher. These are supplemented by actors who play clichéd Draconian teachers who stare straight at the camera and yell. We see elementary school students with their hands tied behind their backs and high school students dressed in grey t-shits reciting lessons in a robotic twang. I could almost hear Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ playing in the background.

These fictional interludes are contrasted with thoughtful onscreen quotes by figures such as Maria Montessori, Paulo Freire, Albert Einstein, and Rudolf Steiner and by real life interviews with more “progressive” educators in the tradition of Waldorf, Kilpatrick, Sudbury and Montessori. They hail from institutions like the Pachamama School in Ecuador, the Ideas School in Colombia and the Red de Educación Libre in Spain: schools with no grades, no exams, and open groups comprised of students of all ages where young people move freely about according to their interests and abilities. The focus, according to these educators, should be on liberty and simultaneous exploration; children correct themselves and teachers limit themselves to serving as helpful guides. However, the few scenes where we actually see “examples” of this type of education are limited to nursery schools where children touch each other and build things out of blocks (doesn’t this happen at nursery schools everywhere?). Other depictions of desirable education are bucolic scenes where children roam free in large green spaces, locations for education that I am hard-pressed to imagine in an urban setting like Buenos Aires. From time to time, childish animations pop up showing frowning stick figures with bubble captions that read: “I am not just a number.”

There are some interesting questions posed by ‘La Educación Prohibida’: school curriculums are often obsolete and out of touch with the real world and many students do get lost in the system and then lose their desire to learn. Yet although we hear plenty from the representatives of the educational institutions where students are supposedly encouraged to explore their own individual potential, the students themselves are absent from the big screen. And in spite of the film’s broad criticism of the school system, real-life public school teachers of the countries surveyed are missing. Couldn’t these teachers have something more to contribute than the atrocious stereotypes we are subject to in their fictional depictions? In terms of the critique of the whole educational system, another glaring omission is the difference between public and private schools. Aren’t private schools more likely to fulfil the mandates of an open, more comprehensive education the co-producers all seem to favour?

What is ultimately “prohibited” in The Prohibited Education is the possibility of examining these questions in a real, in-depth way. This perhaps reflects the age of the production team, who are all aged 21 to 24. I would be very much interested to see what Doin and his crew have to say about education 20 years from now, when they have their own children and are obliged to make certain compromises in terms of their education in order to help them find their own way in the world. Reflections such as these could be summarized in a much shorter and succinct film on the same subject. Ultimately, I am more interested in the way Doin put together an international network to explore his subject and the way he used the digital medium to get it up on the web and spread the word – as of publishing, more than a half million people had downloaded the film from the website – than in the actual film his team of ardent collaborators produced.

SANTIAGO, Chile — On Thursday, this year’s third and largest student rally for education reform ended in violence. The estimated 150,000 that marched in front of the presidential palace to protest education cost and allocations of profit were met with water canons and tear gas.

The police and city mayor called the event that was organized by the Confederation of Chilean Students (Confech) the “most violent of the year”. They estimate that 250 protesters were detained and 20 officers injured. However, the protesters felt that the main message was consistent, despite the violence.

“Down with profit, up with fighting,” said Confech spokesperson, Gabriel Boric.

Yesterday’s event was the culmination of last week’s two-day protest that was organized by Confech as a response to a seven-month investigation of seven universities that were suspected of using profit to benefit the salaries of executives and directors. Along with salary irregularities, the committee in the Chamber of Deputies investigated whether the schools were outsourcing services and utilities for profit.

Deputy president of the committee, Alejandra Sepúlveda, spoke against the universities conducting their services similar to a business. “If a university makes profits, it is absolutely logical that you have to reinvest them into the university,” Sepúlveda said.

It was these suspicions coupled with President Sebastian Piñera’s inaction to eradicate Pinochet’s 1981 education model that sparked student protests:

“We want to say that while this happens, we will not be quiet. We went from a military dictatorship to a market dictatorship,” said Boric.

Despite the destruction of street lamps and the throwing of bottles and rocks at police from the hooded “encapuchados”, the students still felt the protest to be lighthearted.

Still, Cecilia Pérez, intendent of the metropolitca area, is calling for leaders of the student groups to be held responsible for the injuries and damages.

High school and university students finished a two day protest yesterday against profits in the Chilean education system. Almost 3000 high school students marched through the Chilean capital of Santiago in the demonstration organised by the Coordinadora Nacional de Estudientes Secundarios (CONES) on Wednesday, calling for the state to take a bigger role in Chilean education.

Private University students also took to the streets to campaign against profits in the higher education sector. The protest, which was supported by the Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile (CONFECH) comes a week after a Court Hearing in which seven Universities were accused of failing to maintain non profit status.

Wednesday’s march began as a peaceful protest but ended in the arrests of 35 students. The atmosphere became hostile when police arrived towards the end of the day and began attempting to disburse and question students.

Chilean President Sebastián Piñera criticised the student movement at the G20 where he accused the students of spreading “misconceptions” and claimed that they were “heavily influenced by the communist party”.

Students claim that their education system is suffering from a lack of state regulation and accused the government of having few answers.

“Institutions are acting illegally, with no regulation from the state,” said the president of the Federacion de Estudiantes de la Universidad Santo Tomás.

Minister for Education, Harald Beyer responded by saying “we are increasing the funding system, we are increasing regulation, we are doing many things that point to an improved education system.”

The student movement in Chile, sometimes called the ‘Chilean Education Conflict’ launched in May 2011 as an opposition to the profit across secondary and higher education in Chile. Since then there have been 40 protests organised by student groups. State education in Chile was dramatically reduced under General Pinochet’s regime which ended in 1990 and now most universities are privately owned and a large proportion of secondary students attend private schools.

Students are angry about what they see as too much corporate involvement in education and are demanding more free and state run institutions.

The protests will culminate on the 28th of this month with a national student strike, also marked by the October municipal elections and the presidential year 2013.

Pupils and teachers of the Liniers school No.13 Coronel de Marina Tomás Espora are the latest group to mobilise at the offices of the Ministry of Education in protest agains the closure of two educational courses.

Seventy students entered the headquarters at 200 Paseo Colón at noon, occupying floors 7, 8 and 9. Their parents allegedly support the measure.

In addition, the students spent the weekend at school, in protest against the same issue. Neither the Minister of Education Esteban Bullrich nor his advisers has responded to the mobilisation.

In the absence of response, the pupils decided to march to the legislature to present their claim.

IdeaMe is an online platform, which helps creators, be they inventors, artists, or designers, among others, to finance their projects through crowd funding. The Indy features and promotes one project every week, with the aim of helping the creators finance and achieve their dreams.

La Belgranense performing (courtesy of La Belgranense)

This week’s featured idea.me project takes us into the lively atmosphere of La Belgranense’s big band ensemble. Formed in 1999, this group of 20 musicians has dedicated itself to entertaining in a variety of locales that don’t typically enjoy such energy-filled performances.

Formed in the Temperley area of Buenos Aires, La Belgranense is a travelling act of good will and high spirits. At least once per month for the last 13 years, the group has visited rural schools, nursing homes, special schools, psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in Argentina in order to perform for those whose access to live music is limited by circumstance.

La Belgranense initially emerged as a dream of founding member Juan Carlos Pombo. Though he had not played trumpet for over ten years, Pombo asked whether a band existed at his children’s school in Temperley. He was given the go ahead to form La Belgranense.

“I sent a note to parents calling on them to play any instrument, and with the first five members, we organised rehearsals and got a band leader,” explained Pombo.

What began as five members soon blossomed to 20, comprising professionals who range from lawyers to engineers. Today, La Belgranense’s impressive line-up includes three flutes, two clarinets, five saxophones, two trumpets, two guitars, a trombone, a flugehorn, keyboards, percussion, and a recorder, among other odds and ends.

Beginning in 2001, in response to hard times around the country, La Belgranense formed a sponsorship with a school in Bella Vista, Corrientes. Now, every October, through the Civil Association of Patrons and Students of Rural Schools (APAER), La Belgranense travels to Corrientes to entertain groups of students, bringing along donations and a full selection of tunes.

“Our repertoire is varied and eclectic,” said Pombo. “It goes from tango and folklore to jazz and popular music, as well as a children’s repertoire, but I think that jazz is where we are most comfortable.”

La Belgranense also partners with the Claps Group, a team of animators who stir up the imagination of youngsters with everything from lights, sound, and projections to party favours, games, magic, and black theatre.

“It’s amazing the way kids appreciate our presence,” Pombo continued. “You have to come and see the their faces year in and year out. The joy is recorded in their eyes and hearts.”

With the hope of expanding their reach, La Belgranense has taken to idea.me for support in achieving its future goals. The group now seeks to divide its annual tour into three trips—one to the Province of Buenos Aires, one to the rural areas of Entre Rios, and the last to Corrientes—in order to include more schools and bring the big band experience to as many children as possible.

La Belgranense’s next performance will be 11th May in the Navarro zone, where children will be brought together from three different rural schools.

“We believe that to laugh, sing, play, have fun, and share is very valuable to these children, and valuable to us.”

2nd April, 1982: under orders from former dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine forces invaded the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. The move started a conflict that lasted only 74 days, but the war’s effects are still felt today.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the assault, and the view that the islands do rightfully belong to Argentina still permeates public consciousness through the media and in general conversation – and in that which is taught to children.

This week, the Argentina Independent hit the streets to find out exactly what influence people feel the education system has in creating a collective memory and the opinions regarding the controversial islands.

Juan Cruz Ezequiel Sanchez, 21, student, Olavarría

I think, yes, the Argentine education system influences people’s opinions regarding the Malvinas. In my opinion, if you grow up with other relationships, like in a university or a larger city, you can forge a more independent ideology than in the Argentine education system. When students pass through it, they form own opinions on the Malvinas. They don’t tell you in school how drunk Galtieri was when he sent 20,000 boys to potential deaths against English forces – neither do they tell you in England that [former British prime minister] Margaret Thatcher went to war when her government was in decline.

Nicholas Elzegebe, 18, student, Neuquén

I believe people are going to form their opinions and ways of thinking not so much in formal education but in the informal part, in their relations with other people. That said, I think that, actually, there are certain frozen facts; you can analyse them fact by fact regarding who has sovereignty, looking more at the economics, the people – but you can’t see the 100% panoramic view, only a little part.

Raul Latasen, 32, software designer, Corrientes

Definitely – education has a lot of influence on the way people think of the Malvinas. About the war, about the sovereignty, about all of that. We are taught from elementary school that the Malvinas are a part of our national territory because of the legacy that came from independence from Spain. So that definitely influences it.

However, I believe that that’s not the only educational force at play. I make the distinction between formal education and informal education, because some people here – much to my regret, I would say – unfortunately, have a different view of Malvinas although they are Argentine. At the end of the day, it’s a game of beliefs that one has grown to believe, and in that regard, I think that on both sides of the ocean education makes a big difference. We are both told that they belong to us in every case.

Yes, I would say it plays a big factor, and I think that’s fine. It is how it’s supposed to be. One way of defending every country’s sovereignty is teaching their childen from an early age what they’re country’s all about, what is their territory, their culture, and all the things of which they should be aware.

Claudia Morales, 46, clerk, Buenos Aires

We have education programs where for us, the Malvinas have always been ours. And, they say in Great Britain that they’re theirs. That’s why there was the war and more. And so, for us, all that we say about the Malvinas will be in our favour and that we should always defend that viewpoint. All the commentary that’s coming out is always going to come out in defense of that point, that the Malvinas are ours – they’re in our continental area, and England took them from us. That’s it.

Jesica Coppa, 23, student, Buenos Aires

Yes, it’s the opinion that we all have, that they’re completely in Argentina’s territory. It’s a commercially strategic point, that England has them, and that’s all they’re doing. And definitely, education influences opinions, and we know that. Perhaps the history, the why they were taken – that’s not coming in education now. It was said before, but now not as widespread.

Susana Tononi, 49, psychologist, Buenos Aires

The truth is I believe that teachers work really hard. If it weren’t for them, kids wouldn’t be open to learning about the Malvinas. They wouldn’t know what happened or anything. I think it’s really important to know there’s a bit of earth that’s ours, that for things in history we can’t have. But to me it seems that the teachers are really, really good. There are always perceptions, but the teachers are teaching the kids.

My mother-in-law was a teacher; she retired. My husband works in education. The other part of education that I have seen from the side of my sons – who are grown up, but are going to college – the truth is that, yes, they work really hard. If it weren’t for teachers, kids wouldn’t know anything, neither what happened nor what’s happening. What teachers are doing is important.

Malvinas propaganda on the streets of Buenos Aires (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Thirty years after the Falklands/Malvinas war, its memory lives on in the echoes of the veterans’ protests and in thousands of posters plastered on almost every Buenos Aires’ wall. Claims for the ownership of the islands and foul-mouthed graffiti directed towards the English and sprayed across walls in Buenos Aires -in a language that seems right out of a football pitch- make the national discourse clear.

The debate about the islands’ sovereignty is not only a political one, but also a discussion about Argentina’s own identity, of which the lost islands have become a potent metaphor throughout the years.

“Malvinas […] is a way to ask ourselves what kind of country wants to be the one that would eventually retrieve the islands and welcome its inhabitants,” once wrote Federico Lorenz, historian and author of the book ‘Las Guerras Por Malvinas, 1982-2012′.

Much has been written about the diplomatic controversy between Argentina and the UK. On the 30^th anniversary of the invasion, it is interesting to look instead at the paradox raised by Lorenz: how is it possible that the crowd gathered in Plaza de Mayo to cheer for Leopoldo Galtieri announcing the invasion was the same that had taken to the streets only three days before in protest against the dictatorship?

The reasons lie in what the ‘Malvinas cause’ is to Argentines. As Lorenz argues, “it is perfect for the banal patriotic discourse to work: it is the right cause [to fight for].”

But what exactly is the ‘Malvinas cause’? Argentine political scientist and member of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Vicente Palermo, defines it as a discursive aspect of Argentine nationalism that includes “a narrative of the past, an interpretation of the present and a mandate for the future”, and which has helped to shape national identity.

Two factors have been crucial in developing and keeping the ‘Malvinas cause’ alive: the constitutional mandate and the education system (of which the Constitution is both cause and consequence).

The ‘Malvinas Cause’ at School

'Sal en las heridas' by Vicente Palermo

In his 2007 book ‘Sal en las heridas’, Vicente Palermo recalls that his first  memory related to the Malvinas dates back to when he was 12, and he was wearing his first pair of long trousers.

Asked to write a wish to his aunt travelling to Europe, an embarrassed young Palermo all of a sudden wrote “Las Malvinas son argentinas“, without even thinking about what he was writing.

Similarly, historian Federico Lorenz said: “I learned that the Malvinas are Argentine at school. We used to write letters to soldiers in class, confident about what we were doing, and the teachers would help us with the envelopes. Somewhere we learned that this or that is homeland, and that someone stole a part of it away from us.”

Behind the obsessive mantra “Las Malvinas son argentinas“, lies a whole set of patriotic messages children come in contact with from a very young age, at school.

With the aim of tracing the origins of the widespread malvinero nationalism back to school, Carlos Escudé, a renowned political scientist and leading figure at the CONICET, analysed the way geography was taught in Argentina from 1879 to 1986.

The results of his study, conducted in 2000 by examining 77 geography textbooks used in primary and secondary schools, were stunning.

What Escudé calls “the indoctrination about territorial nationalism” is a process that consolidated around 1945, more than a century after the islands were taken over by the British.

“Geography textbooks printed before the 1940s attributed to Argentina a territory of 2.800.000 km², while later textbooks attributed it lands for approximately 4.000.000 km²,” he wrote in his essay.

“In previous years, talking about the so-called disputed territories,” – such as Malvinas and other southern islands, Beagle Channel, Cape Horn Archipelago and Argentine Antarctic Sector – “was a task for diplomats only, not for teachers.”

According to Escudé, the use of these “indoctrination” methods was not specific to the Peronist era, but it also extended to the last decades of the 20th century.

“These images promoted by writing exercises, readings and essays at school stay engraved in children’s memories. […] I have the impression that [continuously looking at and sketching maps] has a strong psychological impact.”

In a controversial article titled ‘Are the Malvinas really ours?’ published on La Nacion on the 14th February, Argentine historian Luis Alberto Romero wrote that: “We have outlined [the frontiers of the Argentine territory] so many times at school that we ended up believing this was the reality.”

The Origins of Territorial Nationalism

The words of Vicente Palermo help give a framework to Escudé’s studies. Palermo explains that Argentine education policies root back to the massive plan of immigration from Europe ordered by the liberal elites at the end of 19th century to provide the country with a larger workforce.

“From 1880, timid education policies were turned into a powerful apparatus of free, compulsory, public education,” Palermo elucidates. “Given the large quantity of foreigners in the country, education is quite nationalistic, featuring a strong element of identification with national symbols and the official history. It is visible in this galloping love for flags; marches and anthems sung everyday while raising the flag.”

Likewise, historian Luis Alberto Romero wrote that Argentine politics are imbued of a nationalistic syndrome. “At the beginning of the 20th century, the obsessive quest for a national identity started […] developed by strong institutions like the army, the [catholic] church and the two biggest democratic movements, Yrigoyenist radicalism and Peronism”

According to the experts, the lost Malvinas islands are at the core of a nationalism constantly looking for itself.

“This is a fundamental part of the dogma. We are a righteous country and our pacifism has turned us into victims. We lost big territories […] but we are morally superior,” Carlos Escudé wrote.

Today: the Righteous State Mission

Speaking before the 41st Assembly of the Federal Education Council on the 28th March, Minister of Education Alberto Sileoni said: “the Malvinas belong to the ministry too,” asking for an increasing prominence of the issue “in all the classrooms of the country.”

“This is because the National Education Act establishes that, and also because the Malvinas were, are, and always will be Argentine,” he added.

'Soberania es recuperar lo nuestro' (Sovereignty is recovering what is ours) posters along Avenida de Mayo. (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

The minister was indeed speaking the truth. National Education Law No. 26,206, in its third article, states that one of the aims of the education system is “to reaffirm the sovereignty and national identity.”

In particular, article 92 of the same law establishes that the common basic curricula should provide resources for the building of a national identity from a regional Latin American perspective (Mercosur) and the inclusion of the “recovery of the Malvinas islands.”

Similarly, the Senate of the Province of Buenos Aires passed law 14.222 (made effective in 2010) to promote the teaching of the sovereignty rights over the Antarctic Sector, the Malvinas, Georgias del Sur and Sandwich del Sur.

“They have to stop with this ‘malvinismo educativo’ (‘educational malvinism’),” comments Vicente Palermo. “Government should promote a sober education: this instilling children with clichés about the ‘Malvinas cause’ seems toxic to me. And it is still in school nowadays.”

In a paper published in 2010 within the booklet Pensar Malvinas, academics Iván Falcón, Evangelina Aceval, Nicolás Cardozo, Eduardo Gómez and Patricia Bernasconi showed how young generations perform a clear dissociation between the Malvinas and the last military dictatorship.

In their study, they interviewed adolescents between 17 and 18 years old in four schools of Corrientes. What they found was that approximately 90% of the interviewees, when asked to tell what was the first thing they could think upon hearing the word ‘Malvinas’, answered: 1. they are Argentine; 2. the bad conditions of the soldiers during the war; 3. their geographical location.

Thus, as they reflect, “the memory is formed and forged in a systematic way, without a deep reflection about the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’”.

On the opposite side of the dispute, the war of 1982 – known in Argentina as the ‘righteous cause in the hands of bastards’ – was not taught in Falklands’ schools up until 1999.

The ‘Malvinas Cause’ in the Constitution

In 1994, former Senator Eduardo Menem pushed for the introduction of the so-called ‘first provisional clause’ in the National Constitution. The clause requires the government to peacefully “seek to retrieve full sovereignty over the [contended] territories and maritime spaces.”

“[In doing so,] it imposes to respect the life and the customs of the islanders, which above all means to respect their interests,” Eduardo Menem recently answered to Luis Alberto Romero, who had questioned the islands’ sovereignty from the same La Nación columns. In his comment, Menem also added that it was in the islanders’ own interest to become Argentine.

“If we stick to the Constitution, there is no way Argentina and the UK can negotiate a middle-ground position. The constitution imposes to seek the full sovereignty,” Vicente Palermo explains. “However, this can’t be done whilst respecting their lives: it is a contradiction in terms since the kelpers have a clear political will and do not want to be Argentine.”

Vicente Palermo has raised the same point with 16 other intellectuals in an open letter published in February. In their manifesto, ‘Malvinas: an alternative vision’ they criticised “a climate of nationalist agitation”, pointed out that the issue bears little relation to the country’s main problems, and called on Argentina to accept the rights of the islanders to self-determination.

“They were saying that perhaps we should investigate a bit deeper what Malvinas really mean to Argentines,” commented former BBC correspondent for the Americas Daniel Schweimler.

“As far as I can see, they were greeted by a barrage of insults and death threats. It would help their cause if they could open the debate a bit more, although we have books being written and people are starting to discuss the issue a bit more.”

In fact, as Palermo confirms, a second manifesto is being prepared: “Things are starting to change in Argentina. It seems to me that there are many more different voices in the opposition now. The country seems less homogeneous about it. It is a good thing.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, Schweimler states that for the British, the Falklands are still a distant worry.

“There is this often repeated story about the 1982 invasion. When it started, most of the Brits thought the invasion was off the coast of Scotland, so of course they said that ‘we should fight back’. When they realised where the Falklands were, it simply stopped being an issue. Most British people had no idea where the islands where, and now 30 years later most of the young people wouldn’t probably know where they are,” said Schweimler.

“But here, all of the Argentines have an opinion on it. Some are stronger than others, but they reflect various level of consciousness about the issue.”

To find out what Argentines think about the effect of the education system on their opinions about Malvinas, click here.