Naval Air by Kaplan Philip;

Author:Kaplan, Philip;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval
ISBN: 1727914
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

FALKLANDS

Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri Castelli was Lieutenant General and commander-in-chief of the Argentine Army as well as the de facto President of Argentina in April 1982. In a move to quell the growing anti-government demonstrations and calls for reform by his many critics, Galtieri decided to exploit the traditional patriotism and nationalism of his people. Relying, as he had throughout his military career, on the use of force where territorial disputes were concerned, on April 2nd he ordered his troops to retake the self-governing British overseas territory known as the Falkland Islands archipelago (the Malvinas Islands to the Argentines), located some 250 nautical miles east of the South American coast. The general believed that the action would spark his people to unite behind their government. It was a huge gamble, but he felt that the British were not very interested in the islands and were unlikely to respond to his move. His marines arrived first to occupy Port Stanley and its airport. Thousands of Argentine soldiers soon followed and, virtually overnight, Galtieri was seen as a new national hero in Buenos Aires.

General Galtieri came from a working-class background, a family of poor Italian imigrants. When he was seventeen he was able to enroll in the Argentine National Military Academy where he studied civil engineering. He later became an officer in the engineering branch of the army and, when he had accumulated twenty-five years as a combat engineer, he was made commander of the Army Engineering Corps. By 1976 he had attained the rank of major general and by 1980 he had risen to lieutenant general and commander-in-chief of the army.

In 1976 a military junta which Galtieri enthusiastically supported, had staged a coup, taking power in Argentina and, in December 1981, his own power and influence enabled him to oust his rival generals in the junta. His next target was the country’s president, Roberto Viola, whom he removed and succeeded in office.

Galtieri vigorously pursued communists and all those he perceived as possible communists in Argentina, dealing brutally with the people he saw as left-wing subversives in the society. When he visited Washington in March 1981 he was greeted warmly by the Reagan administration whose perception of the general’s regime was that of a strong barrier to the spread of communism in South America.

With the Argentine economy in deep recession and considerable unrest among the population, Galtieri tightened monetary policy, froze salaries and enacted procedures that led to a greater unpopularity of his government. To slightly alleviate the pain of recession, he brought in limited political reforms allowing a mild expression of dissent, after which anti-government demonstrations grew and with them demands for a return to democracy. And by the early spring of 1982, it was clear to the general that he had to do something to harness the ingrained patriotism of the people and defuse the demands for reform.

With the April annexation of the Falklands by Galtieri’s forces, the anti-government demonstrations in Argentina were quickly overwhelmed by pro-Galtieri patriotic ones. The general

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