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On July 15, 2026, Argentina’s national team beat England 2-1 in the World Cup semifinal match in Atlanta, Georgia, advancing to the final against Spain. It was a stunning victory since Argentina trailed England 1-0 for most of the game but scored two goals within seven minutes at the very end of the match.

Argentina’s fans rejoiced with thunderous celebrations, especially in Buenos Aires, the country’s capital, where more than a million turned out at the city center.

A moment minutes after the end of the match stood out to us as the most worth highlighting. It is the reason for this post.

The Argentine players, facing thousands of jubilant fans in the Atlanta stadium, unfurled a banner that read in Spanish: “LAS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS” (The Malvinas Belong to Argentina), drawing louder cheers from the stands.

It was a welcome slap in the face to British chauvinism and imperialism. Go Argentina!

The Fox TV cameras caught a glimpse of the scene broadcast live around the world and immediately turned away. But the political act was covered extensively in Latin America, where there is widespread sympathy for Argentina’s claim over the Malvinas Islands in the South Atlantic.

Almost two centuries ago, Britain invaded these islands, took them over as a colony, and has since held onto them by force — including a war with Argentina in 1982.

For this reason, we are publishing below an article that appeared in the April 12, 1982, issue of the Intercontinental Press magazine (and was reprinted in the April 16, 1982, issue of the Militant newspaper), along with an afterword.

These materials provide historical background to this conflict that underlined the tensions below the surface at the July 15 match, earlier games between these teams, and relations between British imperialism and semicolonial Argentina.

The headline, text, and subheadings that follow are from the original. Photos are by World-Outlook.

— World-Outlook editors

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British Hands Off Argentina!

BY DAVID FRANKEL

“If we have to fight we will,” British Defense Secretary John Nott declared April 4 [1982], as the largest British fleet assembled since World War II prepared to sail for Argentina.

Led by the aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes, and accompanied by nuclear submarines, light cruisers, and other warships, the 36-ship task force put to sea April 5.

The British war moves were in response to the Argentine government’s decision to take possession of the Malvinas Islands (called the Falkland Islands by the British). Several thousand Argentine troops landed on the Malvinas on April 2 [1982], an action that enraged the British ruling class.

Although the islands [which are 8,000 miles from Britain and 250 miles from Argentina] rightly belong to Argentina, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher [of the Conservative Party, or Tories] denounced the Argentine move as “an act of unprovoked aggression,” and Nott vowed to “restore British administration to the Falklands even if we have to fight.”

One Conservative Party leader complained on the floor of Parliament, “We have failed to defend the integrity of one of our last remaining colonies.”

The Labor Party leadership [which has alternated with the Conservatives in running the British government] fell right in line with the chauvinist campaign being whipped up by the British rulers. Instead of pointing out that British workers have no interest in defending colonial possessions, the labor leadership criticized Thatcher for not sending troops to the Malvinas sooner!

But opposition to Thatcher’s war moves was already being expressed in the ranks of labor. A reflection of this came April 6 when the Labor Party’s international committee voted down a proposal to condemn the dispatch of a naval fleet by the narrow margin of 6 to 5.

Reagan warns of ‘aggression’

Backing up the British demand for the withdrawal of Argentine forces from the Malvinas, the U.S. State Department issued a statement saying: “We have told the Government of Argentina that we deplore the use of force to resolve this dispute. We call on Argentina to immediately cease hostilities and to withdraw its military forces from the Falkland Islands.”

President [Ronald] Reagan, in a personal phone call to Argentine President Leopoldo Galtieri, warned that an Argentine move to take over the Malvinas would be seen in the United States as an “act of Argentine aggression.”

Britain’s foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, who later resigned, told reporters in London that “the U.S. government has been extremely helpful.”

U.S. policymakers were particularly upset by the Argentine move, since it comes in the midst of the intensifying confrontation between imperialism and the social revolutions in Central America. [The Sandinista National Liberation Front had toppled a U.S.-backed dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, and a civil war was under way in El Salvador between a U.S.-backed junta and left-wing rebels.—W-O]. Washington has been pressing the Argentine regime to play a bigger role in the counterrevolutionary effort there.

But the Argentine government was already facing stiff resistance from working people to its plans to intervene in Central America. With anti-imperialist sentiment being further roused around the issue of the Malvinas, and with Washington backing the British, the regime will find it more difficult to join in common action with the U.S. rulers.

Because of this the Reagan administration is urging the British and Argentine governments to reach a negotiated settlement. But in the meantime, the British fleet continues on its dangerous course.

Dictatorship or democracy?

Not surprisingly, supporters of British imperialism pointed to the fact that Argentina is ruled by a military dictatorship. “Storming onto the virtually defenseless Falklands gives the ruling generals and admirals in Buenos Aires a chance to distract attention from domestic failures and rally patriotic pride,” the editors of the New York Times noted April 3.

These staunch supporters of the murderous junta in El Salvador expressed the pious fear that “with a clash likely, a new crackdown on domestic dissent [in Argentina] becomes easier to justify.”

It is certainly true that the Argentine military hopes that the dispute over the Malvinas will strengthen its position at home. The country is in the midst of a deep economic crisis, and on March 30 the biggest protests since the armed forces seized power in 1976 took place. According to Argentine papers, there were some 2,000 arrests around the country, and two people were killed when police opened fire on demonstrators in Mendoza.

But the character of the current regime in Argentina is not what is at issue in the dispute over the Malvinas. Most opponents of the military regime support Argentina’s claim to the islands. Another government could come to power in Argentina next month, but the issue of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, which is 150 years old, would not go away.

What is involved is a confrontation between an imperialist power and one of the countries that it has oppressed for more than a century. In fact, the Argentine economy was dominated by Britain right up through World War II. Today, the British are determined to maintain their grip on the Malvinas Islands because offshore oil fields in the area are potentially as rich as the North Sea find.

Stop British threats!

One has only to glance at a map to see the basis for the Argentine claim to the Malvinas. But in 1833 the British Empire took over the islands and forced the Argentine settlers on them to leave. They were replaced with British settlers.

Argentina has been negotiating for the return of the Malvinas for decades. The issue was taken up at a conference in Havana in 1940, and at the United Nations in 1958. In 1971 an agreement was signed for the gradual integration of the islands into Argentina, but the negotiations broke down in 1973. The latest talks have been going on since 1978.

As Galtieri explained in a nationwide broadcast following the occupation of the islands by Argentine forces, it was necessary “to put an end to the interminable succession of British evasions and delays designed to perpetuate their domination over the islands and their zone of influence.”

The British imperialists have hidden behind the desire of the 1,800 settlers on the Malvinas to retain their link with Britain. Nobody is challenging the right of the English-speaking settlers to remain on the islands. But just as in the case of Northern Ireland, British colonists do not have the right to settle on the land of another country and then to claim that land for Britain.

The Malvinas Islands belong to Argentina. The workers movement around the world should demand that the British imperialists stop their military threats immediately and withdraw their forces from the region.

— From Intercontinental Press

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Afterword by World-Outlook

After a 10-week war, the British military forces dealt a severe blow to Argentina’s right of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and to the struggle against imperialism. They took over Puerto Argentino (Port Stanley) and forced the surrender of 15,000 Argentine troops on June 14, 1982.

While most nations in the world recognized Argentina’s sovereignty over the Malvinas, the British government had the backing of all major imperialist powers in this conflict, especially Washington. The Pentagon provided Britain with essential intelligence, weapons, and ammunition. It also allowed the British fleet and bombers to refuel from U.S. military bases on Ascencion Island in the Atlantic. The European Economic Community, the European Union’s predecessor, slapped a total ban on Argentine imports.

The British government waged this bloody war to reestablish its colonial grasp over islands that it forcibly took from Argentina in the 19th century. It organized its biggest naval mobilization since World War II to carry out a war against an oppressed nation nearly 8,000 miles from its shores.

In Argentina the masses rallied to the defense of their country against the Thatcher-Reagan aggression. Hundreds of young men lost their lives or were wounded in battle, and thousands were taken prisoner.

But the majority of people didn’t think that the military junta that headed the defense did everything it could. And, most of all, they didn’t feel they got an honest account from the government of why the military defeat occurred.

Thousands demonstrated to express their anger and demand President Leopoldo Galtieri’s resignation. They chanted, “The boys who died will not be sold out by chiefs.”

The savage treatment of the demonstrators by the junta’s police spread the anger more widely.

During the war the junta — no longer receiving support from Washington and under pressure from the masses — began to grant concessions to the mass movement. It hoped to stave off a social explosion of the kind that swept Argentina in the early 1970s and led to the end of the previous military dictatorship in 1973.

Argentina’s military dictatorship did end in December 1983. But the Malvinas have remained under British colonial rule to this day.

The best way for working people in the United States and around the world to help in this struggle is to join the Argentine players and the Argentine people in demanding that the British forces withdraw from the “Falklands” and that Argentine sovereignty be established over the Malvinas.

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