Thatcher exults, Galtieri falls and Reagan faces Latin anger
"Today has put the Great back in Britain." So said an exultant Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher last week as she greeted the euphoric crowd that had gathered outside 10 Downing Street, cheering and singing Rule Britannia, to celebrate Britain's victory in the ten-week war for the Falkland Islands. An emotional Thatcher shook hand after hand, and declared, "This is a great vindication of everything we have done. It proves that everything that we thought was right. What a night this has been for Britain! What a wonderful victory!"
So it was. But hardly had the white flags of surrender been hoisted over the island capital of Port Stanley when a set of new, potentially more formidable problems emerged. Three days after Britain's triumph, Argentina's top generals ousted President Leopoldo Fortunate Galtieri. He was temporarily replaced as President by yet another general, Interior Minister Alfredo Oscar Saint Jean, and as army chief by Major General Cristino Nicolaides. Said Galtieri, following his removal from power: "I am going because the army did not give me the political support to continue." In fact, Galtieri's fall may have been hastened by crowds of a very different sort from those that greeted Thatcher. Frustrated and angry at their country's defeat, some 5,000 Argentines had gathered in the Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires, throwing coins at the President's palace to symbolize a "sellout" surrender, and chanting, "Galtieri to the wall!" It was one of the worst displays of public discontent since 1976. For those who experienced the chaos of that earlier, turbulent era, the demonstration was a reminder of the volatility that has marred so much of Argentina's history, and once led to the kind of nationalistic populism that was the hallmark of the late dictator Juan Domingo Perón.
At week's end Argentina's leaders still refused to admit military defeat. Clinging to the position that had doomed all efforts at a negotiated settlement before the guns were unleashed in the South Atlantic, the Argentines insisted that their claim to sovereignty over the Falklands be negotiated as part of any settlement. Buenos Aires warned that any cease-fire in the Falklands would be "precarious" so long as British forces remained on the islands. While the Argentines seemed willing to suspend hostilities for the moment, they left open the possibility of further fighting. If the fragile cease-fire broke down, the conflict could easily escalate into a new and possibly even more violent confrontation, since the British have not ruled out the possibility of answering additional attacks with the bombing of Argentine airbases and the mining of Argentine harbors.