The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

After successfully regaining the islands, the British decided to consolidate the Argentine dead at Darwin. They wanted to send them home for burial, but Argentine authorities insisted on the soil of the Malvinas. Small groups of relatives have visited since the 1990s, and the weekly LAN flight from Chile now stops once a month in Argentine Patagonia as a principal link for family members. A group of directors of the association which repre- sents families, the Comision de Familiares de Caidos en Malvinas e Islas del Atlantico Sur, visited the islands in March 2005 to examine the cemetery and a new memor- ial. They also met with Governor Pearce, Falklands coun- cilors and islanders. Afterwards, association president Hector Cisneros described the meetings as “very pleasant, very cordial and very respectful.” He said the business of the association “is not to talk politics nor resolve diplo- matic problems.” He was touched by the reception they received, Cisneros said: “They are so friendly that it is frightening.” Falklands Councilor Jan Cheek deflected criticism of the occasion from the Falklands’ own bitter minority, say- ing simply that welcoming the visitors was “the right thing to do.” n F O C U S A P R I L 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53 Darwin Cemetery holds 260 young Argentines killed on the Falklands, mostly conscripts from the classes of 1962 and 1963. They all died tragically and many of them heroically in Argen- tina’s misguided 1982 invasion that concluded with a humiliating defeat by British arms that probably ended forever any chance of “recovering” Las Malvinas.