The victory of Alfonsín’s Radicals in the November 1983 elections surprised most political observers by its depth and clarity. In this important and topical book, two Argentinian socialists briefly chart the country’s political and economic history, before moving on to discuss the full-scale restructuring of the economy organized by the ruling junta. It was the crisis of this model, with its explicit ambitions of regional power, which drove Galtieri into the Malvinas adventure.

The authors persuasively argue that although the integration of these bleak, inescapably dependent offshore islands with Argentina represents the only progressive solution, the junta’s goal of self-aggrandizement gave the operation a reckless and overwhelmingly reactionary stamp. Itself the result of the crisis of military rule, the disastrous war with Thatcher’s Britain intensified all the contradictions of the regime and isolated it from its original base of support in society.

A concluding section written for this edition analyses the significance of the election results, especially for the declining Peronist movement and the left-wing groups and parties that threw themselves behind the war.

First publication in English of a major, critical work from Argentina on the Malvinas/Falklands War and its aftermath.