Page:The Future of the Falkland Islands and Its People.pdf/37

 Like all states, which emerge as the result of violent revolution, its present boundaries encompass only such territory as it was able to gather by force or subsequent agreement or which it was able to maintain actual governmental control over. More specifically in the Falklands case, it is worth mentioning also that for decades before and during the few years of co-existence with Argentine settlers the permanent British presence and local industry in the Islands had been legally authorized by treaty (the 1790 Nootka Sound Convention between both claimant parties, Spain and Britain), which legal authorization Argentina as a third party, and indeed a non existent entity as an independent nation in 1790, lacked.

It is therefore a fact that in a true historical perspective the Argentine position of claiming sovereignty over the Falklands is untenable in the twenty first century if only for the very reason that the majority of the American states both of the North and South owe their very existence, present borders and formation to violent revolution, the suppression or usurpation of the native populations by European invaders and colonizers over a period of many hundreds of years and sometimes violent competition for the territory to be included within their ultimate framework. No amount of argument or historical revisionism can escape from this position. Argentina is no different to any other similar American state in this respect excepting that it alone appears to require that its perceived territorial boundaries should match its original historical aspirations rather than the modern actuality.

The legitimacy of South American and other similar states is recognized universally because of their de facto occupation and control of the territory that they held by force majeur as successors to the historical usurpation of the native peoples and their land. This recognition, except perhaps by some residual indigenous groups, is wholly legitimate, subject to the acceptance of the indigenous peoples, because not to do so would place millions of otherwise innocent descendants of the original settlers in the impossible situation of not legitimately belonging to and being deprived of human rights and rights of tenure or self determination in the country of their birth.

Argentina's acceptance and defence of it own self determined independence on the foregoing basis, regardless of its purported historical legacy, and the mainly European origins of its people, exposes the double standards by which, as a nation, it attempts to legitimise and bolster its claim of sovereignty over the Falklands. Argentina’s failure to recognize the rights of Falkland Islanders to the full measure of self determination, which they similarly claim for