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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 23, 1982
PAGE 10
It has been said that Argentina was a British colony in fact without being
one politically. The
British
brought the cattle breeds that stocked the
fertile Pampas and built the railroads and port facilities that transported
the bounties of beef and grain to Britain and markets around the world.
About 500,000 third or fourth generation Anglo-Argentines still play a key
role in the nation's economy. Some live in English-named and appearing
suburbs around Buenos Aires and observe many British customs and tradi
tions.
They, along with 17,000 British citizens in Argentina, are very
concerned over the looming hostilities.
Both groups are concerned over
threats of retaliation against British-controlled businesses.
Argentina's decline can mainly be traced to the nationalistic fervor in the
post-war Peron period which reduced British power and influence (such as
the nationalizing of the railroads, and their subsequent political feather
bedding)
An economically-prostrate Argentina is a military danger.
ECONOMIST in its April 17, 1982 issue:
Reports THE
Far from being underdeveloped, Argentina is an overdeveloped
country in an advanced state of decline. In an attempt to gain a
respite from an increasingly militant, Peronist-made union move
ment, the seizure of the Falklands was a masterstroke.
The Argentine militarists however, need help. As such they are playing
directly into the hands of the Soviet Union, which is all too willing to
show its gratitude for imports of Argentine grain. The Russians would like
to use the Falklands for their "fishing trawlers" in order to monitor free
world shipping around stormy Cape Horn and through the Strait of Magellan
shortcut. This strait assumes more importance with the gradual slipping
away of U.S. control over the Panama Canal.
Soviet Spanish-language radio propaganda butters up the Argentines, differ
entiating, for example, between "fascist Chile" and the "military junta of
Argentina." Not a few Argentine observers are worried over the drift their
country is taking. Said a leading ne�spaper editor: "We seem to be pushed
by fate into the arms of the country that should be our worst enemy."
Evil Precedent Being Set
There are at least twenty border conflicts in Latin America which could be
inflamed by this evil precedent.
For example, Chilean officials are
worried about possible threats to both ends of their 2,600-mile long shoe
string nation.
They believe that the Argentines, if successful in the
Falklands, will try next to wrest from them three contested Beagle Channel
islands at the tip of South America. Chilean troops are being mobilized now
in the country's southern region.
Meanwhile, Peru and Bolivia side with Argentina in its disputes with
Britain and Chile. Both countries would like to recover parts of northern
Chile which they lost one hundred years ago in the war of the Pacific.
Gentile Resurgence
The attack upon the lonely shepherds of the Falklands could be highly
symbolic--and a forerunner of far more calamitous days ahead for America,