On September 4, 2026, Argentine President Javier Milei made the following statement:
“The Malvinas Islands are Argentine, by history and by right. There is no doubt about this. The islands have been part of Argentine territory since the founding of our nation. In 1833, the United Kingdom occupied the Malvinas, expelled the Argentine authorities, and established a colonial situation that persists to this day.
This implies that the islands’ inhabitants—being a population planted in a usurped territory—do not have a legitimate right to self-determination, and that any argument based on referendums held on the islands is invalid.”
Apparently, Milei uses the criterion of original appropriation of a previously unowned resource (homestead) to establish the legitimacy of land ownership. This legitimacy would be maintained only if the property were voluntarily ceded or exchanged, and lost if taken through coercion. Milei claims the Malvinas Islands fall into this latter category: they were legitimately appropriated by Argentines and coercively seized by the British—who renamed them the Falkland Islands—making their current possession of the archipelago illegitimate. If this is indeed what happened, Milei is right, and the Malvinas are Argentine. Let us examine the facts. [continue reading…]




























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