The end of the Dirty War, and the junta’s collapse, began in earnest on April 2, 1982, when the military launched an ill-fated invasion of the Falkland Islands, a tiny archipelago in the South Atlantic about three hundred miles off Argentina’s eastern coast. A British territory since the early nineteenth century, it had a population of about eighteen hundred English-speaking residents. Argentina had always claimed sovereignty and knew the islands by a different name, the Malvinas. The invasion by ten thousand Argentine troops was a poorly disguised effort to divert attention from the country’s disastrous economy and civil unrest. It quickly turned into humiliation. The British launched a naval armada to retake the islands and seized them again in June, at a cost of 907 lives—649 of them Argentine soldiers and sailors.
The invasion initially had popular support among Argentines, including church leaders. Bergoglio praised soldiers who died in “the Malvinas war”—he would never call them the Falklands—as heroes: “They went out to defend the fatherland, to claim as theirs what had been usurped.” The invasion led to an abrupt decision by John Paul II to visit Argentina in June; it was the first pilgrimage to the country by any sitting pope. The awkward two-day trip, which came in the final days of fighting, was an attempt by the Vatican to appear even-handed. Aides said the pope went largely because he did not want to cancel a long-planned visit that same month to Britain. On arrival in Buenos Aires, he called for negotiations to end the war, a plea that came too late, since Britain was only days from victory. Still, the junta was eager to exploit the visit to suggest a papal endorsement, and military leaders were delighted when the pope said virtually nothing during his time there about human rights.
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