“We Argentineans feel most like Argentineans when we see or sense that we have been robbed. This allows us to explain to ourselves why we are what we are and why we didn’t become anything else. What defines us.…
“Not because we should win them back and also not if we indeed win them back. They are Argentinean because they are lost and out of reach. The slab of stone that makes up the Malvines Memorial in Ushuaia at the tip of Patagonia has a hole cut out of it in the form of the islands. This is very effective because it is filled with the view of the dark sea behind it.
“But the point of the monument is the hole and the point of the hole is the absence. If the Malvines were won back one day, they would become slightly more Argentinean. And we Argentineans would become slightly less Argentinean.”
Source: Martin Kohan in Perfil, March 10
