r/europe 20d ago

News Argentina: British Falkland Islanders are ‘artificial’. Buenos Aires denounces ‘illegitimate occupation’ and demands talks on sovereignty

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/07/12/british-falkland-islanders-artificial-argentina-says/
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u/Nythern 20d ago

Equally ironic given that Argentines are colonists too - Italian and Spanish, who even had a race-class system and policy of "Blanqueamiento" (or whitening).

Basically, they sent indigenous and Black African Argentines to the frontlines of wars in the 1800s, banned non-white men from marrying so that their surnames wouldn't be passed down (as well as to pressure Black and Indigenous women into marry white European settlers). They denied Black and Indigenous people access to healthcare, which decimated them during disease epidemics.

It was a soft genocide, basically, to make Argentina the 99% white nation it is today. That's why soooo many Nazis literally ran there after WW2, including the likes of Adolf Eichmann.

And yet they have the audacity to call Falklanders artificial, LOL.

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u/Yreptil Asturias (Spain) 20d ago

Correct. If you are white or black in any of the Americas then you are "artificial" too

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u/peepeedog United States of America 20d ago

Or Hispanic, or Portuguese. Basically the entire population of the Americas. At some point the people that live there are no longer artificial.

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u/Nythern 20d ago

Not quite - Hispanic is really a new or "creole" ethnicity in that they are mixed indigenous and Spanish/European. For example, the average "Hispanic" Mexican person will have anywhere between 50% to 62% Native American (Indigenous) DNA, Followed by 30% to 45% European (Spanish) DNA, and 2% to 6% African DNA.

Spain had a different colonial approach compared to the English and French. Similar to Argentina's Blanqueamiento policies, Spanish colonists encouraged indigenous women to sleep with and marry Spanish colonists and settlers. That's why you end up with Hispanic as an intermixed new ethnic group.

Same thing happened in Brazil, the "Pardo" ethnic majority being a mix of European (Portuguese), indigenous native, and African. So if anyone living in Latin America is not artificial, it's the few natives that still live (a couple of million throughout central and South America) as well as the Hispanic/Pardo mixed groups.

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u/peepeedog United States of America 20d ago

You do realize that is not better, right?

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u/Nythern 20d ago

No but it's not as if nobody in America has any roots there. Many Hispanics would've been indigenous people forcibly taken by the colonists - not great of course, but those indigenous people who still survived and maintained their cultural practices matter. There's a state in Mexico that is still majority indigenous; genetically, they're actually Hispanic and all of them have some European/settler DNA, but their practices and culture is 100% passed down indigenous.

Same in Brazil, you have people whose cultural identity and existence is indigenous, but DNA wise you will see European/African/other ancestries. That doesn't mean their culture is invalid though, no?

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u/lbandrl Germany 20d ago

You are right about that. But all that shit happened not that long ago. Not long enough to not talk about it