Before a Falklands vote, bad blood surges anew

LONDON — Today and Monday, the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands, a wind-swept, sparsely populated archipelago that was a final way station for early 20th-century explorers such as Ernest Shackleton en route to the icy wastes of Antarctica, will go to the polls in a referendum on the islands' future.

A total of 1,672 eligible voters — vastly outnumbered by the islands' estimated population of 1 million penguins and 700,000 sheep — will be asked to answer yes or no to a straightforward proposition: “Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?”




For Argentina and Britain, the 1982 conflict was a shock. The hope, sustained for years after the war, was that both countries would put the bitterness behind them.

But in the past few years the bad blood has returned, driven by a surge of Argentine nationalist fervor stirred by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who has adopted a number of measures intended to place economic pressure on the islanders, including banning cruise ships that stop at the islands from Argentine ports.