Argentina
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On 2 April 1982 a force of 5000 Argentinian troops lands in the Falklands, claiming sovereign rights over them as the Islas Malvinas. The defending British garrison of eighty-one marines is easily overwhelmed. General Galtieri pays a triumphal visit to Port Stanley, the islands' capital.

In Britain the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, immediately mobilizes a fleet to recover the islands. An exclusion zone of 200 miles is declared around the region, with the warning that any ship or aircraft found within this zone will be assumed to be hostile. By the end of April the first units of the British task force reach the scene.

On May 3 the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano is torpedoed and sinks with heavy casualties (368 dead). This becomes the most controversial event of the war, because of allegations that the ship was outside the exclusion zone and was heading away from it. The following day the British destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Exocet missile, with the loss of twenty men.

The first British landing is on East Falkland, where a bridgehead is established by May 21. Within the following week Port Darwin and the nearby Goose Green airstrip are captured. On June 14 it is announced that British troops are in Port Stanley and the Argentinians have surrendered.
 

The casualties in the war number 655 Argentinian dead and 255 British (the majority of the British deaths occur on the landing ships Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram, bombed while unloading supplies near the Fitzroy settlement).

In Britain the victory does wonders for the political fortunes of Margaret Thatcher (somewhat in the doldrums before these events). In Argentina the war has considerably more dramatic results. The military regime, already unpopular, is totally discredited by the embarrassing defeat - a self-inflicted one in the sense that the junta initiated the action. Galtieri resigns three days after the surrender, but this is only the beginning of the Falklands repercussions in Argentina.
         







The military junta retains a temporary hold on power. In October 1983 elections are held, but only after a decree in August granting the police and the military immunity from prosecution for their actions since 1976.

The presidential election is won by a civilian lawyer, Raúl Alfonsín, standing for the Radical Civic Union. He sets aside the junta's self-awarded amnesty. Over the next three years several members of the junta and hundreds of their henchmen are tried. Videla is sentenced in 1985 to life imprisonment for human rights abuses (he is released in 1989). Galtieri is acquitted in that trial but is convicted in 1986 of incompetence during the Falklands campaign.

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