The Falkland Caper

The Falkland Islands are one of the world's remoter causes. Plunked like stones some 300 miles off South America's southeast coast, they are inhabited by penguins, sheep and 2,200 farmers and fishermen who live in a cold and constant drizzle. But a cause they are.

Occupied by the British in 1833, they have been claimed ever since by Argentina, which calls the islands the Malvinas. The ownership issue has been debated before the OAS, the U.N., and even in postage stamps put out by both nations. Every Argentine schoolboy is brought up on the slogan that "the Malvinas are Argentina's." Last week a band of young Argentine nationalists decided the time had come for action.

Curious Islanders. It was a swinging caper. Led by Maria Cristina Verrier, 27, a ye-ye blonde playwright who is a kind of cross between the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and the Dodge Rebellion, 18 members of the Movimiento Nueva Argentina climbed aboard a night flight from Buenos Aires to Rio Gallegos in Argentina's far south. Shortly before the DC-4 was due to land, they pulled pistols and burp guns out of their suit cases, ordered the pilot to change course for Port Stanley, capital of the Falk land Islands. If all went according to plan, they figured, they would land about dawn, surprise the British Governor and police chief in their beds, and take possession of the islands without firing a shot.

But all did not go according to plan.

The Governor was away. The plane took longer than expected to get to Port Stanley. And at the last moment, somebody remembered that there was no airstrip anywhere in the islands. So the terrified pilot had to do his best in the mud of a seldom used race track. When the shaken conspirators emerged from the plane, they found themselves surrounded by hundreds of curious islanders, none of whom spoke enough Spanish to understand that they had been conquered by the Argentines.

The natives were damnably hospitable. They took the plane's 25 nonconspiratorial passengers into their homes, were hurt when Maria Cristina and her troupe refused their hospitality and elected to stay in the plane. The last straw came when the island's tiny police force politely informed the conspirators that it was against the law to arrest the police chief or capture public buildings. Dismayed, the invaders finally gave themselves up and accepted beds in Port Stanley homes.

Shots at the Shutters. News of the attempted conquest electrified all Argentina. The nation's Peronist labor unions called for all-out mobilization to conquer the Malvinas. A gang of toughs invaded the British consulate at Rosario and burned a portrait of Queen Victoria. In Buenos Aires, eight shots were fired at the shuttered windows of the British embassy, where Prince Philip had just arrived for a three-week goodwill visit. To calm the uproar, President Juan Carlos Ongania issued an announcement declaring that while the islands were the rightful property of Argentina, the government would stand for no violence to enforce its claims.

So saying, he declared the ill-fated conspirators under arrest, sent a ship to pick up the DC-4's stranded passengers. There was no need to apologize to the residents of the Falkland Islands: the at tempted invasion had given them something to talk about for years to come.

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