Argentine Propagandist Dropped?
It would seem that, following exposure in the UK and most recently in the Argentine press, the Argentine Government has decided not to include Alexander (‘Alejandro’) Betts in their delegation to this year’s UN Decolonisation Committee hearing on the Falkland Islands in New York.
As a Falkland Islander, who asserted that he had been convinced of the validity of Argentina’s sovereignty claim through his own historical research, Alexander Betts was useful to the Argentine Government and regularly appeared before the UN C24 Decolonisation Committee to speak in their support. But Falkland Islanders have long known that he left the Falklands for Argentina in 1982 not out of altruism but to live with his Argentine mistress, deserting his pregnant wife and his daughter. Prior to that, he had been a strong proponent of UK sovereignty. This has now been exposed to an Argentine audience by an article in Clarin, a national Argentine newspaper [see translation below]. Not surprisingly, the Argentine Government may have felt it prudent not to call on Betts’ services this year.
That hasn’t stopped Betts, now an Argentine citizen, for accepting a nomination by the political party of the current Governor of the Argentine Province of Tierra del Fuego to stand for election for a seat in the Mercosur parliamentary assembly – Parlasur. The Argentine Government claims that the Falklands Islands are administratively part of Tierra del Fuego and, usefully for them, Betts included his old, pre-1982, address in Stanley in his nomination papers.
The “Argentine Kelper” Didn’t Go to the United Nations this Year.
There are myths that become taboo and difficult to contradict. Over the last three decades, an image has been created for all Argentines of Alexander Jacob Betts Goss as a “Good Kelper” [Falkland Islander].
The descendant of a typical family of British settlers in the archipelago, where he was born, he emigrated here the same year as the 1982 war and completely embraced the history and reasons for the Argentine claim to the Islands. What’s more, already having chosen to be known as Alejandro Jacobo, and having taken up Argentine nationality, he has become one of the Kelpers preferred by the Kirchner government which, year after year, has made him into its principal petitioner at the Decolonisation Committee where they will deal with the Malvinas issue today.
This year, the Government state that Betts will not be part of the proceedings. Last weekend, Governor Fabiana Rios, invited him to stand for election as a deputy for Parlasur to represent Tierra del Fuego where he went to vote with his new National Identity Document, as the National Constitution makes this the province which includes the Malvinas. Faced with repeated questions from Clarin as to why he was not going to be in the national delegation this year, the Government has not given any answer. By contrast, from London and the Islands, a crusade has been launched to expose some shady aspects of his life. British professor Peter Willetts accused him of lying and states that he has a letter written by Betts to the local press in 1978 in which Betts criticises the British Government for being soft on Argentina. And recently the Daily Mail published statements from the woman who was his second wife, Rosa Betts and her daughter Magaly Betts accusing him of having left the Islands, not for political reasons, but to “follow an Argentine lover”. Magaly accused him of abandoning her mother when she was pregnant by him and of not wanting anything more to do with them. Betts did something else that is difficult to understand: he had the address of a house in the Malvinas, which belongs to someone else, written into the DNI that they gave him last year. Clarin has sent e-mails to Betts in order to talk to him about these matters, but he has not replied.
