Argentine Cemetery

Located near Darwin settlement on East Falkland, the Argentine Cemetery contains graves marked with individual white crosses, many of them adorned with rosaries and flowers. It holds the remains of 236 Argentine combatants killed during the 1982 Falklands War. When the war ended on the 14th June 1982, most Argentine bodies were left in temporary graves close to where they fell. Britain offered to send them to Buenos Aires, but the ruling military junta said that they were already in their homeland.

In December 1982, the British government commissioned a firm of civilian undertakers to consolidate all the temporary Argentine graves on the Islands to a single location. Assisted by the armed forces, they identified and documented each Argentine gravesite and brought the bodies to Port Darwin, as at the time this was the largest single Argentine gravesite, with the bodies of the 47 Argentine soldiers killed at the Battle of Goose Green and buried there soon after the battle.

Many of the bodies collected were without dog-tags, so best efforts were made to identify each soldier from personal effects found on the body. Single items were not considered conclusive, but collections were. All were given a Christian burial with full military honours.

Each grave was marked by a white wooden cross with the name of the soldier on it, if known, or Soldado Argentino Solo Conocido Por Dios (“Argentine Soldier Known Only By God”) if not.

As part of a joint project between the UK, Falkland Islands, Argentine Government and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a forensic team exhumed, analysed and documented the remains in each of the unidentified graves in the Argentine cemetery with this DNA compared to that of surviving family members. The DNA identification project was co-funded by the UK and Argentine Governments as a humanitarian initiative in line with international law. On the 13th September 2016 a UK-Argentina Joint Communication both countries expressed their full support for a DNA identification process in respect of all unknown Argentine soldiers buried in the Falkland Islands. The ICRC’s multinational 14-member forensic anthropology team began its efforts in June 2017 with samples analysed in the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team’s laboratory, and scientists in the United Kingdom and Spain confirmed the results of the DNA testing.

By March 2018 the identities of 90 bodies had been confirmed and more than 200 relatives of these soldiers were able to visit the actual grave for the first time. On the 26th March, 2018, Argentina’s Secretary for Human Rights accompanied the Argentine families, along with the retired British Army colonel who was originally responsible for burying the Argentine dead immediately after the conflict. The visit included a religious ceremony jointly conducted by the Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires, and the Right Reverend Abbott from the United Kingdom.

The Cemetery is easily reached vehicle, with clear signs from the Mount Pleasant – Darwin Road.