From the GPO roof to the 1982 rupture

By 1916 mass Irish emigration to Argentina was over, and the community that remained was mostly Argentine-born. What follows is a son who went back to fight, two states that made ties formal, and a war that made Dublin choose.

A flag over the GPO

Eamon Bulfin was born in Argentina in 1892 and in Easter Week 1916 raised the green "Irish Republic" flag over the GPO. He was condemned to death, reprieved and deported to Buenos Aires in March 1917. Edmundo Murray says the Argentine envoy reportedly intervened; an Irish government page said his Argentine birth saved him. In 1919 de Valera made him the Republic's first representative to Argentina.

Laurence Ginnell followed in 1921 as special envoy. P.J. Little's report to Dublin that October expected a loan aimed at £500,000 to raise only £10,000 to £15,000, and reported that President Yrigoyen's government favoured Ireland but would not recognise the Republic. Argentine accounts later held that Argentina was the first Latin American country to recognise the Free State in 1922; no 1922 primary document has been found, so this site says only "one of the first".

Ties made formal

Relations were established by an exchange of notes on 29 July 1947, according to the Argentine foreign ministry, which dates Ireland's Buenos Aires mission to 1949; the Irish government's page says 1948. Edelmiro Farrell, grandson of Matthew Farrell of Co. Longford, was president from 1944 to 1946, the highest office an Irish Argentine has held, and Perón rose to power within his government. The journalist Tom Hennigan describes the community of the 1970s as prosperous, conservative and largely supportive of the military, though several prominent guerrilla leaders were of Irish descent.

The dictatorship, 1976 to 1983

On 4 July 1976 the Pallottine priests Alfredo Leaden, Alfredo Kelly and Pedro Dufau and the seminarians Salvador Barbeito and Emilio Barletti were killed at San Patricio parish in Belgrano. The order had come to Argentina from Ireland to serve Irish immigrants, and Hennigan writes that Kelly and Leaden were of Irish descent. In 2006 a court charged seventeen members of an ESMA task group, but an appeals chamber found that unproven. As of June 2026 the federal judge Daniel Rafecas was examining a Federal Police reprisal hypothesis and had summoned four former officers. No one has been convicted, and this site names no perpetrator. A canonisation cause for the five is open.

Fr Patrick Rice, born in Fermoy, Co. Cork, was abducted with the catechist Fátima Cabrera in October 1976 and tortured. Both survived, credited in part to the Irish Embassy's prompt action.

Rodolfo Walsh was a writer first. His Operación Masacre pioneered Argentine investigative non-fiction; Murray's dictionary entry states that he was also a Montoneros intelligence officer. In March 1977 he published an open letter to the junta, and on 25 March an ESMA task group shot and abducted him. He remains among the disappeared. In December 1977 founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and two French nuns were among twelve people abducted after meeting at the Santa Cruz church, run by the Passionists, a congregation of Irish origin. The register also holds the writer Gloria Kehoe, abducted on 13 June 1977, the student Jorge Patricio Dillon, kidnapped on 20 January 1977, and the neurologist Eduardo O'Neill, taken from his home on 9 September 1977.

Ireland and the Malvinas war, 1982

On 2 April 1982 Ireland backed the European Community statement condemning the Argentine landing, on 3 April it voted for Security Council Resolution 502 calling for Argentine withdrawal, and in April it agreed to the Community's ban on Argentine imports. The General Belgrano was sunk on 2 May, with 368 dead by one count and 323 by another. On 4 May the Irish government called for an immediate Security Council meeting to prepare a ceasefire resolution; Charles Haughey told RTÉ that the sinking and the heavy loss of life had prompted it. On 17 May the Community renewed sanctions without Ireland and Italy.

Motives are disputed, and this site endorses none. Haughey's own account cited the loss of life. The historian Stephen Kelly argues that he acted from political opportunism and anglophobia. Michael Lillis, a former diplomat, judged Ireland's links with Argentina too weak to justify the risk.

The two governments' positions are stated here as their own. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Malvinas, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The United Kingdom described the sinking in 1982 as self-defence under the UN Charter.