Justice this Thursday (19) declared that the Argentine State was responsible for the deaths of more than 400 natives in the Chaco (northeast) in the 1920s.
Federal judge Zunilda Niremperger described the events as “crimes against humanity in the framework of genocide against indigenous peoples”. The massacre took place during the presidency of Marcelo T. de Alvear (1922-1928).
According to the decree, on July 19, 1924, about a hundred police officers and some armed civilians, supported by an airplane, arrived on the reservation, where a thousand people of the Sand and Mocoit peoples lived.
Some workers went on strike because of the deplorable conditions they were subjected to, food shortages, no wages and high taxes. Despite working in the region, the free movement of many people was prevented.
Gunmen shoot at locals for an hour.
Between 400 and 500 members of the Kum and Mocoit ethnic groups died, the statement said. “The wounded who could not escape were killed in the most brutal way possible. There were mutilations, exhibitions, funerals in mass graves,” he adds.
The survivors had to hide for years.
The judge ordered that the sentence be published in the Official Gazette and that the study of the massacre be included in school and university programs and other “historical reparation measures”.
Historians claim that during Argentina’s formation as an independent nation, indigenous peoples were subjugated until they were destroyed.
One of the most tragic episodes is the event known as the ‘Desert Campaign’ during the incorporation of Patagonia into national territory, which killed at least 14,000 indigenous people between 1878 and 1885.
source: Noticias
