The Napalpí massacre occurred on 19 July 1924, in Napalpí in the

Chaco Province Chaco (; Wichi: ''To-kós-wet''), officially the Province of Chaco ( es, provincia del Chaco ), is one of the 23 provinces in Argentina. Its capital and largest city, is Resistencia. It is located in the north-east of the country. It is borde ...

of Northeast

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. It involved the

massacre A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...

of 400 indigenous people of the

Toba Toba may refer to: Languages * Toba Sur language, spoken in South America * Batak Toba, spoken in Indonesia People * Toba people, indigenous peoples of the Gran Chaco in South America * Toba Batak people, a sub-ethnic group of Batak people from N ...

ethnicity by the Argentine Police and ranchers.

Historical context

Forty years earlier, the

Argentine Army The Argentine Army ( es, Ejército Argentino, EA) is the land force branch of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic and the senior military service of Argentina. Under the Argentine Constitution, the president of Argentina is the commander- ...

had been involved in a military campaign to subjugate the indigenous people, mostly Guaycuru of several different ethnic groups, of the Argentine Chaco called the Conquest of Chaco. The campaign resulted in the death of thousands of indigenous people, the displacement of many more, and the social and cultural destruction of numerous ethnic groups from the provinces of Chaco and Formosa. The Argentine forces established a line of fortresses in order to gain lands for European settlers. The land was mainly used by the settlers to grow

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

. The native people were confined in compounds, where they were subjected to a regime of exploitation bordering on slavery. One of the compounds was Napalpí, which means

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

in the

Toba Qom language Toba Qom is a Guaicuruan language spoken in South America by the Toba people. The language is known by a variety of names including Toba, Qom or Kom, Chaco Sur, and Toba Sur. In Argentina, it is most widely dispersed in the eastern regions of t ...

. Its official name was "Colonia Aborigen Chaco" (Chaco Aboriginal Colony). It was founded in 1911. The first families installed there were Pilagá, Abipón,

Charrúa The Charrúa were an indigenous people or Indigenous Nation of the Southern Cone in present-day Uruguay and the adjacent areas in Argentina ( Entre Ríos) and Brazil ( Rio Grande do Sul). They were a semi-nomadic people who sustained themsel ...

and

Mocoví The Mocoví ( Mocoví: ''moqoit'') are an indigenous people of the Gran Chaco region of South America. They speak the Mocoví language and are one of the ethnic groups belonging to the Guaycuru peoples. In the 2010 Argentine census, 22,439 peopl ...

. The inhabitants of Napalpí had started to produce cotton, but in 1924 the Argentine authorities imposed a tax of 15% of the cotton crop which created great discontent and a strike. In retaliation for this, groups of indigenous people started killing animals and damaging the crops of the European settlers. In June 1924, a

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

named Sorai was killed by the police; later a French settler was killed, probably in an act of vengeance. After this incident, Fernando Centeno, the Governor of Chaco, prepared a ferocious and brutal repression of the indigenous people.

The massacre

Early in the morning of 19 July 1924, a group of 130 men (police, ranchers and white citizens), armed with Winchester and Mauser rifles, attacked the indigenous people who had only spears to defend themselves. The attack lasted 40 minutes. At the end, the wounded, including women and children, were killed with

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Accounts of the massacre

At the end of the 1920s the journal ''Heraldo del Norte'' stated that: :"Around 9 o'clock in the morning, without a shot being fired by the innocent aboriginies he policefired repeatedly at close range, in the panic the "indios" (more women and children than men) tried to attack resulting in the most cowardly and ferocious carnage, and the killing of the injured without respect for gender or age." On 29 August, 40 days after the massacre, the former director of the Napalpí compound, Enrique Lynch Arribálzaga wrote a letter that was read in the National Congress: :"The massacre of the indigenous people by the Chaco police continues in Napalpí and the surrounding areas, it seems that they want to eliminate all potential witnesses to the carnage of July 19, so that they cannot testify to the investigative commission" In the book ''Memorias del Gran Chaco'', by historian Mercedes Silva, an account by a

mocoví The Mocoví ( Mocoví: ''moqoit'') are an indigenous people of the Gran Chaco region of South America. They speak the Mocoví language and are one of the ethnic groups belonging to the Guaycuru peoples. In the 2010 Argentine census, 22,439 peopl ...

, Pedro Maidana, stated that "they killed in a savage manner, they cut off the testicles and an ear to exhibit as trophies of the battle". In the book ''Napalpí, la herida abierta'' (Napalpí, the open wound) the journalist Mario Vidal wrote: :"The attack ended in a massacre, the worst massacre in the history of the indigenous cultures in the 20th Century. The attackers only ceased fire when it was clear that there were no "indios" that were not dead or injured. The injured were beheaded, others hung. In the end around 200 men, women and children and a few white farmers loyal to the indigenous cause". A recent documentary by "la Red de Comunicación Indígena" (the network of Indigenous Communication) stated: :"Over 5,000 shots were fired and the orgy of blood included the extraction of testicles, penises and ears of the dead, these sad trophies were exhibited in the precinct of Quitilipi. Some of the dead were buried in mass graves, others were burnt." In the same transmission the chief Toba, Esteban Moreno, told the story that had been passed down the generations: :"In the camps appeared soldiers and an aeroplane flew overhead. They killed them because they would not harvest. We call it a massacre because it was only aboriginies that died,

s and mocovíes, it was not a fight because not one soldier was injured, after the killing, the massacre that place is called the Colony of the Massacre." Over 80 years after the Napalpí massacre, nobody has been punished or found guilty, the crime remains unpunished and the few lands that remain in aboriginal ownership are being continually encroached. In 2022, Argentina opened a 'truth trial' to recollect the events. No one is being prosecuted, as there is no defendant alive. The last known survivor of the Napalpí Massacre is Rosa Grillo (born 22 February 1908).

Sources

* Martínez Sarasola, Carlos: ''Nuestros paisanos los indios''. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1992

References

External links