Patagonia rebelde
Encyclopedia
Patagonia rebelde was a violent suppression of a rural worker's strike in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz
in Argentine
Patagonia
between 1921 and 1922. The uprising was put down by Colonel Héctor Benigno Varela's 10th Cavalry Regiment of the Argentine Army
under the orders of Hipólito Yrigoyen
. Approximately 1,500 rural workers were shot and killed by the Argentine Army
in the course of the operations, many of them executed by firing squads at Estancia San José. Most of the executed were Chilean and Spaniard workers who had sought refuge in Patagonia after their strike in southern Chile in 1920 was brutally suppressed by the Chilean authorities. At least two soldiers, five gendarmes and a number of local policemen and ranch owners and family members died during the campaign.
, the price of wool had dropped significantly provoking an economic crisis in southern Argentina. In August 1920 there were a number of strikes in the province of Santa Cruz. An armed confrontation took place near El Cerrito and there were killed and wounded on both sides and a number of policemen were taken hostage. As the unrest spread, the government of Hipólito Yrigoyen ordered Colonel Héctor Benigno Varela's 10th Cavalry Regiment immediately to the affected area and the Argentine Marines seized the various ports and key installations in the province. The new police chief in the province, Oscar Schweizer, instructed Varela to avoid bloodshed and the army colonel was able to work out a deal with the strikers and their estancieros, and prohibited the payment of wages in Chilean money. In May 1921 the cavalry regiment returned to Buenos Aires
but their leave was cancelled in October as strikes broke out again in the province when the estancieros reneged on their promise of fairer working conditions.
Manuel Carlés of the Liga Patriótica is reported to have violently broken up one of the demonstration of the strikers in Río Gallegos with one dead and four injured in the resulting melee. The month of August saw activity in the ports of Deseado, Santa Cruz, San Julián and Río Gallegos come to a complete standstill with a general strike. Hundreds of stikers believed to be anarchists or bolsheviks were either thrown in jails or shipped back to Buenos Aires. The Buenos Aires referred to the armed strikers as "anarquists" and "thiefs". At the same time, the Chilean government grew alarmed at the prospect of facing similar unrest in southern Chile and deployed a strong carabineer force under Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo to the city of Puerto Natales
. According to historian Miguel Angel Scenna, the Argentine government soon grew suspicious of the deployement of this Chilean force on the Chilean-Argentine border. According to Captain Elbio Carlos Anaya, a company commander in the 10th Cavalry Regiment, the Chilean carabineers guarding the mountain passes, allowed the strikers to cross back and forth into Argentina armed with weapons and without any hindrance on the part of the carabineers.
the 10th Cavalry Regiment liberated 14 hostages. But the soldiers were also reported to have killed some one-hundred unarmed workers suspected of collaborating with the strikers, among them Santiago González, a stonemason at the local Banco de la Nación branch. Albino Argüelles, secretary general of the Sociedad Obrera of San Julián, a blacksmith and a member of Socialist Party was also court martialed and shot in November 1921. In December one of the ranch owners, Daniel Ramírez was himself taken into detention under the orders of captain Naya for assisting and actively cooperating with the armed strikers and Ramírez was executed in the first week of February 1922 after having been brutally tortured for over a week. His wife and several local merchants intervened and pleaded for his life, but this was to no avail. At Paso Ibáñez a large column of some 900 demoralised armed strikers tried to negotiate a favourable surrender with Colonel Varela but were soon rebuffed and retreated to regroup at Río Chico and Estancia Bella Vista but not before freeing those they had taken captive as hostages. In the meantime the local police forces hunted down and arrested or executed those sympathetic to the armed uprising. In the port of Santa Cruz police commisioner Sotuyo with the help of Sicardi of the Liga Patriótica detained and tortured for six days a stonemason, Santiago González Diez, a self-confessed anarquist who was forced to dig his own grave before being shot. The cavalry regiment captured some 480 strikers in the interior at Cañada León along with 4,000 horses and 298 muskets and carbines and 49 revolvers. More than half of those captured at Cañada León were executed before the firing squads stopped. The regiment then captured the La Anita and Menéndez Behety estancias and some 80 ranch owners and their families as well as captured policemen and other civilians are liberated in the operation and around 500 captured strikers executed. The armed strikers knowing there would be no mercy make a final and desperate stand at Tehuelches station but are defeated after a one-hour battle and the survivors marched off to firing squads.
The 10th Cavalry Regiment having accomplished its mission of putting the uprising soon received orders to return to Buenos Aires, but some 200 soldiers are left behind under the commands of captains Anaya and Viñas Ibarra. Contrary to Argentine popular myth, Varela received a frosty reception in Buenos Aires where the Minister of War gave him a complete dressing down. Varela also came under heavy criticism by the parliamentarian Antonio Di Tomaso.
In June 1921, Argentine parliamentarians debated a proposed law giving the state the power to control unions, declare strikes illegal, and reimpose the ten-hour workday. This debate provoked popular condemnation in a demonstration supported on all sides, followed by a general strike and a state of siege.
Santa Cruz Province (Argentina)
Santa Cruz is a province of Argentina, located in the southern part of the country, in Patagonia. It borders Chubut province to the north, and Chile to the west and south. To the east is the Atlantic Ocean...
in Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
Patagonia
Patagonia
Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...
between 1921 and 1922. The uprising was put down by Colonel Héctor Benigno Varela's 10th Cavalry Regiment of the Argentine Army
Argentine Army
The Argentine Army is the land armed force branch of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic and the senior military service of the country.- History :...
under the orders of Hipólito Yrigoyen
Hipólito Yrigoyen
Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Irigoyen Alem was twice President of Argentina . His activism became the prime impetus behind the obtainment of universal suffrage in Argentina in 1912...
. Approximately 1,500 rural workers were shot and killed by the Argentine Army
Argentine Army
The Argentine Army is the land armed force branch of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic and the senior military service of the country.- History :...
in the course of the operations, many of them executed by firing squads at Estancia San José. Most of the executed were Chilean and Spaniard workers who had sought refuge in Patagonia after their strike in southern Chile in 1920 was brutally suppressed by the Chilean authorities. At least two soldiers, five gendarmes and a number of local policemen and ranch owners and family members died during the campaign.
First confrontation
In 1920, in the aftermath of the First World WarWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, the price of wool had dropped significantly provoking an economic crisis in southern Argentina. In August 1920 there were a number of strikes in the province of Santa Cruz. An armed confrontation took place near El Cerrito and there were killed and wounded on both sides and a number of policemen were taken hostage. As the unrest spread, the government of Hipólito Yrigoyen ordered Colonel Héctor Benigno Varela's 10th Cavalry Regiment immediately to the affected area and the Argentine Marines seized the various ports and key installations in the province. The new police chief in the province, Oscar Schweizer, instructed Varela to avoid bloodshed and the army colonel was able to work out a deal with the strikers and their estancieros, and prohibited the payment of wages in Chilean money. In May 1921 the cavalry regiment returned to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
but their leave was cancelled in October as strikes broke out again in the province when the estancieros reneged on their promise of fairer working conditions.
Manuel Carlés of the Liga Patriótica is reported to have violently broken up one of the demonstration of the strikers in Río Gallegos with one dead and four injured in the resulting melee. The month of August saw activity in the ports of Deseado, Santa Cruz, San Julián and Río Gallegos come to a complete standstill with a general strike. Hundreds of stikers believed to be anarchists or bolsheviks were either thrown in jails or shipped back to Buenos Aires. The Buenos Aires referred to the armed strikers as "anarquists" and "thiefs". At the same time, the Chilean government grew alarmed at the prospect of facing similar unrest in southern Chile and deployed a strong carabineer force under Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo to the city of Puerto Natales
Puerto Natales
Puerto Natales is a city in Chilean Patagonia. Puerto Natales is the capital of both the commune of Natales and the province of Última Esperanza, , one of the four provinces that make up the Magallanes and Antartica Chilena Region in the southernmost part of Chile...
. According to historian Miguel Angel Scenna, the Argentine government soon grew suspicious of the deployement of this Chilean force on the Chilean-Argentine border. According to Captain Elbio Carlos Anaya, a company commander in the 10th Cavalry Regiment, the Chilean carabineers guarding the mountain passes, allowed the strikers to cross back and forth into Argentina armed with weapons and without any hindrance on the part of the carabineers.
Final confrontations
Colonel Héctor Benigno Varela's 10th Cavalry Regiment was ordered to return to Santa Cruz Province. His company commanders in the second expedition were captains Pedro Viñas Ibarra and Pedro E. Camposare. A detachment of National Gendarmerie troops was also added to the cavalry force. This unit sailed for Santa Cruz on 4 November 1921. In the meantime as a group of ten strikers approached the Estancia Bremen, the German ranch owner and his parents sensing danger, sought to defend their property with carbines and two strikers were killed and four were wounded in the exchange of fire. In response the strikers took several ranch owners and their families hostage and reportedly killed and violated some. Upon disembarking at Santa Cruz port the 10th Cavalry Regiment soon made it's presence felt with forced detentions and executions. In a clash in Punta AltaPunta Alta
Punta Alta is a city in Argentina, about 20 kilometers southeast of Bahía Blanca. It has a population of 57,296. It is the capital of the Coronel Rosales Partido...
the 10th Cavalry Regiment liberated 14 hostages. But the soldiers were also reported to have killed some one-hundred unarmed workers suspected of collaborating with the strikers, among them Santiago González, a stonemason at the local Banco de la Nación branch. Albino Argüelles, secretary general of the Sociedad Obrera of San Julián, a blacksmith and a member of Socialist Party was also court martialed and shot in November 1921. In December one of the ranch owners, Daniel Ramírez was himself taken into detention under the orders of captain Naya for assisting and actively cooperating with the armed strikers and Ramírez was executed in the first week of February 1922 after having been brutally tortured for over a week. His wife and several local merchants intervened and pleaded for his life, but this was to no avail. At Paso Ibáñez a large column of some 900 demoralised armed strikers tried to negotiate a favourable surrender with Colonel Varela but were soon rebuffed and retreated to regroup at Río Chico and Estancia Bella Vista but not before freeing those they had taken captive as hostages. In the meantime the local police forces hunted down and arrested or executed those sympathetic to the armed uprising. In the port of Santa Cruz police commisioner Sotuyo with the help of Sicardi of the Liga Patriótica detained and tortured for six days a stonemason, Santiago González Diez, a self-confessed anarquist who was forced to dig his own grave before being shot. The cavalry regiment captured some 480 strikers in the interior at Cañada León along with 4,000 horses and 298 muskets and carbines and 49 revolvers. More than half of those captured at Cañada León were executed before the firing squads stopped. The regiment then captured the La Anita and Menéndez Behety estancias and some 80 ranch owners and their families as well as captured policemen and other civilians are liberated in the operation and around 500 captured strikers executed. The armed strikers knowing there would be no mercy make a final and desperate stand at Tehuelches station but are defeated after a one-hour battle and the survivors marched off to firing squads.
The 10th Cavalry Regiment having accomplished its mission of putting the uprising soon received orders to return to Buenos Aires, but some 200 soldiers are left behind under the commands of captains Anaya and Viñas Ibarra. Contrary to Argentine popular myth, Varela received a frosty reception in Buenos Aires where the Minister of War gave him a complete dressing down. Varela also came under heavy criticism by the parliamentarian Antonio Di Tomaso.
Aftermath
News of the mass exection soon reached Buenos Aires but the government made no call into an official investigation for fear of political repurcusions. Argentine socialists and anarquists however promised vengeance. Kurt Gustav Wilckens, a German immigrant from Silesia, had been deported from the United States for his radical political views. In Argentina, he worked as a stevedore in Inginiero White and Bahía Blanca, as a rural laborer in Alto Valle del Río Negro and as a correspondent for Hamburg's Alarm and Berlin's The Syndicalist. Although he claimed to be an adherent of Tolstoy's pacifism, Wilckens killed Varela with a hand-held bomb outside the officer's recently acquired home at Humboldt-Santa Fe in 1923 because of his desire "to wound through him the brazen idol of a criminal system". Upon hearing of the assassination, Argentine President Yrigoyen arranged that the house be given to the widow of Varela as a gift, even though the couple had only recently commenced paying off the house. Wilckens himself was killed in Villa Devoto while awaiting sentencing, by José Pérez Millán Temperley, a young man from an aristocratic family belonging to the Liga Patriótica. News of Wilckens's death led to a general dock strike and the burning of streetcars, as well as arrests, injuries and deaths but achieved according to historian Otto Vargas "an incredible miracle in unifying the divided working class in Argentina".In June 1921, Argentine parliamentarians debated a proposed law giving the state the power to control unions, declare strikes illegal, and reimpose the ten-hour workday. This debate provoked popular condemnation in a demonstration supported on all sides, followed by a general strike and a state of siege.
See also
- Tragic Week (Argentina)Tragic Week (Argentina)Tragic Week was a series of riots and massacres that took place in Buenos Aires, during the week of January 7, 1919. The riot was led by anarchists and communists, and was fought by both the police and the army...
- La Patagonia rebelde (film)La Patagonia rebeldeRebellion in Patagonia is a 1974 Argentine film directed by Héctor Olivera and written by Olivera with Osvaldo Bayer and Fernando Ayala, based on Osvaldo Bayer's renowned novel Los Vengadores de la Patagonia Trágica , based upon the military suppression of anarchist union movements in Santa Cruz...
- Federación Obrera Regional Argentina
- List of massacres in Argentina
Bibliografía
- La Patagonia trágica. José María Borrero. (1928).
- La Patagonia rebelde (tomo I: Los bandoleros). Osvaldo Bayer, Editorial Galerna, Buenos AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, (1972). - La Patagonia rebelde (tomo II: La masacre). Osvaldo Bayer, Editorial Galerna, Buenos AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, (1972). - La Patagonia rebelde (tomo III: Humillados y ofendidos). Osvaldo Bayer, Editorial Galerna, Buenos AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, (1974). - La Patagonia rebelde (tomo IV: El vindicador). Osvaldo Bayer, Editorial Booket, Buenos AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, (1997).
External links
- Bohoslavsky, Ernesto (2005). Interpretaciones derechistas de la «Patagonia Trágica» en Argentina, 1920-1974, Historia Política, UBA-UNICEN-UNLP-UNMdP-UNS-UNSAM
- Cronodata: Timeline of events from 1920 to 1922
- 1921: Una historia de la Patagonia argentina. Colegio Secundario Provincial N° 21 "José Font"; Gobernador Gregores (Santa Cruz)
- Sangrientas huelgas patagónicas, by Felipe Pigna. Diario Clarín, Buenos Aires, 12 August 2007