Argentina to commemorate 98th anniversary of Indigenous massacre

By Bala Chambers

LONDON (AA) - Argentina is set to commemorate the 98th anniversary of what has been described as a "crime against humanity" enacted against Indigenous communities in the country’s northeast.

On Tuesday, various organizations will remember the killing of up to 500 people from the Qom and Moqoit Indigenous communities.

Members of the organization Originarios.AR y la Fundación Napalpí will gather to reflect on the dark incident in Argentine history under the banner of "The Reconstruction of Collective Memory for the First Trial for the Indigenous Truth.”

A range of experts will be present during the gathering to share their expertise, including Diana Lenton, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Analía Noriega, member of the Napalpí Foundation, and Juan Carlos Martínez, part of the General Council of the Moqoit people of Chaco, called Qoma' gue Nashillipi.

In May this year, a federal judge in Argentina said the Argentine state was responsible for the Napalpí Massacre, in which up to 500 Indigenous people on a reservation in the province of Chaco were killed on July 19, 1924, labelling the massacre a "crime against humanity" and calling for remedial reparations to be paid.

In the nearly month-long trial, Judge Zunilda Niremperger ordered the state to teach about the massacre across all levels of education, to conduct a forensic analysis to find the victims' remains, to carry out a public event to acknowledge the state's role and responsibility and for a museum and memorial to be constructed at the site of the massacre.

As those involved in the massacre all died in the preceding years, the trial did not include any defendants.

The Napalpí Foundation said the trial was the first in Argentina "to judge an ethnocide as a crime against humanity."

-The Napalpí Massacre

On the Napalpí reservation in the province of Chaco, the Moqoit and Qom Indigenous communities lived in poor and slave-like conditions overseen by ranchers.

On July 19,1924, the communities were protesting degrading working and living conditions on local cotton plantations when they were met with deadly force by police and ranchers bearing arms, resulting in up to 500 deaths.

According to survivors’ accounts, the police and ranchers buried the bodies of the Indigenous peoples of all different ages in mass graves, with body parts taken from them as "war trophies."

Survivors say they were chased and persecuted in the aftermath.