This article was originally published by Miguel Goyeneche in Argentina Reports, a sister publication.
A federal court on Thursday held the Argentine state responsible for the “Napalpi Massacre” that killed more than 500 indigenous people on a reservation in the northeastern province of Chaco in 1924. The judge called the massacre a “crime against humanity” and ordered the state to make reparations corrective.
Judge Zunilda Niremperger, who presided over the nearly month-long trial, ordered the state to include the massacre in its ongoing school curriculum, conduct forensic analyzes to find the remains of the victims and hold a public event acknowledging the state’s responsibility. . it will include the surviving victims and their descendants. The judge also ordered the construction of a museum and memorial at the site of the massacre. according to Argentine Secretariat for Human Rights.
The trial, dubbed the “truth trial,” did not include any defendants, as the police and other authorities involved in the massacre have all died, and the plaintiff, Secretary of Human Rights and Gender Chaco Silvana Pérez, is said to have not has requested financial compensation. in this case, however, experts say the court’s decision could pave the way for further lawsuits from the victims’ families.
The night before the court decision, the Napalpí Foundation released a statement.
“This trial is the first in the country to try an ethnocide as a crime against humanity,” it read and added, “this case is essential not only in terms of historical reparations for the injured communities, but also for society itself, as the Consequences of this massacres meant the invisibility and silence of a fundamental part of our history and identity”.
The Napalpi Massacre of 1924
In a reserve in northeastern Argentina called Napalpí, Moqoit and Qom, indigenous communities lived in slave-like conditions imposed by European settlers.
On July 19, 1924, the community was protesting the inhumane working and living conditions on local cotton plantations when a brutal crackdown by police and settlers killed 400 to 500 indigenous workers. The survivors were hunted and persecuted for months.
A new awareness of the atrocities committed that day, which led to last week’s historic verdict, was made possible by investigations by historians such as Juan Chico, a 45-year-old Qom scholar who died in passed by COVID-19. Juan spent many years of his life visiting the area looking for survivors and documenting their testimonies of the massacre.
“He walked about 30 to 40 kilometers, from Quitilipi to Machagay and other places looking for evidence and information together with Mario Fernández,” said Ana Noriega, a member of the Napalpí Foundation.
Chico’s last partner, Raquel Esquivel, said she had heard about what had happened in Napalpi through her maternal grandmother, “because she speaks Kum, but her mother doesn’t.”
“When I was little, I asked my grandmother why she spoke in Kum and my mother did not, and she replied that many years ago there was a massacre of many brothers and, in order to protect the family, she had not taught her children. language,” Esquivel said of Telam.
