The massacre of the original city that Peronism tried to hide

On October 10, 1947, during the government of Juan Domingo Perón, the gendarmerie and air force repressed and killed between 500 and 1,000 indigenous Pilaga people in Formosa.

October 10, 202222:42

This Monday they were fulfilled 75 years since the Rincon Bomba massacreThe severe repression of the Pilaga of Formosa Indians, which developed during the government Juan Domingo Peron And it was hidden for decades.

“The Pilaga massacre remains Ignorance of societyNot only across the country, but also among the Formosans themselves,” he said ღFormer Federal Judge Fernando Carabajal.

Carabajal – the current Formosan MP – issued a historic ruling in 2019 describing the massacre as “genocide”, defining the “historical truth” of what happened at the site and ordered repairs for the indigenous community still inhabiting the western zone of that province.

It was a A long legal process which began in 2005, facilitated by indigenous lawyers Julio Garcia and Carlos Diazand which was later endorsed by the Pilaga People’s Federation, which was formed as a result of the lawsuit.

Throughout this trial, which lasted for years, through the testimony of survivors from the Pilaga community, descendants who spoke to their parents and grandparents, and the contributions of declassified documents from the Gendarmerie, the Air Force and the Ministry of the Interior, It was established what happened on October 10, 1947.

It was a day like Monday 75 years ago when Brutal repressions began which ended after 20 days, leaving between 500 and 1,000 Pilaga Indians, including men, women and children.

These facts They shut up and it’s a shame for Peronism Which makes the massacre of Trelew or the naval bombardment of the Plaza de Mayo two great symbols of the persecution of the labor movement.

Even for such a Peronist government Jildo Insfran, who has been in power for 27 yearsAnd that he never touched the subject He did not claim either to Pilaga.

Acts

Pilaga Indians are part of the ethnic groups that lived then Formosan National TerritoryAlong with Vichy and QOM. Pilaga, who lived in very poor conditions, went to work in the sugar factories of Salta.

In particular, it was cheap labor for the San Martin de Tabacal mill owned by the former governor of that province, Robustiano Patroni Costas. They walked and covered more than 400 kilometers through the West Formosa to Salta.

In that year there was a complaint about improved working conditions, which were very poor, as the Indians were given discounts on food or lodging for almost everything they received.

As a result of this unanswered claim, the Pilaga were not in the “conspiracy” in 1947 and walked back to Formosa, where They began to concentrate in an area known as Rincon BombaVery close to the city of Las Lomitas, about 300 kilometers west of the capital.

“This concentration caused all the fear in the white community,” he said ღFormer judge Karabakhali.

The Gendarmerie began to concentrate its troops and went to disperse the Pilaga, who were concentrated in unusual numbers because they could not work in the sugar mills that year. “First they armed, they took away the weapons, which were not many, sticks and machetes”Karabakhal explained.

With unarmed Indians, gendarmerie Machine guns located in front of the concentration and although no acts of violence occurred, on October 10 he opened fire on a concentration of defenseless Pilaga Indians, many of whom began to fall, while others fled to escape into the mountains.

Brutal repressions

The head of the Gendarmerie, which had been created ten years earlier and was then dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, was Emilio Fernández Castellanos. Some versions say that Castellanos did not want to open fire, but it was his second-in-command who gave the order to fire and there was no room to retreat.

It was then that the chase began, which lasted for 20 days, where those who studied the events emphasized the pursuit and repression of the gendarmerie, later supported by the aircraft armed with machine guns of the air force, which chased the survivors, destroying the witnesses. .

It was about a Cadet aircraft registration T-153 named “Misiones” which was fired with a 7.53 mm Colt machine gun. Some historians point out that this was the Air Force’s baptism of fire, 35 years before the Malvinas.

“Was Wild repression and rape of womenDuring the trial, the gendarme established the rape of the girl, which we recovered from the testimonies,” explained Karabakhal.

After the crackdown, the authorities kept quiet about what happened in Rincón Bomba, which was not difficult in a place and at a time when the area was practically isolated from the rest of the country. Newspapers offered a very distant official version of the facts that were established at the trial, which had a sentence in 2019.

But the horror of the massacre that claimed the lives of Pilaga’s men, women and children, It remained in the memory of the survivors and was passed down from generation to generation.Like many other issues among indigenous peoples.

“Continues to hold my attention as time passes nation state And also the provinces are still not taking responsibility, these proposals prove something, although it is true that they are not firm from a legal point of view,” said Carabajal.

“Even The state had to move forward towards symbolic reparations which contains a proposal on how to include the event in the school calendar,” explained the former magistrate.

“There have been different governments, of different political persuasions, but always the same lack of interest on the part of the state to take responsibility, to recognize the historical or institutional nature of moving forward unilaterally, this shows that Racism still exists And it is difficult to assume this part of history,” he noted.