Julius Popper

Julius Popper
Julius Popper
Born	December 15, 1857 Bucharest, Romania
Died	June 5, 1893 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nationality	Romanian , Argentine
Known for	Selk'nam genocide

Julius Popper (December 15, 1857 – June 5, 1893), also known in Spanish as Julio Popper, was a Romanian-born Argentine engineer, adventurer and explorer. He was the designer of the modern outline of the city of Havana, Cuba.

Known as a modern "conquistador" of Tierra del Fuego in southern South America, he was a controversial but influential figure. Popper was one of the perpetrators of the genocide against the native Selk'nam people.

Popper was born in 1857 to a Jewish family in Bucharest, son of professor Neftali Popper, a prosperous antiques merchant, and his wife Peppi. He studied in Paris and completed gaining credentials as an engineer.

After working in Europe for several years, he took a job working on the infrastructure for the telegraph in Chile. He arrived in Argentina in 1885, where he became attracted by the possibility of gold mining in Tierra del Fuego. On 7 September 1886 he led an 18-man expedition that included a chief engineer, a mineralogist, a journalist and a photographer. They found gold dust on the beach of El Páramo, in San Sebastián Bay. The expedition was rigorously and strictly enforced according to military standards with heavily armed men, with Popper in direct command of everything. He succeeded in unearthing great amounts of gold and his Compania de Lavaderos de Oro del Sud realized enormous capital gains at the Argentine . A mint built to manage the gold has been adapted as the Museum at the End of the Earth, officially known as the Museo Territorial.

In Patagonia, Popper gained dominance with a private army. He issued his own coins and stamps to symbolize his power. When the Argentine peso lost its value in the market crash of 1890, his gold coins were regarded as currency.

...
Wikipedia