Napalpí massacre

The Napalpí massacre occurred on July 19, 1924, in Napalpí in the Chaco territory of Northeast Argentina. It involved the massacre of 400 indigenous people of the Toba ethnicity by the Argentine Police and ranchers.

Forty years earlier, the Argentine Army had been involved in a military campaign to subjugate the indigenous people of the Argentine Chaco called the Conquest of Chaco. The campaign resulted in the death of thousands of indigenous people, the displacement of many more, and the social and cultural destruction of numerous ethnic groups from the provinces of Chaco and Formosa.

The Argentine forces established a line of fortresses in order to usurp the indigenous territories for European settlers. The land was mainly used by the settlers to grow cotton, the native people were confined in compounds, where they were subjected to a regime of exploitation bordering on slavery. One of the compounds was Napalpí, which means cemetery in the Toba language, its official name was Colonia Aborigen Chaco" (Chaco Aborigial Colony). It was founded in 1911 the first families installed there were Pilagá, Abipón, Toba, Charrúa and Mocoví.

The inhabitants of Napalpí had started to produce cotton, but in 1924 the Argentine authorities imposed a tax of 15% of the cotton crop which created great discontent and a strike.

In retaliation for this groups of indigenous people started killing animals and damaging the crops of the European settlers. In June 1924, a shaman named Sorai was killed by the police; later a French settler was killed, probably in an act of vengeance. After this incident Fernando Centeno, the Governor of Chaco, prepared a ferocious and brutal repression of the indigenous people.

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