Almost 100 years after Argentine police and settlers mowed down hundreds of indigenous people protesting living and working conditions on cotton plantations, a landmark trial opened Tuesday to finally secure some form of accountability. With all the killers long dead, guilt has never been officially assigned for the 1924 massacre of members of the Qom and Moqoit communities on land settled by immigrant farmers from Europe, mainly Italy. Now, finally, “we will demonstrate… who participated and who was responsible for this genocide,” federal prosecutor Federico Garniel said as the trial opened in the city of Resistencia in Argentina’s northeast. It is the first court case to delve into the persecution of indigenous peoples in Argentina. On July 19, 1924, some 130 police and ranchers with guns descended on protesting residents of the so-called Napalpi indigenous reservation where Qom and Moqoit people lived in conditions of semi-slavery, forced to work on the cotton fields.
AFP
