One Hundred Years On, Argentine State Acknowledges Indigenous Massacre in Trial
By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 13 2022 (IPS) - It’s a strange trial, with no defendants. The purpose is not to hand down a conviction, but to bring visibility to an atrocious event that occurred almost a hundred years ago in northern Argentina and was concealed by the State for decades with singular success: the massacre by security forces of hundreds of indigenous people who were protesting labor mistreatment and discrimination.
“We are seeking to heal the wounds and vindicate the memory of the (indigenous) peoples,” explained federal judge Zunilda Niremperger, as she opened the first hearing in Buenos Aires on May 10 in the trial for the truth of the so-called Napalpí Massacre, in which an undetermined number of indigenous people were shot to death on the morning of Jul. 19, 1924.
The trial began on Apr. 19 in the northern province of Chaco, one of the country’s poorest, near the border with Paraguay. But it was moved momentarily to the capital, home to approximately one third of the 45 million inhabitants of this South American country, to give it greater visibility.
In a highly symbolic decision, the venue chosen in Buenos Aires was the Space for Memory and Human Rights, created in the former Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), where the most notorious clandestine torture and extermination center operated during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, which kidnapped and murdered as many as 30,000 people for political reasons.
More:
https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/05/one-hundred-years-argentine-state-acknowledges-indigenous-massacre-trial/
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Truth trial for the Napalpí Massacre, part of the indigenous genocide in Argentina
02.10.21 - Argentina - Redacción Mar del Plata
By Ailín Bullentini/Agencia Tierra Viva
“My mother shed tears every time she remembered that horror, but she made the effort to overcome it to seek historical reparation,” says Sabino Yrigoyen, one of the 12 children born to Melitona Enriquez, one of the last survivors of the Napalpí Massacre. Melitona died in 2008 without knowing that, many years later, that effort to tell the story of the massacre in which much of her community was killed would bear fruit. At the beginning of the month, 13 years after her death and almost 100 years after the event, the Federal Court authorised a trial for the truth to bring “historical and symbolic reparation” to the original Argentinean peoples who were repressed, persecuted, hunted, murdered and denied. The fact was confirmed by the justice system as a crime against humanity.
Sabino continues to live in Chaco, and from there he speaks to Agencia Tierra Viva in light of the news that updates the struggle of his mother and the entire Qom and Moqoit community in the area: The head of Federal Court No. 1 of Resistencia, Zunilda Niremperger, authorised the processing of a trial for the truth about the crimes against humanity committed on 19 July 1924 and its subsequent days against members of the Qom and Moqoit peoples, who at the time were carrying out a strike in their clearing work to demand better working and living conditions. They were repressed and persecuted. Between 200 and 300 members of these communities were killed. Their bodies were burned or buried in mass graves. And the facts were distorted and denied by the national authorities.
Sixteen years ago, a civil trial began for the massacre, which was successful for the communities this March in the Resistencia Court of Appeals. It was a civil trial in which the national state denied its responsibility. However, in parallel, the provincial Prosecutor’s Office began to investigate the events from a criminal perspective in 2014, in a task led by its Human Rights Unit. In 2014 it initiated a formal investigation with the aim of clarifying the facts and, above all, to provide reparation to the community.
“We sought from the beginning to address the right to truth of the victims and their families, on the one hand, but also to generate an act of historical reparation for the people,” said the ad hoc prosecutor Diego Vigay, who shares the specialised Human Rights Unit with the general prosecutors Federico Carniel and Carlos Amad, and the federal prosecutor Patricio Sabadini. Last July they asked the judge for a trial for the truth, which she responded satisfactorily in early September.
More:
https://www.pressenza.com/2021/10/truth-trial-for-the-napalpi-massacre-part-of-the-indigenous-genocide-in-argentina/
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Argentina: Massacre of indigenous groups and its cover-up brought to trial
Wednesday, April 20th 2022 - 09:34 UTC
Witnesses over 100 years old testified through audio-visual records before the Court on opening day on.
Although none of the suspects is still alive, an Argentine court in the northern province of Chaco began Tuesday a “truth trial” for the so-called “Napalpi massacre,” the killing of native peoples perpetrated in 1924.
Some survivors over 100 years old and descendants of the victims are expected to testify in the proceedings which seek to determine what actually happened, although there can be no penalties imposed since the alleged killers have all died.
“This trial will build through Justice a truth that is written, that symbolically repairs the relatives of the victims and also democracy and new generations,” Argentina's Human Rights Secretary Horacio Pietragalla Corti said.
The official was present at Tuesday's opening hearing. A special investigation by the Secretariat has led to this trial. The trial seeks to establish how the Napalpí massacre occurred, in which members of the Qom and Moqoit indigenous peoples were murdered.
On July 19, 1924, about a hundred law enforcement officers and settlers shot members of these communities who were protesting for better working and living conditions.
More:
https://en.mercopress.com/2022/04/20/argentina-massacre-of-indigenous-groups-and-its-cover-up-brought-to-trial
