History
Estancia Los Granaderos

In the year 1921 a long-lasting strike of rural workers broke out in the province of Santa Cruz. Such workers were union members of the Federación Obrera de Rio Gallegos (Rio Gallegos Workers Federation) affiliated to the FORA, the anarchist headquarters. The prices of lamb meat and wool had grown considerably during the First World War giving rise to a period of remarkable prosperity among Patagonian ranch owners. Unluckily, prosperity was not shared by workers who continued living in subhuman conditions with wretchedly low salaries. When the War came to an end, the demand fell and so did the price of Patagonian primary exports.

The Federación presented ranch owners with a list of demands containing the basic claims which did not comprise an increase in salaries. They requested that salary reductions cease and that living and working conditions on the ranch (estancia) become more humane. The document was categorically rejected by the masters and an assembly decreed a general strike.

The Hipólito Irigoyen administration, pressed by employers’ associations and the British Embassy, sent Lieutenant Colonel Héctor Benigno Varela to handle the matter. The army officer issued a report in which he concluded that the ranch owners were accountable for the situation due to the levels of exploitation their labourers were subject to and wrote an agreement with the aim of solving the conflict. Such agreement contained provisions for workers petitions and forced them to lay down arms, return the goods taken from the estancias and release hostages. It was signed with a sense of victory on the side of the Federación and with reluctance on the part of employers’ associations.

Ranch owners failed to do as agreed. Consequently, by the end of October, the whole territory of the province went on strike.

The Government sent Lieutenant Colonel Varela who planned the campaign dividing the territory in three areas. In the southern region, Viñas Ibarra would have to repress the group led by Antonio Soto having the area of Lago Argentino as their field of operations (near El Calafate and Perito Moreno glacier). A second group was requested to control the territory from Paso Ibañez and Puerto Santa Cruz (central area) where the strike leaders Outerelo and Argüelles operated.

There was a third striker group which travelled from the central area (Cañadón León, today known as Gobernador Gregores) and moved northwards (Tehuelches, Jaramillo and Puerto Deseado zones).

There are records amounting to nearly a hundred sites where people were executed. The three estancias which are mostly mentioned among the evidence are “La Anita” (southern region - Lago Argentino), “Bella Vista” (central area - Cañadón de los Muertos - today near Gobernador Gregores) and “San José”.

Varela started to do as he had been ordered and the estancias were regained one by one. Those workers who surrendered were deprived of their few assets by the “defenders of private property”. Soon afterwards, they had to go through narrow corrals where they were beaten, shaven with clipping machines and locked in the warehouses by soldiery. There, sitting back to back, each one had to hold a lit candle for their better surveillance. Next morning, they were forced to form into two long lines. Varela himself together with the ranch owners and members of the Liga Patriótica identified the estancia delegates, the suspects, the unkind or not indulgent ones, the ones to whom they owed more than three months pay. All of them fell under the bullets of the Regimiento 10 de Caballería (The Cavalry) led by Varela, who had previously forced them to dig their own tombs. On the whole, 1,500 workers were brutally murdered all over the territory of Santa Cruz.

Once his duty was finished, Varela headed back to Buenos Aires. The repressor was appointed principal of the Campo de Mayo Cavalry School, office he held until 27th January 1923 when he was killed at his own door, at 2461 Fitz Roy Street in Palermo, by the German anarchist Kurt Gustav Wilckens. He dropped a bomb and fired the same four gunshots as Varela used to order with his hands.