(News updated 4/18/2022)

CHACO, Argentina. On April 19, the historic Truth Trial regarding the Napalpí massacre in the province of Chaco. In 1924, 423 people—the vast majority of them Indigenous people—were murdered by a group of police officers and civilians. It will be the first criminal trial to uncover the truth about crimes against humanity committed by the Argentine state against the Indigenous population. Since no one is still alive, the verdict is expected to reconstruct what happened and provide reparation.

The hearings of this Truth Trial will be broadcast on the National Judiciary's YouTube channel:

https://youtube.com/shorts/2R63o8jr-gc

Judge Zunilda Niremperger, presiding over Federal Court No. 1 of Resistencia, ordered the truth trial regarding the Napalpí massacre. This was requested by the Resistencia Human Rights Prosecutorial Unit. It is comprised of Attorneys General Federico Carniel and Carlos Amad, Federal Prosecutor Patricio Sabadini, and Ad Hoc Prosecutor Diego Vigay.

"The effective search for the truth is relevant not only in terms of collective memory but can also benefit from historical and symbolic reparations for the communities that have been directly harmed by such events," the judge stated in the ruling.

What happened in the Napalpí community 

The massacre took place on July 19, 1924, in the Napalpí community. That day, a group of 130 police officers and civilians murdered approximately 423 people, 90 percent of whom were from the Qom and Moqoit indigenous nations. This is according to documents and testimonies gathered during the preliminary investigation conducted by the Resistencia Human Rights Prosecutor's Unit, which is handling the case.

Policy makers

The massacre was carried out on the orders of Fernando Centeno, then governor of the Chaco territory. Centeno answered to the government of President Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear of the Radical Civic Union. His aim was to silence the demands of Indigenous and Creole people for fair compensation for the cotton harvest, or to leave Chaco territory to work in the sugar mills of Salta and Jujuy, where better pay was offered.

Right to the truth for all

“The expectation is that the community and society can continue to reconstruct the truth about what happened in Napalpí. It is also expected that the trial will have the same characteristics as the one for crimes against humanity during the last dictatorship, because it is a crime of equal importance. This would allow the community to have access to the right to the truth , as victims of state terrorism during the last dictatorship have. Furthermore, it would offer some sense of reparation and that the State assume its responsibility,” Diego Vigay, federal prosecutor of the Human Rights Unit of the Resistencia prosecutor's office, told Presentes.

The first hearing will begin at 8:00 a.m. on April 19, Day of the American Aborigine, at the House of Cultures in Resistencia, Chaco province. Opening statements will be presented there. Audiovisual recordings of interviews with survivors Pedro Balquinta and Rosa Grilo will also be played, as well as testimony from Qom historian Juan Chico , who died in June 2021 from Covid-19.

Pedro and Rosa were among the 38 children who managed to escape the massacre. However, about half of them were handed over as servants in the towns of Quitilipi and Machagai, and the rest died along the way. 

At 114 years old, Rosa is the only survivor. 

Rosa Grilo is the only living survivor. She turned 114 on February 5th , celebrating during a sweltering day that began on Saturday, February 26th, and lasted two more days. From around the country, some 500 people, including family members, neighbors, and friends, came to visit her at her home in Machagai ("Lowland" in Qom), a city in the province of Chaco.

Rosa gets up at 6 a.m. and drinks bitter mate. “We make her rice pudding, and dinner has to be ready by 12 o'clock sharp. She eats very healthy,” her grandson, Herminio Gómez, told Presentes. “She gets angry too. She remembers the beginning of her life. We stay and listen to her. She teaches us,” he added.

Herminio also said that Rosa "is in good health," but that she hasn't seen a doctor for six or seven months because "she doesn't have the means to travel to the village." He also complained that their community "lacks water" and that they are asking for "rural electrification."

“What happened was never discussed.”

At the time of the massacre, Rosa was a child, “but not that young, that's why I remember,” she said in an interview conducted by the Human Rights Unit of the Federal Prosecutor's Office in Resistencia on November 27, 2018, to gather her testimony. She emphasized: “ What happened was never discussed; it's only now that it's being discussed.”

“It's very sad for me because they killed my father, and I almost don't want to remember it, because it makes my heart ache. A plane from above was dropping bags, and they fell to the ground, killing them there. My grandfather and my mother were shouting, 'Let's shoot, let's shoot.' I don't know why they killed so many children and adults; the suffering was so great,” the survivor said.

He also said that the communities were firing from the mountains "because we wanted to survive." "I don't want to see it happen again. These things hurt. How can you not feel like family?" he concluded.

“There's an issue of traumatic memory that has to do with the fact that the four survivors were children when the massacre occurred and only spoke when they were in their 80s or 90s. They endured many decades of terror, of fear. Many of the victims, from the Qom people, lost their language, and a large part of the population, due to the terror it represented. It was risky to know the language,” the ad hoc prosecutor handling the case explained regarding these testimonies. 

How the trial came to an end after so many years

The Fiscal Unit in charge learned of the massacre following a demand for justice from the Colonia Aborigen . "They were talking about a crime that had all the hallmarks of a crime against humanity," Vigay emphasized.

Thus, in 2014, a search for records and testimonies began, which constituted the preliminary investigation that now serves as evidence of the massacre.

“The Colonia Aborigen community, together with the Napalpí Foundation, had been working extensively to reconstruct historical memory. We relied on that. There was extensive research into the massacre, and we incorporated several books, historical and scientific research by anthropologists, sociologists, and historians into the investigation,” the prosecutor explained.

They also took testimony from investigators, as well as from the children and grandchildren of the survivors. They also requested assistance from various public, provincial, and national organizations, such as the National Archives , the Chaco Historical Archives , and the Chamber of Deputies, "because there are sessions from that time where socialist deputies denounced the massacre," he said.

Public hearings with priority for indigenous people

During the trial, approximately 50 witnesses will testify, half of them Indigenous. "Oral accounts are fundamental to Indigenous culture, and these children and grandchildren who are testifying are practically doing so in the first person, recounting the story of their mother, grandmother, and grandfather," the prosecutor commented. The verdict will be translated into the Qom and Moqoit languages.

The hearings, meanwhile, will be in-person, public, with priority access for Indigenous people, and will also be broadcast on social media . This was proposed by the Chaco Human Rights Secretariat, the plaintiff in the trial . The first four and the last will be held at the House of Cultures in Chaco, while two of them (May 10 and 11) will be held at the Haroldo Conti Cultural Memory Center in Buenos Aires.

Witness schedule

On April 26, interviews with survivors Melitona Enrique and Rosa Chara will be replayed, while Ramona Pinay, David García, Analía Noriega, and investigators Mariana Giordano, Graciela Bergallo, and Neri Tete Romero will give testimony.

On April 27, the filmed testimony of Felipa Laleqori will be shown, and investigators Pedro Solans, Teresa Artieda, Laura Rosso, Gabriela Barrios, Alejandro Jasinski, Rubén Guillón, and Luciano Sánchez will testify.

On May 3, the descendants of survivors of the Massacre will testify: Matilde and Salustiano Romualdo, Sabino Irigoyen, Cristina Gómez, Lucia Pereira, Cristian Enríquez and Guillermo Ortega, and the Qom and Moqoit indigenous researchers: Raúl Fernández, Raquel Esquivel, Gustavo Gómez, Viviana Notagay, Juan Carlos Martínez and Florencio Ruiz.

On May 10, investigators Marcelo Musante, Nicolás Iñigo Carrera, Jorge Ubertalli, Lena Davila, Alejandro Covello, Alejandra Aragón and Eva Nazar Gaulo will testify at the Haroldo Conti.

On May 11, at the same venue, Silvina Turner, Valeria Mapelman, Carlos Salamanca, Héctor Trinchero, Mariano Nagy, Diana Lenton, and Eugenio Zaffaroni will testify.

Finally, on May 19, the prosecutor's office and the plaintiffs will hold their arguments at the House of Cultures in Resistencia, Chaco.

The Qom and Moqoit communities, as well as the prosecution, hope that this trial will bring reparations. 

“The reconstruction of the truth is a right”

“What it does is reconstruct the truth, which is a right of the victims. Restorative measures would be issued, such as incorporating the sentence into the Chaco curriculum. Also, converting the administrative headquarters of the Napalpí reduction into a memorial museum; returning the remains found by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team to the community and reburial in the Napalpí memorial; and proposing to the community now called the Aboriginal Colony that they give it whatever name they wish,” Vigay concluded.