Rebellion in Patagonia. Osvaldo Bayer
by foreigners.”
The animosity between the two groups increases; there’s open hatred for the police and the powerful. On December 2nd, the workers at La Anónima go on strike, as do the railway workers. The police respond by locking up the secretary-general of the Workers’ Society. One week later, the strike has not only held up but even managed to spread. Despite the communication difficulties involved, local union leaders are in close contact with Antonio Soto in Río Gallegos. Hotel, bar, and café employees have all gone on strike by December 9th. Businesses that hire scabs are boycotted. There are violent incidents across town: blows are exchanged at the Spanish Society—which serves as the headquarters for the strike committee and the pro-municipality activists—and the Colón Bar. Nothing moves. The police patrol the streets in twos, while hotel owners personally serve their guests. Puerto Deseado seems to be on the verge of a civil war. An arbitration committee made up of doctors and bank managers fails in its attempts to reach an agreement with the strikers. From Río Gallegos, Correa Falcón calls for an end to insubordination. The police don’t take their time. They lock up the organizers San Emeterio and Christiansen. But the workers stand firm: they call for a general strike, beginning on December 10th at 8 a.m. They don’t have access to a printing press to make their flyers and so they write them by hand on Canson paper. It pays off. The streets are empty.
The patriots of the Argentine Circle realize that their days are numbered. The numbers don’t lie: Puerto Deseado has a population of 1,570 and only 80 are adult Argentines.
The explosion comes on December 17th. The unions and the pro-municipality committee are scheduled to meet at the offices of the Spanish Society, but the police turn everyone away. Word spreads that the meeting will take place in the graveyard. They are honor-bound to gather at 5:30 p.m. More than three hundred men begin marching towards downtown.
News of the approaching strikers terrifies the members of the Argentine Circle, who take refuge at the police station, bringing their weapons with them. The police chief asks the Coast Guard for reinforcements.
There are contradictory accounts about what happens next. The strikers will later say that their procession was perfectly calm, while the police will claim that they “hurled abuse at shopkeepers, businessmen and members of the White Guard and broke the windows of the offices of the Argentina del Sur Company.” And the police will childishly add that two of the protesters shouted, “Death to the Argentines, lovers of order! Down with the Argentine Circle!”
The procession continues forward and the two or three soldiers trailing behind do not dare to stop it. Soon everyone gathers in front of the police station. Inside, the cream of the Argentine Circle take up their positions next to the police and the Coast Guard, refusing to be intimidated by loudmouthed immigrants and anarchists. They open fire the moment the crowd gets within range. This is evidently the language they speak. No one is left on the street, save the corpse of a twenty-one-year-old railway worker named Domingo Faustino Olmedo. A bullet has struck him in the heart. The men of the Argentine Circle aimed well. Excellent marksmanship. A few others have been wounded. Commissioner Alberto Martín will later report that all of the wounds that day were inflicted by Winchester rifles wielded by “citizens who cooperated with the police.”
It’s time to finish off the strikers before they can regroup. A wide net is cast and the agitators are brought in, one by one.
The police refuse to give up young Olmedo’s body, holding it at the station overnight. Only later do they release the body to his mother.
Governor Correa Falcón is pleased. The strikers have been taught a lesson.
All thirty of those arrested are packed into the same cell. None of them are treated like little girls.
But in spite of the police dragnet and the lesson taught with gunpowder, the strike holds. And posters continue to appear, written in pencil or red ink on Canson paper for lack of a printer;
Departmental Workers’ Federation—Puerto Deseado
TO WORKING PEOPLE! COMRADES!
Thirty of us have been jailed by the capitalist tyrants. But there are still enough of us left to sustain and rejuvenate the struggle against this increasing tyranny.
LONG LIVE THE STRIKE!
—The Strike Committee
Governor Correa Falcón sends the Interior Ministry a telegram explaining “the truth” behind the events in Puerto Deseado:
On Friday the 17th at 6 o’clock, a group of 250 individuals attacked the Puerto Deseado police station with the intention of freeing two people who had been arrested as threats to public safety. The police, with the help of the Argentine Circle, managed to repel the attack, killing one of the attackers and wounding three others. Luckily, there were no losses sustained by the champions of order. The police conducted themselves impeccably.
This is the approach Correa Falcón will use during his final days in office, an approach that will lead directly to the bloody skirmish at El Cerrito. He knows that El 68 and El Toscano are operating near Lago Argentino. He sends out Commissioner Pedro Micheri, an unscrupulous man, the very prototype of the rogue cop. Micheri receives orders to crush the rural uprising with a heavy hand. This plan is accompanied by insistent calls for military intervention from ranchers and their representatives in Buenos Aires. In Río Gallegos, plans are being made for the creation of a Free Labor Association that will bring in workers from Buenos Aires.
This is the situation at the beginning of 1921, the most tragic year in the history of Patagonia. There’s a total work stoppage in Río Gallegos and Puerto Deseado. The few shops that manage to stay open are directly staffed by their owners and supervisors. The Workers’ Society has also declared a boycott against three shops in Río Gallegos. And this doesn’t just mean that no one shops there but that no one is allowed to engage in any sort of commerce with them—not even butchers, barbers, or milkmen.
There is a violent atmosphere in San Julián and Puerto Santa Cruz, with partial strikes erupting on a day-to-day basis. In Puerto Deseado, a general strike manages to survive the repression. On December 30th, the first of Yrigoyen’s troops arrive; sixty soldiers under the command of Frigate Lieutenant Jorge Godoy disembark from the Ona in Puerto Deseado.
South of the Río Santa Cruz, the rural strike is all-encompassing. El 68, El Toscano, and their men camp out near Lago Argentino—close to José Pantín’s hotels in Río Mitre and Calafate, which are little more than taverns, and Clark and Teyseyre’s El Cerrito hotel, which is a little bigger. From there they organize raiding parties to attack ranches, carrying off horses, cutting barbed wire fences, and stirring up the peons.
In the meantime, Captain Yza—appointed governor of Santa Cruz several months back—remains in Buenos Aires, where he orders that Correa Falcón’s entire staff be replaced by loyal Radicals.
On December 27th, La Prensa runs an editorial rightly stating, “Despite the current lack of leadership and the seriousness of the situation, we can still find governors strolling around the Plaza de Mayo.”
The one man who will take advantage of Yza’s strolls will be Edelmiro Correa Falcón.
Commissioner Micheri sets off for Lago Argentino. Correa Falcón has given him orders to revoke the permits for the “hotels and drinking establishments” owned by the Spaniard José Pantín, who sympathizes with the strikers and allows them to buy all sorts of goods on credit. You have to start here: take away the chilotes’ source of sustenance, and complement by the judicious use of the saber and the riding crop, and the problem will go away. Micheri is accompanied by two young men from Buenos Aires—both fervent nationalists—who can’t wait to confront the chilotes and show them what Argentines are made of. Their names are Ernesto Bozzano and Jorge Pérez Millán Temperley. The latter is something of a fanatic, a scion of high society who will later become one of the key players in these bloody events.
Commissioner Pedro José Micheri—a thirty-four-year-old from Corrientes—has been given a free hand to carry out his mission however he sees fit. Arriving at Lago Argentino on December 24th, he discovers that Christmas will be celebrated with horse races