All events · Empire, Clearance and Removal

The Conquest of the Desert and the Occupation of Araucania

1861–1885 · Americas

Displacement Territory Seized Abduction (Children)

Displaced

25,000

Neither state counted the displaced. In Argentina the campaigns culminating in General Julio Roca's advance of 1879 produced several thousand killed and captured; Encyclopedia.com records that survivors were placed in indigenous settlements or dispersed through rural villages, while women and children were assigned to wealthy families in Buenos Aires, and prisoners were held on Martin Garcia island and sent to Tucuman sugar estates. In Chile the Mapuche were confined to reducciones under titulos de merced. The order of magnitude - some tens of thousands of people killed, captured, deported or confined - rests on army reports, ecclesiastical records and later reconstruction, not on any register.

Share of the population affected

17%

of the independent Indigenous population of the pampas, Patagonia and Araucanía before the Argentine and Chilean military campaigns, 1861

Territory

630,000 km²

Encyclopedia.com records that the Argentine campaigns took over 225,000 square miles - roughly 583,000 square km - of the pampas and northern Patagonia for stock-raising and agriculture, much of it granted to officers and to those who had financed the campaign. In Chile, according to Harvard's ReVista, Mapuche landholding fell from about five million hectares to some 500,000 hectares, roughly 50,000 square km lost, with the remainder held as reducciones.

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What happened

Between 1861 and 1885 the Argentine and Chilean states extinguished the independent indigenous polities that had held the southern cone frontier since the sixteenth century. Chile's occupation of Araucania, begun in 1861 and completed after the Mapuche rising of 1881, confined the Mapuche to reducciones granted by title deed; Harvard's ReVista records their landholding falling from roughly five million hectares to about 500,000. In Argentina, campaigns from the 1870s culminated in Roca's advance of 1878-79, which Encyclopedia.com records as taking over 225,000 square miles and destroying organised indigenous resistance; the minister's stated aim was to expel, subjugate or wipe out the Indians. Captured families were separated, prisoners were shipped to Martin Garcia island and to sugar estates in the north, and women and children were distributed as servants to households in Buenos Aires. The land was distributed to soldiers and to the financiers of the campaign and opened to European settlement.

Parties

The Argentine and Chilean armies conquered the independent indigenous territories of the pampas, Patagonia and Araucania, killing, deporting and confining the Mapuche, Tehuelche, Ranquel and allied peoples

Disputed

Whether the Argentine campaigns constitute genocide is actively argued in Argentina, in scholarship and in public commemoration, with Roca's monuments and the national currency a recurrent flashpoint; the number killed and deported has never been established.

The denominator

No census covered the independent territories. The Mapuche of Araucanía south of the Bío-Bío are usually estimated at 100,000-150,000 in the 1860s, drawing on Chilean parish and military reports; the Ranquel, Tehuelche, Pehuenche and allied groups of the pampas and Patagonia are estimated at a further 20,000-30,000. About 150,000 is the low-to-middle end of the combined range.

The figure combines two separate national campaigns against different peoples, and counts killed, deported and confined together, so the percentage measures the combined reach of both states rather than the fate of any single nation.

Where the baseline comes from

Occupation of Araucanía — Wikipediaopen-edited
Conquest of the Desert — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

No reliable toll exists. Argentine army despatches reported figures for indigenous people killed and captured in each expedition, but they were not compiled into a verified total, and deaths in captivity - on Martin Garcia, in transit and on the Tucuman estates - were not recorded at all. Scholars arguing that the campaigns were genocidal emphasise precisely these uncounted deaths; those who dispute the characterisation point to the absence of evidence for large-scale killing in the field. Presenting a number would give a false impression of precision.

Documented forms of violence

Abduction of ChildrenForced LabourArbitrary DetentionDestruction of Property

Encyclopedia.com and Harvard's ReVista document the separation of families, the assignment of indigenous women and children to households in Buenos Aires, the internment of prisoners on Martin Garcia and their transfer to plantation labour, and the destruction and appropriation of indigenous settlements and herds.