flying high.”
He sends a telegram to the interior minister informing him that “those supporting law and order in Río Gallegos have immediately responded, unconditionally putting themselves at the disposal of the government. The majority of these people are Argentine and British.”
The British community in Patagonia isn’t alone. The British embassy in Buenos Aires has also reacted. Its representative, Ronald Macleay, tells the Argentine government of his concerns regarding the plight of British nationals in rather uncompromising terms:
Things have gotten to such a critical state that British nationals, both in town and in the countryside, require urgent protection. It would be dangerous in the extreme to delay any further in providing this protection. I therefore beseech Your Excellency to treat this matter with the utmost seriousness and to authorize me to telegraph the British consul in Río Gallegos, allowing him to reassure his countrymen that the Argentine government will adopt immediate and appropriate measure to protect their lives and property.
Things are beginning to take a more serious turn. Yrigoyen knows that British interests have immense influence in Argentina and that they won’t be shy in defending themselves. The Falkland Islands lie just off the coast and British warships are always on standby.
On January 8th, the War Ministry reports that the Navy is dispatching fifty sailors to Río Gallegos and that “the ministry has a squadron standing by to intervene, should further events make such a measure necessary.”
When things are at their most fraught, the Aristobulo del Valle arrives in Río Gallegos with twenty-five sailors under the command of Ensign Alfredo Malerba. They are only a handful of men, but Malerba is worth one hundred sailors. He meets with Correa Falcón the moment he comes ashore and resolves to pacify the town with an iron hand.
The following day, Captain Narciso Laprida disembarks from the Querandi, bringing fifty soldiers from the 10th Cavalry Regiment with him.
The newspaper La Unión, speaking for the region’s ranchers, merchants, and government officials, enthusiastically welcomes the military:
Though they are few in number, we have every confidence in their effectiveness because they represent the nation’s armed forces. Rebelling against them is to rebel against the fatherland they represent, and those who do so risk being considered enemies of the nation and treated with all the severity of martial law. And so those who respect order, both Argentine and immigrant, could not contain their applause when these bearers of the glad tidings of peace and security marched through our streets.
When Correa Falcón realizes that Malerba is an advocate of order at all costs, he puts him in command of the city’s prisons and police force.
He doesn’t need to be asked twice. On Sunday, January 16th, he mobilizes his sailors and the entire police force to seal off the town, which, in a matter of hours, is cleansed of anything that smells of strikers. He has no qualms about locking up the leaders along with the small fry. And so the first to fall is José María Borrero, the advisor to the Workers’ Society and the managing editor of La Verdad. He’s soon followed by all of the friends of Antonio Soto, though the man himself could not be located.8
Two hours after Borrero was arrested, something disgraceful occurs. Accompanied by their men, Malerba and Ritchie set off for La Verdad’s printing press. But the doors are locked. Ritchie approaches the house of a type-setter—which faces the press—to ask for the keys. He’s whipped when he refuses and Ritchie orders the doors to be forced open. The next day, Ensign Malerba visits the jail. When he passes in front of Borrero, he tells him that his printing press has been destroyed by persons unknown.
This procedure is not very democratic, but it is incredibly effective. When Borrero is released from jail, he finds his printing press destroyed, his plates smashed, and thirty-six boxes of type ruined. In the subsequent court case, Malerba will state that he had been acting on orders from the Naval Ministry.
This is how Correa Falcón and Malerba manage to leave the movement leaderless in Río Gallegos. Save for Antonio Soto, all of the leaders are behind bars. And Antonio Soto is cut off from his followers. Before, messengers from the countryside were able to slip past the police checkpoints by taking a detour along the banks of the river. But now Malerba has sealed off that route as well.
Furthermore, a curfew has also been decreed:
Public gatherings are prohibited. The population is asked to refrain from bearing arms or using the streets after 9 p.m., as well as to immediately comply with any orders they may receive from sentries or police officers.
Yrigoyen and Minister Gómez are in over their heads with this problem of the rural strike. The British embassy complains once again. Macleay informs Argentina’s Foreign Affairs Ministry that a ranch owned by a British national named Juan Cormack was attacked by “armed and mounted strikers, who destroyed shearing equipment and requisitioned horses and supplies.” And then he insists that the Argentine government take protective measures.
Chile, too, is worried about the rural strike on the other side of the border. The following document is an undeniable rebuttal of the theory that the strike in Patagonia was fomented by the Chilean armed forces. In a note addressed to the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Buenos Aires and dated January 12th, Noel, the Argentine ambassador in Buenos Aires, writes:
Confidential and Restricted
To the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Buenos Aires:
Chile’s foreign affairs minister tells me that he has received some very alarming reports about disturbances in the far south, where bandits have overrun the ranches along the border between Chile and Argentina, 250 kilometers away from Punta Arenas, whose residents are asking for protection. The Chilean government requests that Your Excellency forward any relevant news to the embassy, as well as to inquire if the Argentine government has sufficient forces at its disposal in said region and if it would be willing to order its police forces to work in coordination with the Chilean police to defeat these bandits. The Chilean government requests an urgent response.
Noel, Argentine Ambassador.
There will be note after note along these lines, showing the Chilean government’s fear that the conflict would spread into Chilean Patagonia and the Aysén region, a fear stoked in the halls of power by large landowners with the same names as those on the Argentine side of the border.
Under the command of Captain Laprida, the 10th Cavalry Squadron sets out from Río Gallegos on January 2nd, accompanied by Commissioner Ritchie and around twenty policemen. They go by truck to Robert MacDonald’s La Vanguardia ranch and wait there for their horses.
Laprida remains at La Vanguardia, unwilling to venture beyond this stronghold. He knows that El 68 and El Toscano, both of them quite close, are not afraid of a shootout.
Laprida, Malerba, and Correa Falcón telegraph Buenos Aires, reporting that they do not have enough men at their disposal.
But in the meantime, what are the town’s strikers up to? In Río Gallegos, the strike has become unsustainable. Repression, imprisonment, a ban on meetings, and the loss of Borrero’s newspaper (which often ran union communiqués) would, little by little, lead to the bosses’ victory and a return to work. Antonio Soto understands that nothing more can be done in the city and, as the syndicalist FORA doesn’t respond to his desperate appeals, he calls for the strike to be lifted in order to save the Workers’ Society. He drafts a long communiqué analyzing the movement and explaining why the urban workers were defeated. This communiqué closes by stating:
Men
