Stories of the Gorge of the Dead

Cañadón de los Muertos (Gorge of the Dead) is part of a historical and cultural circuit that let us understand details of some incidents that took place in the area and became public years ago due to their degree of cruelty.

Accompanied by a guide in order to understand the significance of this event more deeply, we headed for that desolate spot where a deep undulation marks an open wound in the ground. At that very spot, rural workers who were on strike were slaughtered by the personnel of the then 10th Cavalry Regiment.

That massacre was the result of the dissatisfaction of those workers with the unfavorable conditions they had to undergo while doing their tasks in the countryside and the attitude of their employers in 1920 and 1921.

The guide told us: “It was November, 1921 when repression turned to abuse. About 200 workers were lured into this spot and then forced into the gorge, where they were made to dig their own graves. They were executed and then cremated. Their ashes were buried”.

Imagining the horrible scene made our hair stand while we observed that a cross and a plate pay tribute to those men who gave their live fighting for their rights.

Then we learned that writer, historian and journalist Osvaldo Bayer wrote a book in which the differences between estancia owners and workers during the early twentieth century are crudely and realistically detailed.

“The Avengers of Tragic Patagonia” contains feasible testimonies of various actions that occurred all throughout southern Argentina. The episode at Cañadón de los Muertos is one of them.

The film “Rebellion in Patagonia”, whose story and script were written by the same author, was shown for the first time in 1974. It exposed the drama of those rural workers, the strikes and the execution in 1921. Directed by Héctor Olivera, it was starred by Héctor Alterio, Luis Brandoni, Federico Luppi and Pepe Soriano, who gave their voice and body to the struggling events that pursued the freedom of the working class.

Only aridity and the wind inhabit this place and pay homage to the incredible events of rebellion in Patagonia. We left with a feeling of perplexity.