History: The Conquest of the Desert (Chapter 2, Part I)

“Today, January 18, 1826, in order to save on bullets, we slit the throats of 27 Ranqueles.” –Federico Rauch

Around 30 thousand years ago, tribes from Asia and Oceania began to spread through the American continent from the Bering Strait to Tierra del Fuego. It’s estimated that they numbered close to two million by the time the Spaniards arrived: Tehuelches, Pampas, Wichis, Araucanos, Incas. Diverse groups with diverse languages, cultures and ways of life. They were mostly hunters, fishers and gatherers. The Incas constructed an empire with great cities, a territory which extended throughout the Andes.


Across the ocean, Spain was structured into a rigid feudal society; one, in which, if you had the misfortune to be born at the bottom, you likely stayed at the bottom. There was little room for changing one’s status. America, however, offered this opportunity; the possibility for peasants, workers, down-and-out nobles to change their luck, obtain land, riches, titles and fame.

From the beginning, the Spaniards treated the native peoples with hostility, taking land as they wished, and using religion and force to dominate them. When the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata was formed, its limits delineated the borders between “civilization” and “barbarity”. Beyond its territory lay the “desert”, unconquered –though not as the term would suggest, uninhabited-- territory. The “Indians”, it was thought, needed to either be “domesticated” or “exterminated”.

In October of 1810, several months after the Revolución de Mayo, an expedition was sent out under the control of Colonel Pedro García, to venture into the interior of the country. García reported that the Indian “despite his barbarity” could be dominated and assimilated into civilization. He recommended reinforcing borders.



Meanwhile, in Buenos Aires, the salting industry which produced dried meat preserved in salt, was growing quickly and making the “salters” wealthy and powerful men. The only catch was that both the major sources of salt and the wild cattle were located in territory controlled by various native tribes. The solution? An expansion into and takeover of this territory from the natives. The priority quickly shifted from assimilating the “Indian” to exterminating him.

When Bernardino Rivadavia assumed the presidency in 1826, all of the provinces’ public land holdings were put up as the guarantee for a loan taken with the Baring Brothers Bank of London. Rivadavia applied a system of “emphyteusis” to these holdings by which agricultural producers could farm public land, though as tenants rather than owners. Rather than dividing up the land into lots and leasing it out to small and medium sized producers, Rivadavia handed out thousands and thousands of hectares to those who were already major landowners. Since the law didn’t establish limits or require grazing or occupation of the land, it permitted subleasing and the transference of rights which opened up possibilities for all kind of speculation with public lands.

8 million, 6 hundred thousand (8,600,000) hectares (more than 212 million acres) fell into the hands of only 538 private landowners.

In order to control the borders and guarantee protection for these landowners (from the natives), Rivadavia contracted the Prussian mercenary Federico Rauch who received the ranking of Colonel in the national Army. His strategy consisted of surprise attacks and indiscriminate assassinations of men, women and children. March 28, 1829, in the battle of Las Vizcacheras, Rauch was defeated and his throat slit by Arbolito, a Ranquel.


By the time Rauch died, the 30,000 km2 of pampas that formed part of Buenos Aires had been transformed –by the advanced of the army—into more than 100,000.

A city in Buenos Aires province remains named in his honour.

Translated and adapted from the series Historia de un país Argentina siglo XX.