Conquest of the Desert
The Conquest of the Desert (Campaña del Desierto), directed by General (and future president) Julio Argentino Roca from 1878, was a systematic military campaign to subjugate the indigenous peoples of the Pampas and Patagonia — the Mapuche, Ranquel, and Tehuelche — and to bring their vast territories under the control of the Argentine state. The campaign combined modern rifles, the telegraph, and railway logistics against peoples already weakened by earlier frontier wars. It resulted in the killing, capture, and forced displacement of indigenous communities and the seizure of tens of millions of hectares, which were granted in enormous tracts to a small number of estanciero families. As an external power overrunning and annexing the lands and societies of distinct peoples, it is structurally a conquest. It opened the fertile plains to the European immigrant farming that would transform Argentina demographically by 1914, while concentrating land ownership in ways that shaped the country's politics for a century.
- Year: 1878 CE
- Category: Military
