On July 19, 1924, 500 indigenous people demanding their rights were killed in Argentina. This incident is known as 'Nipalpi Massacre'.

Nepali means graveyard in the local language and this is the massacre for which an aircraft was used for the first time.

Airplanes had been used in the First World War before, but former pilot and researcher Alejandro Coelho says that this incident is unique because in this case the aircraft was not used against another country or a colony, but against its own people. done against

We know the background of how and why this massacre happened.

Demand for increased labor and bloody response:

By the early 20th century, Argentina's ancient inhabitants had begun to be confined to specific areas. Researcher and historian Mariana Giordano says that in these specific areas or reservations, the ancient inhabitants were forced to work in the fields to make them 'civilized'.

Sabino Reguin, the son of one of the survivors of the massacre, says that the workers of the Qum and Muqawit communities united and demanded an increase in their wages, but no one listened to them.

When they were not heard, they went on strike. In response, there was a bloody reaction.

Alejandro recounts that the morning of July 19, 1924, was the first time an armed aircraft was used on Argentine soil against its own people.

Sabino said that people were warned that morning that if they continued the strike, they would be killed, that the federal police would come and kill them. And so it happened.

Governor Fernando Santino then borrowed a plane from a local flying club. Alejandro explains that the plane's first mission was reconnaissance and surveillance to identify targets so that ground troops could later kill people.

"I never thought that a piece of iron could fly in the air"

Sabino says the plane was used to find out where the locals congregate. He says that people who survived the tragedy said that they never imagined that a piece of iron could fly in the air.

Matilde Romaldo, one of the survivors of the tragedy, who is now 90 years old, says that the plane kept dropping bags of coffee and then the shooting started.

Mariana Giordano says the same. She says that the plane dropped bags of coffee so that the children would come out of the bushes. Thus the natives came under the notice of the ground soldiers.

Matilde says that the soldiers also raped the girls.

On this occasion, 130 soldiers surrounded the compound and 5,000 bullets were fired at the unarmed people. Those who didn't die from the bullets were killed with bugles.

Sabino says that after the shooting, the plane flew over again to see if there were any local survivors.

On that day, 70 to 80 percent of the people in Nepali were killed and dismembered and thrown into mass graves.


The first massacre of its kind in Argentina:

Alejandro says that if you imagine the time of 1924, something flying over an ancient population of Argentina might have been considered magic or God, but it was death.

German ethnographer Robert Lehmann Nietzsche took a photo of the plane before the massacre, which was discovered by the Marianas in 2009.

Mariana says that there are many people standing in front of this plane, some of them are armed, some of them are wearing military uniforms. She says Lehmann wrote in his own handwriting on the back of the photo that it was a plane used against a local uprising.

The Napalpi massacre was the first of its kind in Argentina, but not the last.

Alejandro says that even after that, several operations were carried out against indigenous peoples demanding rights, even using a transport plane that had its back door removed and a machine gun mounted on it.

Similarly, he says that on June 16, 1955, Buenos Aires was bombed for four hours, after which 308 bodies were recovered.

Alejandro says the bombing was followed by a series of death flights that he described as 'the greatest injustice.'

He was referring to the cases of enforced disappearances and murders that took place between 1976 and 1983. During these years, Argentina was ruled by the military, during which more than 30,000 people were 'disappeared', tied up and thrown into the Rio de la Plata.

A trial took place 98 years after the incident, after which a federal court in May 2022 found the state guilty of the crime against humanity.

But the families of those who survived the tragedy are still somewhat scared.

Matilde says: 'My children's children don't speak my language anymore because I don't want them to speak it, because if something happened tomorrow they wouldn't know how to protect themselves. will save.'

Adding such incidents to aviation history books will help prevent them from happening again in the future, says Alejandro.