Conquest of the Desert

When the civil wars finished in Argentina, the state wished to expand it's borders, so General Julio Argentino Roca presented a project to end the natives constant pillage of settlements on the border and expand the national borders. In 1879 he led an army of around 6000 men to colonize southern indian land. Some say it was just a conquest and some say it was a genocide. What do you think about this?

Why no both?
I mean, it's a conquest and I think that it was in "self defense" due to be constantly attacked by Mapuches(that's like a war... doesn't it?), but also was kind of a genocide because, damn! the indigenous population in the east side of the Andes decreased a tonne and I've read that some of the survivors were used as slaves in the Capital Buenos Aires, being men separated of the women to prevent them to breed.(I don't think that slavery occurred during this period though, it was before, but still)
That also happened in Chile with the pacification of Araucania, it was a longer process tough, and less "violent", the indigenous population in Chile were not massively killed like in Argentina, In fact a lot of indigenous migrated AGAIN from Argentina to Chile(I said again because they were migrating from one country to another for a long time due to those wars, if I can call them like that)

But... I think that it was bad? no, definitely no, for my point of view it is just history, get over it. But I do understand the people who "hate" this period, some of them are liberals, some of them are real natives, don't care, they have their reasons.

Malotun wrote:Why no both?
I mean, it's a conquest and I think that it was in "self defense" due to be constantly attacked by Mapuches(that's like a war... doesn't it?), but also was kind of a genocide because, damn! the indigenous population in the east side of the Andes decreased a tonne and I've read that some of the survivors were used as slaves in the Capital Buenos Aires, being men separated of the women to prevent them to breed.(I don't think that slavery occurred during this period though, it was before, but still)
That also happened in Chile with the pacification of Araucania, it was a longer process tough, and less "violent", the indigenous population in Chile were not massively killed like in Argentina, In fact a lot of indigenous migrated AGAIN from Argentina to Chile(I said again because they were migrating from one country to another for a long time due to those wars, if I can call them like that)

But... I think that it was bad? no, definitely no, for my point of view it is just history, get over it. But I do understand the people who "hate" this period, some of them are liberals, some of them are real natives, don't care, they have their reasons.

Indeed, the past is the past, let just hope it doesn't happen again.

The line between Conquest and Genocide is often blurred. In general, the losing side usually suffers.

CptCrape wrote:The line between Conquest and Genocide is often blurred. In general, the losing side usually suffers.

Especially at that time, with the whole thing of the new ideas everything was very complicated.