Mariposas en la tormenta: La Matanza de extranjeros en un valle pampeano, Tandil, 1872

Abstract

Says an old Chinese proverb, that «the fluttering of a butterfly can be felt across the world.» When the mid-nineteenth century smoke from a textile factory in Europe led to the flapping of a butterfly on her fireplace, tandilense cattle instinctively turned his head in that direction. The storm triggered by that distant flutter mid-nineteenth century, burst into the narrowness of a mystic mountain valley shortly before January 1872, when the state was preparing to modernize the mechanisms of local power and immigrants occupying economic spaces native dismissed or unknown. In a couple of hours, a group of Creoles turnedhorsemen of the apocalypse killed 36 foreigners, seduced by the idea of the birth of a new society.