Why Argentina's 1910 Centennial Excluded the Indigenous

In 1910, Argentina celebrated its centennial of independence with grand parades, marble monuments, and a confident message of European modernity. But beneath the surface, a different story was unfolding: the systematic erasure of indigenous peoples from the national narrative. This episode explores the 1910 Exposición Internacional del Centenario in Buenos Aires, where indigenous delegations from Patagonia were put on display like living artifacts in a human zoo. We follow the figure of cacique Namuncurá's son, Manuel Namuncurá, a Mapuche chieftain who was photographed in traditional attire but had been forced into exile after the 1880s Desert Campaign. We examine the policies of President Roque Sáenz Peña, the rhetoric of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's 'civilization vs. barbarism,' and the laws that confined indigenous communities to reservations. The episode also touches on the 1910 Congress of the Indians, a little-known meeting where indigenous leaders petitioned the government for land rights—only to be ignored. Through photographs, official documents, and newspaper accounts from La Prensa and La Nación, we reconstruct a centennial that celebrated progress while hiding a genocide.

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