Héctor Benigno Varela

In November 1920, a rural workers' strike broke out in Santa Cruz, which went down in history as Patagonia Rebelde or Patagonia Tragica (Rebel Patagonia or Tragic Patagonia). Varela was appointed by Hipólito Yrigoyen to try to smooth things out between the parties. After meeting with the strikers, an agreement was reached. However, when Varela withdrew from Patagonia, the ranchers did not comply and the strike began again as if there had been no agreement.^[1] However, the government, being strongly criticized and accused of inaction by Santa Cruz landowners, conservative newspapers and embassies of foreign powers, sent Varela back to Santa Cruz with a force of 200 soldiers to violently repress the workers' movement. For more than a month Varela's troops pursued the strikers, executing by firing squad most of them.^[1]

The event that best illustrates the criminal methods used by Varela was the torture and execution of José Font, alias "Facón Grande", on December 23 by order of Varela himself, after he had assured him that he would respect his life if he surrendered peacefully.^[1]

For these events he was honored by the nationalist paramilitary group Argentine Patriotic League.^[5]

One year after the end of the massacre in Santa Cruz, on the morning of January 27, 1923, Héctor Benigno Varela was assassinated as he was leaving his house in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires by Kurt Gustav Wilckens, a German anarchist worker, who threw a homemade shrapnel bomb and fired four shots at him, in accordance with the four shots that Varela himself ordered to the firing squads in Patagonia.^[6]