Roca was perhaps the best argentine president ever. He was no more a genocide than any other XIX century and some XX centrury argentine presidents (including Peron). In fact he was anything but the brute killer he is portrait to be by the left, he was an extremely rational man.
The only reason he has been converted to a monster by some people is that politically he represent everything that they dislike, that is, he was a liberal. J.A. Roca represent a successful, liberal, progressist and open to the world argentina, everything the left detest.
The negative bias of some groups towards Roca is clearly evident when you compare it with the proportional positive bias they have towards other figures such as Rosas and Peron (even though Peron was a fan of Roca).
Rosas for example, killed more indians than Roca, and with much more brutality even. But Rosas represent the populist, autarchic argentina, which some leftist love. So they forgive the Rosas´s killings but condemn the ones of Roca.
And the genocide accusation are really ridiculous, because as someone pointed out a genocide is the systematic extermination of a people. Yet the desert campaign does´t not fit that description. There were way more prisoners than casualties (if it was a genocide, why not kill the prisoners), many tribes formerly expelled by the mapuches fought along side the argentine government, many tribes where later given land to settle, etc. Surely there were a lot of inustices commited, those where hard times and argentina was really a wild corner of the world, but only twisting the concept of genocide can the campaign be classified as such.
