An army- and judge-led mediation attempt commissioned by President Yrigoyen and led by Lieutenant Coronel Zavala condemns police partiality and the exploitative nature of the company store system. After six weeks, the strike is settled in the workers' favor with the first ever collective agreement for Patagonian rural workers and they hand in many of the weapons they seized from the rural estates as part of the agreement. Employers are outraged by having the unfavorable terms imposed on them by the government and respond with selective sackings and denial of service at company stores. Workers respond with boycotts and the president dismisses the governor, who is close to many of the wealthy landowners. More importantly, the landowners refuse to implement the pay rise specified in the agreement. With workers planning another strike to enforce the terms of the agreement, employers, backed by Chile and Britain, successfully force the government to round up union leaders and militants. Another general strike is called in response. While strikers take hostages to defend themselves, bandits known as the Red Council who had previously taken part in the attack on the convoy of replacement workers and refused to disarm, take advantage of the unsettled situation to raid isolated estates. Zavala is told of the continuing unrest despite his efforts, that he workers had not upheld their bargain by disarming, and to "Think of Chile" implying a threat to their borders, and is ordered to restore order in such a way as to permanently remove the threat of rebellion due to socialist or anarchist ideas, which they do by using acting in force, opening fire on strikers without warning, surprising the strikers who had held him in high regard for settling the earlier dispute in their favor. Following this initial fight and others using similar tactics Zavala begins carrying out summary executions, especially of the leaders and even of delegations acting under a flag of truce, some of whom are made to dig their own graves. Eventually the Red Council is captured in a villa they were raiding and the anarcho-syndicalists decide to surrender to Zavala. Armed landowners participate in the suppression of the strikers, identifying the leaders with most of the leaders of the movement being executed with only one managing to escape. Others are tied naked to fences or made to run the gauntlet. After the slaughter, the previous agreement is annulled and wages