In July, 1920 the "most powerful workers' organization of Latin America", as Luis Emilio Recabarren defined it, was attacked. Some members were killed, the press was destroyed and the local burned. The attacks took place also in other Chilean cities, in the framework of the "Guerra de Don Ladislao", a conjuncture when the government associated a fake menace of war agsint Peru with an also purported complicity of anarchists and socialists. Less than five months later a nationwide oligarchic caravan commemorated in Punta Arenas the IV centenary of Magellan's crossing of the Strait. This article analyzes the relation between both events, arguing that the invention of that commoration in the peak of the social conflict allowed to the local oligarchy to project itself nationally and internationally, through the erecting its new tradition over the ashes of another and strengthening its power, associated to the State, in front of the transnational labor insurgency.