José Menéndez was born in 1846 near Avilés, in Asturias, to a family of poor farm workers. At fourteen he left for Havana and later Buenos Aires, where in 1873 he married the Uruguayan María Behety. In 1875 a Buenos Aires firm sent him to Punta Arenas to collect a debt; instead he bought the debt, became a partner and moved here with his family.
From a store selling skins, hardware and clothes he built an empire: the San Gregorio estancia from 1879, steamships from 1892 and, through the family company of 1910, over a million hectares in Argentine Patagonia. People called him the King of Patagonia. The Museo Regional says it plainly: his expansion set him against the Selk'nam, and he pushed aggressive practices against them that contributed to their extermination. Historians such as José Luis Alonso Marchante name him, with Mauricio Braun, among those chiefly responsible.
He died in Buenos Aires in 1918; a year later his remains came to Punta Arenas, and they lie in the municipal cemetery. You can see his mark in the theatre on Magallanes street, opened in 1899 as the Teatro José Menéndez, and in the bronze Magellan in the plaza, which he commissioned and which was unveiled in 1920.
