Facade of exEsma in Buenos Aires. ESMA Site Museum
“It’s a mystery, he’s missing. It has no entity, it is not there.” This was how Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla responded to a journalist who asked him in 1979 about “the problem of the disappeared.” The dictatorship carried out a systematic plan of enforced disappearances and complaints came from within and abroad. “Neither dead nor alive, he is missing,” the soldier concluded. At least 5,000 of these regime victims were kidnapped at the Navy Mechanics School (Esma), a key secret center of the system. With the return to democracy in 1983, the oppressors were brought to justice and spaces like this were resigned. The exEsma is now a symbol of consensus against dictatorship, which has just been declared a World Cultural and Natural Heritage Site by UNESCO.
UNESCO has found that the Esma Memorial Site Museum, built in 2019 on the site of the country’s largest secret detention center, is representative of the illegal repression carried out and coordinated by the dictatorships of Latin America in the decades of the 1970s and eighties on the basis of the violent enforced disappearances. “It is the most prominent symbol of state terrorism,” says the conclusion of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, saying that some areas “require improvement,” such as “the depiction of the political context that led to the dictatorship.” ” The council, which has been meeting since Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, concluded that exEsma meets selection criterion six, meaning it must be “directly or materially linked to events” of “outstanding universal concern.”
Following the announcement, the Argentine delegation carried a message from President Alberto Fernández, who is in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. “The memory must be kept alive so that bad experiences do not repeat themselves. The worst state terrorism was expressed in Esma. During those years, Argentina suffered the persecution of all those who opposed the military dictatorship. Some were persecuted, some were imprisoned, almost all were tortured; others ended up in exile, many were murdered and many disappeared from the face of the earth,” the president said.
The Argentine dictatorship set up around 700 secret detention and torture centers across the country. The space included this Tuesday in the World Heritage List was “the most emblematic secret center in South America,” according to the Secretariat for Human Rights, which began submitting the candidacy to the United Nations in 2015: “Due to the structural dimension.” , the geographical location in the city, the coexistence of the perpetrators with the victims and the concentration characteristics of incarceration and extermination.” The writing marks places such as the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial as prehistory.
The buildings of the old Esma are located on a 17-hectare site that was handed over to the army at the beginning of the last century. The central building rises imposingly from Avenida Del Libertador, an artery that runs parallel to the Río de la Plata. It still bears the blackened letters “Navy Mechanics School.” Even after the return to democracy, the room remained a school for noncommissioned officers while society debated what to do with it. There were initiatives to demolish it, but eventually the Navy was expelled and the creation of a space to remember and defend human rights was ordered.
The project was launched following an agreement between the national government under Néstor Kirchner and the municipal government under Aníbal Ibarra. In 2005 the first signs were put up and the first routes opened. The Esma Memorial Site Museum was inaugurated more than a decade later, in 2019, in the building of the old officers’ mess, the center of repressive activities. Since the building is considered legal evidence in the case against the oppressors and the investigation is ongoing, the museographic proposal has not changed either the structure or the state of preservation at the time of its restoration.
Throughout the tour, you can hear the testimonies of victims in the trials for crimes against humanity against the oppressors. Images of these statements are projected on the walls, such as that of Marta Álvarez, kidnapped in 1976: “Torture begins one day and I believe it never ends.” The Navy left the place completely empty, but the site retains markers and inscriptions, which were made by the more than 5,000 prisoners in this room. Names, telephone numbers, initials, inscriptions of political parties, dates and drawings were found. The museum also displays personal collections that relatives of victims and survivors have brought into the space in recent years.
The National Commission on Enforced Disappearances (Conadep), a body investigating enforced disappearances, determined in 1984 that nearly 9,000 people had disappeared based on official complaints. Human rights organizations increased the number to 30,000. Today, the Human Rights Secretariat is working on a report to provide this figure, which is difficult to ascertain because the dictatorship never provided the information. Many of those responsible are being tried in federal court. To date, more than 1,100 oppressors have been convicted.
The statement comes as Argentina marks the 40th anniversary of the return to democracy and faces the challenge of the far right, which calls the Museo Sitio de Memoria Esma a “museum of the lack of memory or a museum in which memory has lost her memory”. The announcement moved the Argentine delegation in Riyadh to tears. “This recognition at the international level represents a strong response to speeches that seek to deny or relativize state terrorism and the crimes of the last civil-military dictatorship,” emphasized Human Rights Minister Horacio Pietragalla in a statement.
Today the property is managed by a public body composed of representatives of the nation-state, the city of Buenos Aires and human rights organizations. In addition to the museum, there is, among other things, the National Human Rights Secretariat and the headquarters of the Grandmothers and Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. In 2022, more than 44,440 people visited the space. “The Museo Sitio represents all spaces of memory in the country, but also in the region,” said Pietragalla. The minister emphasized that the inclusion of the Esma Memorial Site Museum on the UNESCO World Heritage List is “a tribute to the thousands of missing people” in Latin America.