The Navy Mechanics School, known as ESMA, lies on 17 acres of the finest real estate in Buenos Aires, surrounded by parks, lakes, a river and an equestrian club, and a stone's throw away from the bustling promenade that lines the Rio de la Plata River. At the entrance on Libertador Avenue (the main boulevard going through the capital), behind a tall fence of black iron spears, ESMA's imposing, two-story portico rests on four Greek columns. A large stone staircase rises above a manicured lawn. Beyond, clusters of trees and buildings spread across a lush, sprawling park crisscrossed with treelined alleys. Between 1976 and 1983, during Argentina's last, most ruthless military dictatorship, more than 4,000 guerrilla fighters, activists and dissidents were kidnapped and secretly detained at ESMA, where they were savagely tortured. Only a few dozen survived. The rest were drugged and thrown alive from airplanes over the Rio de la Plata delta and the Atlantic coast. ESMA was Argentina's most notorious secret concentration camp, but by no means the only one. In total, more than 15,000 Argentineans are believed to have «disappeared» into the hands of state-sponsored death squads during the dictatorship. Some 500 children born in captivity, whose identities were confiscated, are believed to have been adopted by military families while their real parents were executed [IJT-86]. But ESMA was the busiest of the camps and, because of its location, it quickly came to symbolize the military repression after democracy was reinstated in 1983.

In 1984, when Argentinean writer Miguel Angel Bonasso published Recuerdos de la muerte (Death Memories), based on true events that happened at ESMA, it became an instant best seller. Since then, the gates of ESMA have witnessed countless human rights demonstrations. It was also there on March 24, 2003, the anniversary of the 1976 military coup, that President Néstor Kirchner stood in front of a crowd of 60,000 and signed the presidential decree that officially transformed the site into a memorial. That day, the gates of ESMA stayed wide open. The Mothers of the Disappeared, white handkerchiefs covering their heads, were able to wander the places where their sons and daughters spent their final days.

It took three more years for the navy to leave the grounds. The military alleged that bureaucratic problems delayed the transfer of the different schools and institutions that were housed at the ESMA. Parents of students at the navy school, located on ESMA's grounds but not used by the death squads, started a campaign to exclude some buildings from being part of the museum. But the Kirchner administration, which had wide support on this issue, did not budge. Finally, in October 2007, the navy turned over the facilities to the national human rights secretariat, which in turn transferred them to the Memorial Institute, an institution created by law in 2002 and responsible for preserving the clandestine detention centers in Buenos Aires.

«When the military left the facility, we had a feeling of conquest»

«Many people didn't want to work here, but when the military left the facility, we had a feeling of conquest,» said Daniel Schiavi, who supervises a team of five guides. Visits are given by appointment only while the buildings are being rehabilitated. The government is counting on the museum opening to the public in time for the 2010 bicentennial, which will mark 200 years since Argentina's first declaration of independence. The Memorial Institute has three directors, one appointed by the national government, another by the city government and the third by human rights organizations. The main question was what to do with the buildings. While some, particularly the ESMA survivors, wanted to keep the premises untouched, others, such as the Mothers of the Disappeared, wanted to transform them into a living, interactive center flourishing with lectures, exhibits, performances and academic research programs. «We don't want a museum because we haven't buried our children. Until they tell us where they are, as far as we're concerned, our children are still alive,» said Mercedes Moroño, one of the leaders of the organization.

Premises preserved

In the end, a compromise was reached: the columned building, the officers' quarters and the four-story building where the prisoners were held will remain untouched, save for the addition of signs as reminders of the time the building functioned as a concentration camp. In the main hall of the central building, photographs smuggled out of ESMA by former prisoner Victor Basterra are on display. He worked at the ESMA documentation center where credentials were forged for the military and pictures of the prisoners were taken before they disappeared. At the officers' quarters, the tour begins in the basement, where the prisoners were first taken. That is where the torture chambers were located. Torturers subjected their victims to electric shocks, attempting to cover the screams by blaring pop music on the radio. On the main floor, in the «El Dorado» quarters, death squad members planned their assaults and kidnappings. On the first floor, known as «the hood», prisoners were held blindfolded in ten-foot by three-foot cells. In the attic was «the little hood», where prisoners who collaborated with the death squads were housed. Three other buildings are preserved: the garage, where the cars used in the kidnappings were maintained, the printing house, where prisoners were forced to work in the photo lab, and the infirmary, where prisoners gave birth to their babies.

The management of other ESMA buildings has been divided among several organizations. The Mothers of the Disappeared took over the former navy school, which they are working to transform into a living cultural center directed by the popular singer Teresa Parodi. The Navy War School and an annex known as «the bakery» will house the National Memory Archives and related activities, as well as a cultural center honoring disappeared novelist Harold Conti. The cadets' dormitory building will house a series of human rights exhibits. Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo is going to set up the headquarters of its House for Identity at the nautical school, which will house a genetic bank of blood samples of the disappeared yet to be identified. Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence (HIJOS) will be in charge of the Alfa Pavilion, while a dissident branch of the mothers' organization will use the Delta Pavilion. Meanwhile, a building behind the Armes Plaza was given to UNESCO, which will use it for the UN-sponsored International Human Rights Institute that will organize international conferences and symposiums. This building will also house a Public Policy Institute specializing in human rights to be run by Mercosur.

«This is the result of a 30-year struggle»

«We are opening a new road, there are no previous experiences to look at,» said former prisoner Ana María Careaga, the NGOselected director of the Memorial Institute, in an interview with the Pagina newspaper on November 12, 2007. «This is the result of a 30-year struggle led by human rights groups and others in civil society. The fact that an autonomous entity has been created to administer an icon like ESMA preserves this place from political changes and perpetuates it as a symbol of that struggle.»

Nonetheless, this memorial is far from being completed. So far, the city has paid for building maintenance and the national government for the police surveillance. But a definitive budget for the memorial projects has yet to be ironed out. «Even though the decision belongs to the state, we want everyone's participation in this, because memory is a collective construction,» said Judith Said, who represents the government on the institute's governing board. For their part, human rights activists say moving forward is a must. «We have to open the memorial's doors as soon as possible,» said Patricia Valdez, executive director of Open Memory, one of the first non-profits to work on the project.