Private tours to know about Argentine History during the last dictatorship.
The former Navy Mechanics School (“ESMA”), located in the northern area of Buenos Aires City, was one of our worst clandestine detention centers during the last dictatorship (1976-1983), where more than 5000 people were detained and tortured.
The report Nunca Más, carried out by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Conadep) in 1984, says: “The ESMA was not only a clandestine detention center where torture was inflicted, it also functioned as the operative axis of a complex organization that even possibly intended to hide the crimes that it committed with the extermination of the victims”.
It was also house of a clandestine Maternity, where many women gave birth to their babies, who were separated from their mothers just after their birth, and, in most of the cases, appropriated by members of repressive forces.
In June of 2000, the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires created the Space for Memory Institute, whose purpose was the “safeguard and the transmission of the memory and history of the events that took place during the State terrorism of the 70’s and the early 80’s through the recovery of the state of rights, as well as the antecedents, later stages, and consequences”.
On March 24th of 2004, the president Néstor Kirchner decided to expropiate the building and give it back to the City, to accomplish this task. Today, there are several cultural centers, run by different Human Rights Associations.
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These tours are given in English and Spanish, so Spanish students of all levels can go and learn about a crucial period of Argentine History.