Argentina’s Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), which once served as a secret detention center during the country’s dictatorship, has been designated as a United Nations World Heritage site by UNESCO.
This move aims to preserve the grim history associated with the facility where around 5,000 people disappeared, with many never returning.
President Alberto Fernández conveyed his gratitude to UNESCO for recognizing ESMA as a heritage site, emphasizing the importance of keeping the memory of the “horrors” that occurred there alive.
In 1976, a military group overthrew President Isabel Perón, initiating a dictatorship that lasted until 1983, marked by widespread human rights abuses as the military sought to suppress dissent, activism, and left-wing political views.
It is estimated that up to 30,000 individuals lost their lives during this period, and many of their fates remain unknown, as they disappeared while in military custody and were never heard from again.
Approximately 340 detention centers were established across Argentina, with ESMA being one of the earliest and largest facilities.
ESMA, situated in Buenos Aires, was transformed into a torture site during this dark period.
Tragically, it even had a maternity ward where pregnant detainees had their children taken away immediately after birth, often adopted by families aligned with the dictatorship.
To conceal the crimes committed at ESMA, workers removed the staircase leading to the basement, where much of the torture occurred, and erected a wall to hide the stairwell when international observers visited in 1979 to investigate human rights abuses.
In 2007, ESMA was repurposed as a site of remembrance, opening to the public to educate about the human rights violations that transpired there.
This year, the ESMA museum acquired an aircraft used in “death flights” to murder detainees. During these flights, prisoners were drugged and thrown, often while still alive, into the sea as a form of execution.
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