We are in the building of the Officer’s Quarters, where the Clandestine Center for Detention, Torture and Extermination of the Naval Mechanics School, also known as the ESMA, once operated. During the last civic-military dictatorship, in between 1976 and 1983, more than 700 detention centers existed in Argentina.

Here  approximately 5,000 men and women were detained-disappeared. They were members of political parties, social activists of revolutionary organizations both armed or unarmed, workers, trade unionists, students, professionals, artists, and members of religious orders. The majority of them were thrown alive into the sea on what are known as The Death Flights. 

Here, the Navy planned abductions and systematically carried out murders. Here, prisoners were kept in hoods and shackled. Here, they were tortured. Here, the Navy made them disappear. 

Here, children were born in captivity and separated from their mothers. Most of them were illegally adopted or stolen. Many of them are the living-disappeared that we are still searching for.

Here a crime against humanity was committed.