Fifty years ago, on March 24, 1976, Argentina plunged into darkness. A military coup overthrew President Isabel Perón and installed a junta led by General Jorge Rafael Videla. This marked the beginning of what the military referred to as the “National Reorganization Process”: a dictatorship that lasted until 1983 and resulted in over 30,000 disappeared individuals, according to human rights organizations.
Under this repressive regime, there were clandestine arrests, systematic torture, executions, baby thefts, forced disappearances – all part of a terror system designed to erase all traces. At the core of this oppressive system, a place became a symbol: the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA).
Officially known as the Naval Mechanics School, located in Buenos Aires, ESMA was unofficially one of the largest clandestine detention and torture centers in the country. Approximately 5,000 people passed through there, with most never returning.
Today, ESMA serves as a site of memory, a place of documentation, archives, and education. However, this memory is once again being challenged. Since President Javier Milei took office, public memory policies have been weakened, funding reduced, and some discourse has downplayed or denied the extent of the dictatorship’s crimes.
So, what does ESMA represent in Argentine history? How does a place of terror transform into a site of memory? Why has the battle over the past become so fierce today? To discuss these questions, we welcome two prominent specialists in these matters, historians and researchers Marina Franco and Claudia Feld, authors of “Crimes Against Humanity at ESMA: Anatomy of a Clandestine Detention Center in Argentina (1976-1983), published by Anamosa.
Guests: – Marina Franco, professor at UNSAM and researcher at CONICET. Founding member of the Center for the History of the Present Time at the interdisciplinary School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Argentina. – Claudia Feld, professor at the University of Buenos Aires and researcher at CONICET. Founding member of the Center for Memory Studies and director of the journal CLEPSIDRA.
