The ESMA never stopped being what it was since March 24, 1976: an emblem of maximum horror. For this reason, because, after the recovery of that Navy property for society, the Argentine State set up a Museum of Memory in the specific place where the concentration camp operated, a device that worked to always remember so as to never forget that there kidnappings, torture, abuse, clandestine births and theft of babies occurred during the last dictatorship, is that Today UNESCO decided to make it a World Heritage Site. Protect it, not only for Argentines and Latin Americans, but for all humanity. “They have taken an important step: they have turned the Navy Mechanics School into a site of memory within the universal heritage,” dedicated the President Alberto Fernandez through a video in which he assured that the decision gives him “peace of mind” so that “no one in Argentina can deny or forget the horror that was experienced there.”
The incorporation of the ESMA Memorial Site Museum to the UNESCO World Heritage was recommended this morning within the framework of the 45th session of the Committee of the international organization, after the conclusion of the organization’s evaluation committee – which received the file at the beginning of 2022 – and the support of the member countries. Japan, Belgium and Mexico highlighted that with their incorporation the “exceptional universal value” of memory sites related to recent conflicts is established. The discussion in relation to this class of goods had been put in check for some years, and the Argentine museum is the first to be accepted after the redefinition of the category. arrives at the peak of the greening of denialist, relativist and vindication speeches of the crimes of the last civil-military dictatorship, with the vice presidential candidate with the most votes in the last elections, Victoria Villarruel, as its main spokesperson. In one of the most recent interviews she gave to television media, Villarruel considered that the ESMA should be returned to the family that had donated it to the Navy. Well, UNESCO watered down her plans.
«This recognition at the international level constitutes a forceful response to the speeches that deny or seek to relativize State terrorism and the crimes of the last civil-military dictatorship,» said the Secretary of Human Rights. of the Nation, Horacio Pietragalla Corti from Saudi Arabia, where he witnessed the session together with the director of the Museum, María Marcela Mayki Gorosito and the representative of Argentina to UNESCO, Marcela Losardo. No one contained their emotion at the news. «And nothing would have been possible without the decades-long struggle of Mothers, Grandmothers, human rights organizations, family members and survivors who maintained from the beginning that what happened at ESMA was and is a genocide,» he remarked.
«It is a historic moment for us,» Losardo managed to say before the committee and before introducing the message that the President left recorded – he is in the UN assembly, in the United States -, in which He dedicated the incorporation to the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who “taught us not to forget, to seek justice.”
The incorporation of the ESMA Memory Site Museum was highlighted not only by the importance of the space as a symbol of memory, justice and reparation for the crimes against humanity that Argentina experienced during the last civil-military dictatorship, but also for the events that They hit other Latin American countries during the same historical period. ““It is the most prominent symbol of state terrorism,” determined the conclusion of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, in charge of evaluating the property with a view to incorporating it into the UNESCO World Heritage list. “It is a tribute to those thousands of missing people that our continent has,” Pietragalla Corti highlighted in this regard. The incorporation of the museum is “a fact of unique relevance within Argentine and regional history, which sets a precedent to continue setting an example in the world with the policies of Memory, Truth and Justice.”
Gorosito was in charge of the process from the first steps, in 2019. The file, signed by the Ministers of Justice, Education and Culture in December 2021 and presented to UNESCO in January 2022, was the result of a work plan that pursued the purpose of highlighting consensus among the most diverse actors of civil society, representatives of the Legislative and Judicial powers, to determine the fundamental importance of the place within the framework of the process of memory, truth and justice. This was especially highlighted in the evaluation carried out by UNESCO.
The history of the Museum in the exESMA
The ESMA Memory Site Museum was inaugurated within the framework of the celebrations for the Argentine Homeland Day. Carlotto stele on one of its sides; Hebe from Bonafini to the other, The then President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner spoke from the green space of scattered pine trees that camouflage the clandestine center on the afternoon of May 19, 2015. Also at the table were the survivor Ana Testa, Juan Cabandié, who was born in the clandestine maternity hospital and from where they took him from his mother, Alicia Alfonsín, before murdering her and disappearing her. Then, almost a decade ago, CFK said that “memory, truth and justice cannot be left in the hands of a president or a Parliament or a Judiciary, it is the people who have to take charge of things.” «What happened to us.»
The statement could speak of the present day, of these days in which denialist, relativist and apologist speeches for the dictatorship reemerge, vigorous. “Today here,” said the former president, with her back to the skin glazed with the faces of those who were taken to the ESMA and never returned, “there is a victory of life over death, of memory over oblivion, of the country over «antipatria.»
The installation of a museum in the Officers’ Casino was planned many years before its inauguration, following the expropriation of the Navy property in 2004. and its subsequent resignification into Space for Memory and the Promotion of Human Rights. The museographic project was led by the museologist and anthropologist who survived the last dictatorship, Alejandra Naftal, who directed the institution until a few years ago and accompanied the profound debate that took place between various groups – survivors, family members, human rights organizations , academics and researchers, among others – on what to do and how in the Officers’ Casino to build collective memory about crimes against humanity without re-victimizing, vindicate the disappeared detainees and their struggle without falling into partisan political appropriation.
The incorporation of the museum to the UNESCO World Heritage is a confirmation that this objective has been achieved. The countries that approved it are Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Qatar, Egypt, Ethiopia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Mali, Nigeria, Oman, Rwanda, Russia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Thailand and Zambia, the 21 rotating representations of the international organization, made up of 194 countries plus 12 associated States.
The Memory Site Museum tells the story of the ESMA Officers’ Casino as a concentration camp: Without modifying the structure of the space – which continues to be judicial evidence – the museographic tour takes those who enter the place along the same path taken by the genocidaires of the 3.3.2 gang that acted in the place with each clandestine detainee: the basement where the torture rooms and slave work spaces were located; hood and hood, where they were kept locked up in inhumane conditions; the pregnant women’s room, where captive women gave birth in secret to their babies, who were handed over to members of the repressive forces or to their loved ones; the fish tank, a space dedicated to slave labor; the Golden Room, a space where the repressors planned the crimes of humanity that they committed in that setting. Since its opening, more than 400 thousand people have visited the museum.