by Saskia van Alphen
- Argentina -

The current Argentinean government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has made Justicia or human rights one of the main items on its political agenda, so much so that it aims to judge and imprison all military staff involved in the army’s illegal activities during the country’s latest dictatorship (1976-1983). It also intends to give (financial) reparations to the victims or their surviving relatives. With this Juicios por la Verdad or Judgements for Truth campaign, Fernández de Kirchner continues the work of her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner, who converted the ESMA, a navy school that operated as one of the biggest clandestine detention and torture centers during those years, into state property and a Space for Memory. By pursuing these initiatives, Fernández de Kirchner hopes to establish a collective memory for this tragic episode in Argentinean history.

by Saskia van Alphen
- Argentina -

The terrain of the Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (the ESMA or Navy Mechanics School) has been open to the public for a year now. Once one of the biggest detention and torture centers during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (March 1976 to December 1983), it is now being transformed into the Space for Memory and the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. The initiative is jointly sponsored by the national government and the city government of Buenos Aires. The management of the Space for Memory also includes representatives from 14 social organizations, such as the Mothers of the Disappeared, HIJOS (Children), various human right organizations and ex-prisoners of the ESMA, who have an important counseling roll.

By keeping the buildings as they are, the center’s planners are giving them the status of commemorative monuments, and opening a museum that will document the dictatorship, the years preceding the coup and the consequences of the military regime. Other buildings will house a library and archive, as well as provide offices for human rights and other organizations concerned with those years of repression.