ARGENTINE
MEMORY FOR THE WORLD
During the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship, which took place between 1976 and 1983, there were more than 700 illegal detention sites. One of them was the Officers’ Quarters at the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), a remarkable set of more than 30 buildings spread across 17 hectares, located in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the Clandestine Center installed at the Officers´ Quarters of ESMA, Argentine Navy officers and NCOs kidnapped, tortured, and murdered more than 5,000 people, executed a plan to steal babies once they were born in captivity, exercised sexual and gender violence, submitted detained-disappeared persons to different kinds of slave labor, and organized the theft of the victims’ properties and real estate.
Today, as the result of a long-time social demand regarding the resignification of that horror, the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory - Former Center of Detention, Torture and Extermination operates in that building, a comprehensive expression of the State policy of “Never Again”, which enjoys an almost unanimous consensus among society.
Inaugurated in 2015, the Museum not only symbolizes and bears witness to what happened there, but also has great relevance in the framework of the Argentine State’s public policies of Human Rights. It is a fundamental tool of the Memory, Truth and Justice paradigm and also within the field of education and the construction of citizenship.
In addition to accounting for the crime of forced disappearance of people in its permanent exhibition, the Museum also seeks to contribute to international awareness and prevention of this crime and provide international visibility to social consensus as a means to achieve justice. For this reason it has submitted a candidacy to the UNESCO World Heritage List, the program that preserves heritage assets with outstanding universal value, such as the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum.
The goal is to provide greater visibility to the values on which the candidacy is based, and highlight the struggle of both Human Rights organizations and survivors and relatives. But, among other things, we believe that our inclusion on the list is also an opportunity to broaden and deepen the debates regarding the issues of Heritage and Human Rights. This is fundamental, since we, from Latin America, can and must bring to these discussions issues that are not sufficiently visible and yet are essential for a comprehensive approach to the issue.
On the other hand, the application allows us to strengthen the Museum’s institutional matters, as it forces us to deepen the work of strategic planning and to observe the rigorousness of the public policies for which the institution was created. It also helps the consideration of the Museum staff efforts as a valuable input for national, regional and international technical cooperation with other museums and Sites of Memory in Argentina, Mercosur and the world.
After fulfilling the technical, social, diplomatic and political requirements of UNESCO, the final nomination file was presented to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in mid-January 2022, an effort that will go on until June 2023, when the final deliberation will take place at the committee meeting.
Presently, the application has been a very valuable tool for the Museum, since it has involved the implementation of a network of connections and dialogues with different sectors and actors from around the world that broaden and enrich their visions on the institution. Human Rights Organizations, survivors, scholars, workers from other museums and sites, networks of cities, national, regional and international parliaments, transfeminist organizations and social movements, to name just a few of those sectors that support us.
As you can see, the candidacy represents for us a political, social and cultural challenge that expresses a profound agreement between all Argentines, represented by the National State. But, at the same time, we believe that it will not only protect the ESMA space and other spaces of memory in the country and the region –and therefore our democracies– but ultimately it will be a significant contribution to all of Humanity.
* Mayaki Gorosito is the Executive Director of the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory - Former Center of Detention, Torture and Extermination.
Mayki Gorosito *
The Memoria magazine is dedicated to the issues related mainly to the memory of the second world war, the Holocaust and Auschwitz. Yet, the reflection on and preservation of the memory of that period influence others. Below you can read an article by Mayaki Gorosito we received from the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory from Argentina that is the candidate for the UNESCO World Heritage List and the case of Auschwitz was an important inspiration to them.