Sometimes referred to as the "Auschwitz of Argentina," ESMA is the most notorious of Argentina's many clandestine centers of detention, torture, and execution. More than a detention center, it was a sprawling, naval complex on the city's northern end, where many officers worked and trained - and, of course, dealt with so-called subversives.
While ESMA's main building is always displayed in articles about the detention center, it is important to note that the actual CCD is a different building, the Casino de Oficiales (Officers' House). No survivors have been able to offer any testimony about the main building; it all pertains to the Officers' House or elsewhere.
Leaving the main building, we turn right to reach the Officers' House. In the process, we walk past the former control tower, which formerly restricted access to the CCD. In other words, one needed special clearance to reach the Officers' House. That shouldn't be taken as an indication that the crimes occurring there were any sort of secret to military figures; 40-60% of all naval cadets had to oversee the prisoners there. Our guide explained that it was a method of achieving silence through complicity. Given that most people in the navy had dirty hands, they all had - and have - reason to guard the truth fiercely.
The Casino de Oficiales was originally used as an officers' house and they actually continued to live there while it was employed as a CCD. Even Admiral Chamorro stayed there with his family - his kids sleeping in the building as his prisoners were tortured above them.
From 1976 to 1979, the building's main entrance was around back. The pattern here was similar to the other camps and centers we visited in Argentina and Chile, and that is no accident. The system was developed by the French in Algeria and Indochina, revised by the US, and then taught in the School of the Americas. All of the Condor countries, and most US allies in Latin America followed the same playbook. Once again, a security contingent abducted and blindfolded the target, typically at night, drove him here, and took him directly inside - in this case, to the basement. While we don't know how many passed through, we do know that the room was dramatically transformed over time.
Originally just one torture center, by the end of 1976 four more had been added in the back, built with slave labor provided by the prisoners. In 1977, offices were also built to provide working space for prisoners recruited to assist Admiral Massera with his political project. Aspiring to achieve complete control of Argentina, Massera used prisoners with political backgrounds to operate a propaganda campaign, making fake documents, false Montonero materials, and other misinformation to target subversives and aggrandize his own role in keeping Argentina safe.
Doctors also worked in the basement. Prisoners selected for transfers (a "polite" term for execution) were injected with tranquilizers here before they were loaded on to a plane or helicopter and then dumped into the Rio de la Plata or the ocean. Finally, the basement also included a phone booth for detainees to call their families. Under supervision and great pressure, the detainees would order their families to stop legal proceedings and naval staff would threaten them with blackmail.
When the World Cup came to Argentina in 1978, it brought the probing eye of the international press, which looked into the growing accusations of human rights abuses by the "Gentlemen" running the country, including whispers of torture taking place at ESMA. Based on this attention, the IAC for Human Rights visited ESMA in 1979. In anticipation of this visit, the navy changed key aspects of the building. The basement was essentially cut off from the rest of the Casino; the main stairway was walled off and painted so as to appear as though it never existed. To the untrained eye, it was convincing work. If our guide hadn't pointed it out to us, I doubt we would have thought twice. In addition, window arches were cut off by a phony wall, to damage the credibility of victim testimony. And, the prisoners were temporarily moved to a house in Tigre, which was property of the Argentine Church.
There is no record of whether the IAC even entered the building during its inspection. The only reference to ESMA in the report is a single paragraph noting that the building was being modified. They didn't find any WMDs there, either.
The second floor is the Officers' Dormitory. As our guide noted, one main staircase handled all foot traffic from the basement to the third floor, where the disappeared were imprisoned. Moved in groups of four or five, they shuffled loudly up or down the stairs, linked together by 20kg chains, scraping along the floor. There is no possible way the officers couldn't have known what was going on.
All told, the Officers' Dormitory includes 74 bedrooms. For these officers, the detention center was their whole life. Go downstairs and they would see prisoners undergoing intense torture; go upstairs and they would see the bloody aftermath.
As noted, prisoner cells were on the third floor, most in the Capucha, reached by turning right at the top of the stairs. Only one meter in height, with a simple mattress on the cement floor, the prisoner was forced to always lie down or sit. ESMA's guides decided to make this the location to describe resistance efforts in the detention center. While we tend to equate resistance with armed uprisings or Gandhi-esque non-violent protests, resistance in ESMA often took much simpler forms. In particular, our guide explained, one of the most powerful types of resistance was simply making a human act - giving food to a pregnant woman or referring to someone by their name instead of their assigned number. Laughter was a political act, an exercise in defiance.
The other side of the third floor included the Capuchita, the Fishbowl, and El Panol. The Capuchita was another section for prisoner cells, but used by other branches of the military, further defying claims of ignorance about what took place in ESMA. The Fishbowl was an extension of Massera's political operation. The finest political minds imprisoned by the navy were forced to work on Massera's behalf here. In order to assist their work, they were provided with all of the latest news, both domestic and foreign, and others joked that the finest Marxist library in the world was assembled here. El Panol, the deposit, held the war booty which was seized from the prisoners' homes.
In the middle of the third floor was the maternity ward, where pregnant women were kept until they delivered their babies - which, in turn, would be passed on to an Argentine military family. Argentine congresswoman Victoria Donda was born and kidnapped here. The secrets contained within these rooms nearly came out; former Coast Guard leader Carlos Febres, who knew a great deal about the activities in ESMA's maternity ward, appeared to be willing to provide information. However, he died soon after, an apparent case of suicide, though most evidence points to murder, another victim of Argentine Omerta.
Argentine officers in ESMA and other detention centers liked to think of themselves as "Lords of life and death." This led to a number of curious activities. For example, our guide described how many prisoners received dental care, despite the fact that they were regularly tortured. Others, stunningly, were taken out to dinner, or movies, or even dancing. While we grasped for explanations, our guide dismissed attempts at applying logic to a brutally illogical world as existed here. "They did it because they could."
Certainly, there was some desire to break prisoners and turn them into collaborators. And, in achieving that, a nice dinner might have been as powerful as an extended torture session - as one said, he knew that he had been broken by the system the moment he wanted to live. But, there is no discernible pattern in those who were recruited for slave labor, or in those who survived. The utter randomness was part of the system, contributing to the terror it produced.
When ESMA stopped being used as a torture center, the Casino was returned to its prior function as an officer's house, remaining as such from 1983 until 2004. The basement was converted into offices. Life goes on, for the living. Indeed, when a new apartment complex was built in recent years opposite ESMA, no reference was made to the former torture center or naval offices in the promotional materials; instead, the advertisement showed a lovely - and empty - park across the street. Nothing to see here.