Author of case study: Greg Labrosse

Geopolitical location of space:
Libertador Ave 8151/8571
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Extant? Yes

Timeframe of RJ/TJ process in this space:

In use as a museum since 2015.

Background information:

On May 19th of 2015, the ESMA Memory Site Museum was inaugurated as a permanent museum and historical landmark. Principally, the museum is a site of culturally memory to safeguard the victims’ stories and to promote the non repetition of State terrorism. Given its status as judicial evidence, the museum has not altered the building from the state in which it was received. The museum’s content is created primarily through testimonies of survivors from the 1985 Trials of the Juntas and in the human rights trials restarted in 2004.

Is restorative and/or transitional justice actually taking place in this space?

Encounters between victims and perpetrators do not take place in this space. Its function is to preserve memory by honouring the victims’ stories and educating the general public on the events that took place during Argentina’s dictatorship. That said, it has the potential to become a place for restorative practices.

Who is the audience/the intended participants for this space?

The general public and researchers interested in the fields of political history, memory and transitional justice.

How or to what extent is this space public?

The museum is accessible to the general public from Tuesday to Sunday between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Physical/factual description of space:

The ESMA Museum and Site of Memory operates in what used to be ESMA’s Officers’ Club, a 5,390 sq. m building inaugurated in 1948 to be a leisure and rest area for high-ranking Navy officers. The construction has an independent pavilion, three floors in comb design, basements, and a large attic. Located on one of the principle avenues in the city of Buenos Aires, the building of the Casino de Oficiales (Officer’s Quarters) was the nucleus of repression by the clandestine centre for detention, torture and extermination. Between 1976 and 1983, this building had two functions: a space of enjoyment and rest for higher-ranking Navy officers and, at the same time, a place for the confinement of the detained-disappeared.

The conservation of the Officers’ Quarters is a result of the work of human rights organisations, who fought for its preservation for more than 40 years. The same organisations that were the first to denounce the ESMA’s operation as a clandestine centre now promote all sorts of actions to preserve it.

Analytical description of space:

According to the museum website, the ESMA was an emblematic Clandestine Center in South America: “Due to its size, its location in an urban center, the co-existence of naval officers and the detained-disappeared, and its unique concentration features of imprisonment and extermination, its role transcended its own borders and transformed it into a heritage of outstanding universal value.”

Since the years of the dictatorship, the Officers’ Club building has been the object of many interventions and threats meant to erase the remaining traces of its former role as a clandestine center. Most of these changes occurred in 1979 in order to hide the clandestine center from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which visited Argentina and ESMA due to the accusations made by survivors and families of the victims.

Today, the ESMA is a space that denounces State terrorism and helps foster cultural memory. Its mission is to contribute to the knowledge, experience, and understanding of human rights violations committed by the Argentine State by promoting intra and intergenerational dialogue between the past, present and future. The Museum is on UNESCO’s list of candidates to potentially receive status as a World Heritage Site.