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| Photographs of the disappeared on windows at ex-ESMA Detention Center |
It’s difficult to move past abduction, torture, detention
and disappearing when thinking about the experience of being in Buenos Aires.
It is a lively and buzzing city with friendly people and a vibrant cultural
life. It has some interesting museums, diverse neighborhoods, plenty of
colonial architecture, an equal measure of which is in disrepair. But I found
it impossible to get past the fact that justice has never been served for the
crimes committed under the military dictatorship.
Everywhere I went in Buenos Aires, I felt the weight of the unresolved past: the
crimes of the fascist death squads hang over Buenos like a dark cloud. As I
walked around, I kept wondering if this man or that was guilty of crimes
against humanity. I saw big burly men in suits sauntering down the street and I
immediately thought “ex-military.” The walls of Buenos Aires’ streets are also
filled with graffiti that protests the violent rule, and the Mothers of Plaza
de Mayo still gather and protest the disappearance of their children, forty
years on. Perhaps most frightening of all, the remains of detention and torture
centers are barely disguised, right in the middle of the city. For all of the
celebration of daily life in Buenos Aires, I was not expecting to be confronted
by the darkness that haunts the streets.
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| Political graffiti on the streets & images of the Disappeared |
I asked a local if there was corruption in Argentina as
there is in so many other South American countries, and his response, was
“well, not of overt kind, but of course, that’s how government runs.” The
broken pavements, daily demonstrations, the artificially inflated peso, the
curious absence of indigenous or black people in the streets of Buenos Aires, it
reveals that something is not right with this city.
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| "Paris of South America" |
I was in Buenos Aires for a conference that took place in
the Borges Cultural Centre that shares the building with a plush downtown mall,
Galerias Pacifico. The mall is filled with street designer shops, eateries and
it’s even a hub for changing money on the black market. Again, just another location
bustling with daily life. That was, until I learnt that the military junta had
set up torture chambers in the basement. By the time I learned of the building’s
history, I was not at all surprised as I had been in Buenos Aires a few days
and was feeling the ghosts of the these nine long years (1974-83) wherever I
went. I read that the walls in the basement of the Galerias Pacifico building still bear the graffiti of the tortured and disappeared.
I didn’t go down to see if these markings had been erased by the 1991
renovations of the building. I didn’t need to see any more traces of violence
and death in Buenos Aires: I had seen enough.
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| Street Graffiti |
On the final day of the conference, we visited ex-ESMA, the centre
for torture, detention and transition to death for over 5,000 people during the
fascist dictatorship. My skin shuddered as I looked at buildings in close
proximity, even integration into daily life, from the fascist period. They were,
at the time in 1974-83, used by the armed forces, mainly naval, as a training
facility. In the basement of the building we visited, detainees identified as
resisters to the fascists were herded, hooded, stripped of their
identity, then their humanity, before being detained upstairs, tortured some
more, and finally, taken on a plane and dropped in the ocean, alive. All these
clinical activities took place while the officers in charge lived, worked, and
slept on floors one and two of the same building. One wonders what inhumanity it requires to eat and
sleep with the business of torture and murder taking place all around. It
is clear on visiting the building that the guards and officers saw their
prisoners, handcuffed, hooded and shackled as they were led to their pit measuring
70cm wide and 2m long. They must also have heard the prisoners upstairs as they waited for their call
to death.
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| Walls at ex-Esma |
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| Windows at ex-Esma |
The most heinous part of the story was told us
by our guide: the officers moved the stairs and the elevator. When the
prisoners who became survivors, told of their memory of the spatial
organization of the building after the fact, they remembered the stairs and the
elevator that took them to and from their living death, from street level to
basement, from basement to 3rd floor, and finally to street level to
be disposed of in the sea. After they had testified at the ongoing tribunal, court
representatives came to verify the layout of the building to prove the
innocence and rectitude of the survivors. However, the stairs and the elevator
had been removed. Similarly, when bodies started to wash up on the shores of Buenos
Aires and Montevideo, the perpetrators studied the currents of the sea and made
sure to drop the bodies in a place and at a time that would ensure they were
not carried by the tide to shore. That they could even imagine doing these clinical
actions was a chilling reminder, not one of them has yet been brought to
justice. I don’t think I can imagine the torture of having my reality
discredited in this way: the denial of removing the spatial co-ordinates to
disprove the captives’ memory must have been psychological hell. To date, not
one person has been charged with these crimes.
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| Projection of books on 3rd Floor (prison and torture area) at es-Esma |
As we walked through the centre, the guide also reminded us not to
touch the walls of the cells and the rooms because the building was still being
used as evidence in the trials to prosecute and bring justice to the captors.
So effectively, with the history ongoing, I felt as though the murderers were
still watching the corridors, and was sickened to think, not only of the torture
that took place within these walls, but that the world can sit back and wait for what
should be the most urgent of actions.
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| Former Detention Center under a traffic bridge in San Telmo |
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Buenos Aires, and all of Argentina, as a place that suffered
a violent and bloody dictatorship will take decades and still more decades
before it can recover from the torture, abuse and crimes of its government. While
it was the rulers of the past that committed these crimes, there was no
secret made of the fact that the Argentinian government of the present is
taking steps to oust the humanitarian groups who occupy and activate for human
rights at ex-ESMA. Their funding is being cut. And so, I came away from Buenos
Aires wondering how can this festering wound can ever begin to heal when not only do the
people who committed the crimes not admit having done so, but some of those charged with bringing justice are doing their best to deny?
Many had told me before I went that Buenos Aires is like Europe, it's the Paris of South America. It’s true that
France is not the epitome of governmental right doing, but, there’s no doubt
that while Buenos Aires might have wealthy bourgeoise neighborhoods with splendid
colonial architecture, this city is a long way from being the Paris of South
America.
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