Clandestine detention center (Argentina)

Their number and use became generalized after the coup d'état of March 24, 1976, when the National Reorganization Process took power, to execute the systematic plan of enforced disappearance of people within the framework of State terrorism.

Similar operations were carried out in other countries in the region, with the express support of the US government, interested in promoting at all costs the control of communism and other ideological currents opposed to its side in the Cold War.

Also in 1975 a CCD operated in the Acindar plant in Villa Constitución, presided over by José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, as part of the repressive structure organized to contain the strike declared by the UOM union in May of that year.

After this initial period of torture-interrogation, they would be held for one to two months: During their permanence in the CCD, the detainees-disappeared were systematically dehumanized through various means: substitution of a number for their name, rape, animalization, humiliation, overcrowding, intolerable housing conditions, isolation, forced nudity, racism, antisemitism, homophobia, etc.

[7]Clarín never explained the details of the article, nor did it make itself available to the courts to verify whether the persons interviewed were disappeared, as well as which was the detention center visited by its journalists and whether the military officers involved may have been committing crimes against humanity.

[8] Beginning as early as 1976, people suspected of being involved in political opposition to the Argentinian regime were kidnapped from homes and public places and brought to detention centers.

There was little recognition of the treatment of Dirty War victims, as it was left to the side to deal with the "real, pressing issues" of the time in the opinion of the United States government.

Located in the officers' casino of that institution of the Argentine Navy, in the northern area of the City of Buenos Aires (Núñez), on Avenida del Libertador at 8200 (34°32′18″S 58°27′49″W / 34.53833°S 58.46361°W / -34.53833; -58.46361), approximately two blocks from the 1978 World Cup Stadium; it operated from March 1976 to November 1983.

ESMA became the political power base of the Navy and in particular of Massera; it was closed in November 1983, after the elections in which Raúl Alfonsín won and a few days before the constitutional authorities took office.

In December 1975, General René Otto Paladino, one of the founders of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A) was put in charge of the Secretariat of Intelligence (SIDE), it was decided to create a base so that Aníbal Gordon's gang could operate without attracting attention.

[32] El Banco was the denomination given to a CCD that operated between late 1977 and mid-1978 and was located very close to the intersection of the Ricchieri Highway and the Camino de Cintura, a few meters from Bridge 12.

The center was under the control of the Command of Military Institutes, which at the time of its operation was in charge of Generals Santiago Omar Riveros, José Montes, Cristino Nicolaides and Reynaldo Benito Bignone.

[26][42] 'El Infierno' was named by the head of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police, Ramón Camps, and operated in the Lanús Investigations Brigade, under Miguel Etchecolatz.

[43] The headquarters of the Regional Unit II of the Lanús Investigations Brigade (URIIBIL) operated there, and the local authorities were Commissioners Bruno Trevisán and Rómulo Ferranti, sentenced to three and four years in prison for the crimes of 'abuse and severity' against the Iaccarino businessmen.

Survivors include: Oscar Solís, Eduardo Castellanos, Gladys Rodríguez, Nilda Eloy, Corina Joly, Horacio Matoso, Haydee Lampugnani, Adolfo Paz, and Gustavo Fernández.

[47] A CCD operated within the premises of the Ford plant in General Pacheco, where company personnel were involved in torture and interrogations during the last dictatorship, a case emblematic of corporate responsibility in State terrorism crimes.

3 housed a clandestine detention and torture center during the dictatorship, coordinated by Task Force 5 of the Argentine Republic Navy, which gathered repressive resources in the area of La Plata, Berisso, and Ensenada.

[50] The clandestine detention center (CCD) at Campana's Federal Shooting Range was occupied by the Armed Forces a day after the military coup of 1976 and began to be used as a place for the abduction and torture of individuals persecuted for their political and social activism, within the framework of the systematic plan of terror and extermination imposed by Argentina's last civic-military dictatorship.

[51] In a house at Monte Peloni, on Route 226, which connects Olavarría with Mar del Plata or Tandil, a CCD operated where the Army tortured and held numerous young people from the area between 1976 and 1978.

[52] This refers to an estate located in the area of Los Laureles, on the outskirts of the city of Tandil in the Buenos Aires Province, at the current streets Juan Manuel de Rosas and Scavini.

'We were sent to La Ribera for periods of approximately twenty days, always accompanied by Gendarmerie officers'... 'I was there six times and saw about thirty detainees, men and women, housed in a block.

The complaint made by this commission to the Judiciary regarding the case of Amelia Gélida Inzaurralde – who was removed from Buen Pastor prison and taken to La Ribera, where she died due to torture – led to the prosecution of General Juan Bautista Sasiaiñ.

The Judge in charge, Dr. Gustavo Becerra Ferrer, explicitly supports the above when he says textually in the considerations of his resolution: 'Consequently, given the position held by the declarant (which allows us to consider his statements as a well-founded and authoritative version), it is clear that the immediate responsible for the Military Prison was the accused Sasiaiñ, and in the higher hierarchical order, the Corps Commander, General Luciano Benjamín Menéndez'.

[59] A CCD operated in Campo Hípico de Goya where men and women persecuted for their political, social, and union activism were kidnapped and tortured, and where several people were killed.

[73] The Provincial Human Rights Secretariat delivered a presentation to Federal Judge Daniel Bejas, requesting his intervention to understand the extent of the land donation from the Arsenal Miguel de Azcuénaga, as there is still a protective measure in place to safeguard evidence since there are still open graves containing the remains of disappeared detainees.

[74] Between 1975 and 1983, the southern part of the country fell under the authority of Zone 5, along with its corresponding subzones and areas, each of one had complete repressive autonomy, including the management of clandestine detention centers.

"La Escuelita" was a clandestine detention center located in the northeast of the city of Bahía Blanca, in the Villa Floresta neighborhood, on the road to Carrindanga (Camino de Cintura), behind the V Army Corps.

[26] In 2001, while the first trial of repressors in Bahía Blanca began, archaeologists from the National University of the South, called upon by the Justice system at the initiative of Memoria Abierta, made excavations to find the foundations of the clandestine center.

[26] A survivor, Alicia Mabel Partnoy, wrote a book about her experiences in the center titled precisely "La Escuelita", published in the United States in English in 1986 and in Spanish in 2006.

Likewise, the illegal deprivation of freedom and the consequent disappearances that occurred in Argentina and in the province could not have been carried out without clandestine detention centers, i.e., without an infrastructure that allowed the victims to be kept in secrecy.