Thursday March 23, 2023 | 2:29 p.m.
President Alberto Fernández highlighted this Thursday that, “47 years later, we do not forget and we continue to demand justice”, as tomorrow marks a new anniversary of the civic-military coup and in this context criticized those who “question if it is true and think that human rights is someone’s business.
“Men and women were thrown into the sea from these planes as a method of elimination. We continue to value collective memory,” said the president, announcing the start of construction of the Space for Memory and Promotion of Human Rights in the former Campo de Mayo Clandestine Detention, Torture and Extermination Center, where the planes that participated in the so-called “death flights” are exhibited.
In another passage of his speech, he reflects on the newspaper telamthe president highlighted that Argentina has issued “nearly 1,200 genocide sentences”, in the framework of the trials against humanity that were reactivated from the government of the late former president Néstor Kirchner, and said that “if something mobilized the Argentines it was the search for truth and justice”.
When announcing the construction of a space for memory in the former Campo de Mayo Clandestine Detention, Torture and Extermination Center, the President questioned the management of Mauricio Macri, who tried to “turn this place into a recreation park.”
The Memory Space
As officially reported, this will be the first space for memory built from scratch and will be built in the place where the main operations center functioned during the last civic-military dictatorship that began in 1976.
The work will be carried out on two properties and consists of the construction of a building on Gral. Juan Gregorio Lemos avenue and a perimeter fence with two access arches.
The first property will have an access square and a hall that will lead to different rooms and a multipurpose room that will be used for different activities, while the second property will place a perimeter fence, and will build an access arch and one of exit.
A Memorial is also planned to pay homage to the victims of state terrorism linked to Campo de Mayo and a space will be set aside for the exhibition of three planes that were used in the so-called “death flights”, from where they shot the detainees.
With an estimated completion date of July 2024, the work will require an investment of 2,198 million pesos.
The new space is part of the Heritage Infrastructure Plan, which contemplates the execution of 131 works and projects for the restoration, refunctionalization, preservation and enhancement of heritage assets, buildings and historical monuments.
In the country there are more than forty spaces for memory in which educational, cultural, artistic and research activities are carried out.
Specifically, the former clandestine detention center of Campo de Mayo was a nerve center of Army operations during the last civil-military dictatorship.
El Campito, one of the largest clandestine detention centers, operated there, and the Intelligence Detachment 201 known as Las Casitas, the Military Prison for Defendants, and the Military Hospital, among others, also operated within the Campo de Mayo garrison.
The Military Hospital functioned as a clandestine detention center in the Epidemiology pavilion, and as a clandestine maternity hospital.
