Macri leaves ESMA concentration camp site w/o maintenance or grounds staff; fires 2,000 caretakers.

[forest444]

Last edited Tue Dec 15, 2015, 08:51 PM - Edit history (2)

The University of Buenos Aires School of Architecture and Urban Planning (FADU) reported today that effective December 18, the Ministry of Social Development will have terminated the 2,000 employees contracted under the Kirchner administration's Argentina Works program for the refurbishment, maintenance, and groundskeeping of the ESMA Human Rights Memorial Site.

Located in Buenos Aires' upscale Núñez district near the northern end of the city and coveted by developers since the 1990s, the 37-acre site includes nearly 900,000 ft² of buildings. It was originally built in the late 1920s as the Argentine Navy Mechanics School but was used in the late 1970s as the largest of around 300 detention and concentration camps for the Dirty War; an estimated 5,000 were killed at the ESMA.

Upon being informed of the news, the cooperative employing the 2,000 affected workers demonstrated peacefully in front of the ESMA site along Libertador Avenue and with heavy police presence.

The protesters also made public the notification to that effect received from the Social Development Ministry. The letter stated that "with the change of administrations (the December 10 inaugural of right-wing President Mauricio Macri) a series of steps are being taken," without any further explanation or indications that maintenance at the ESMA site will continue.

Most of the employees at the cooperative are women. The contract resulted from an agreement between the FADU (which oversees all work), the Ministry of Human Rights, and the Ministry of Social Development. Their work, according to ESMA officials, "allowed for the successful cooperation between the community, human rights organizations, and the State to have a place for truth, memory, and justice, and for the public to know Argentina's tragic recent history that we may consolidate the rights secured under democracy."

The site, which houses museums and numerous human rights institutes, was opened to the public in 2008 and formally inaugurated by President Cristina Kirchner on May 19, 2015. It received over 225,000 visitors last year.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.telam.com.ar/notas/201512/130202-ex-esma-despidos-cooperativistas-protesta.html&prev=search
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ESMA Memorial Site: http://www.espaciomemoria.ar/mapa.php

[enid602]

1. prisons

I've only seen thar place from the outside. It still brings fear to the locals. There's a big one at Ezeiza too, and a really forbidding one near the port in MDP

[forest444]

2. Not even the staunchest Kirchnersts thought Macri would go as far as to close the ESMA Memorial site

Although I'm personally not too surprised, given his own admiration for the dictatorship and the fact that the 37-acre site (worth at least US$200 million today) has been coveted by developers - including Macri's father - since Menem first floated the idea of selling the lot in the late 1990s. I smell money behind the decision to leave the site without maintenance (don't be shocked if an "accidental" fire breaks out there at some future date).

Remind me: when did you live in Buenos Aires, Enid? I never had the chance to myself since my parents left shortly before I was born; but naturally I've always had a fascination for my would-be homeland. My relatives are almost all still there (scattered throughout the country), and their anecdotes certainly help me get a better idea of local trends than if I followed the news alone.

Very few, btw, are Kirchnerist (or even Peronist) - but once you put politics aside, all agree on how significantly living standards and the economy in general have improved over the last 12 years; before then, as they often put it, it was "down, down, down." I'm afraid Macri might be pushing the country the same way again - and what's worse, to benefit his biggest backers (big landowners, who've always resented taxes and Argentina's development itself; and non-bank finance, who resent limits on their often illicit activities).

So, keep in touch! And thanks as always for your thoughts.

[enid602]

5. macri

I lived on Arroyo in the Retiro District from '07 to '10. That article you posted is odd. The museam opened this year, but they have 2000 caretakers. They may have meant 200. It's no bigger than a suburban High School. It's in the Botanico area, surrounded by park land. I cant imagine he'll try to demolish it.

Macri seems to be steamrolling toward austerity. Without finding a quick way to reemploy people displaced by promised privatization, he's going to piss off a lot of people. His party is definitely in the minority in the legislature and in provincial governments; I don't see him going too far too fast.

[forest444]

6. I certainly hope so.

The problem though might not be Macri himself, as much as it is some of his big contributors and supporters. They'll surely expect him to circumvent Congress by decree if need be to deliver for both the special interests that bankrolled his campaign (big agro and finance, which want deregulation and a steep devaluation) and the far-right ideologues that have backed him through the media and other pressure groups.

And returning to the state of impunity the Dirty War crowd enjoyed in the pre-Kirchner era is at the top of their wish list, as well revenge on human rights organizations and the left in general for causing them so many headaches over the past 12 years. The lobbyists are already getting their wish list courtesy of a spate of recent decrees, so it follows that these ideologues may get theirs as well (over time). Will they get their way? So far, it looks like it; but I suppose only time will tell.

As for the article itself, I can't rule out a typo as to the number of laid-off staff; it's possible. But are you sure we're talking about the same museum? The ESMA Memorial site is in Núñez, practically at the northernmost end of the city and quite a distance from the Botanical Gardens. It's a full 37 acres (the Botánico is 22) and includes several buildings; the link above describes each one.


Kudos on your Arroyo Street digs, Enid. I never lived there; but I have a friend there, I've stayed at the Sofitel, and am somewhat familiar with that neighborhood. The Fernández Blanco Museum (Spanish Colonial art) is one of my favorites in the city.

Thanks again for your reply, and Happy Holidays!

[Judi Lynn]

3. Shameful to try to "disappear" the evidence of the place where so many people were tortured.

A man who used to live there, study there, was driving with his girlfriend whom he later married, away from their university, driving past the place, and they saw a guy who was a student in a class they shared walking into the place, and they discovered he had actually been a spy for the dictatorship.

I never forgot hearing of that event. How chilling.

DU'ers here at the time read about the place being made into a museum, and open for the public to be able to see the very rooms where perhaps some of their friends or relatives, or their friends or relatives were terrorized and broken.

I would imagine they've been waiting until they could get a fascist into office and use him to destroy this historic landmark to make it so much easier to pretend to future generations it never happened, to make it easier to fool people all over again.

[center]









The "Blond Angel of Death," Alfredo Astiz, finally sent to jail
in later years for a life sentence, after murdering 2 nuns at
the Naval Mechanic School. They had belonged to the Madres
de la Plaza, human rights group whose loved ones had been
murdered already.





Before prison. [/center]

Astiz: Former navy captain Astiz boasted of his dictatorship-era crimes in a magazine interview in 1998, saying he was "the best-trained man in Argentina to kill journalists and politicians."

"I'm not sorry for anything," Astiz said in the interview.

He infiltrated human rights groups whose members were later kidnapped and was convicted in absentia in Europe of killing two French nuns held at the ESMA.

More:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/5864316/Life-sentence-for-Argentine-Blond-Angel-of-Death

[forest444]

4. Thank you for that. Human rights may be a scam to Macri,

but unfortunately selling those very valuable 37 acres (worth around $200 million) would be a scam much more to his liking.

The international community needs to keep an eye on how he handles the ESMA site. If there's one thing Macri hates, it's condemnation from the First World.

Tickles his insecurities.