As part of a visit to the ESMA Memory Site Museum, Foreign Minister Felipe Solá headed the ceremony to present the nomination of the former Clandestine Detention, Torture and Extermination Center to the UNESCO World Heritage List and Mercosur Cultural Heritage.
“It is very moving to visit the Museum because of what it means to go back to the place of horror and because of the contrast between the outside and the inside. You pass through trees and nature to enter the building and find this place where atrocities were perpetrated while, for example, the Football World Cup was taking place,” stated Solá, accompanied by the Chief of the Private Office of the Foreign Ministry, Guillermo Justo Chaves, the Director for Human Rights, Cecilia Meirovich, and the Director for Intermediate Organizations and Public Diplomacy, Conrado Carrasco Quintana.
“The challenge of achieving the nomination for this place is complex but we are backed by the great work that the team has been doing with outstanding discipline and accuracy,” added the Foreign Minister after meeting the Argentine Secretary for Human Rights, Horacio Petragalla Corti, and the Chief Director for the Museum, Alejandra Naftal.
Horacio Petragalla Corti stated that “the ESMA Museum is an emblematic place that invites us to explore the memory of our recent past to understand the true dimension of State terrorism. This is a fundamental instrument to continue building together a legacy that is linked to the unrestricted defence of Human Rights.”
“This place is a symbol for Nunca más (Never Again), the consensus that united Argentines on the path towards the restoration of democracy under the principles of Memory, Truth, and Justice, and that makes us a global role model in the Human Rights field,” he added.
The nomination is intended to give international visibility to State terrorism committed by the civil-military dictatorship that governed Argentina between 1976 and 1983, with the enforced disappearance of people at the core of their actions.
This important step highlights our country’s strong commitment to the Memory, Truth, and Justice process initiated by human rights organizations and implemented in human rights promotion and protection public policies, which are a guide to strengthen democratic and republic institutions.
The ESMA Memory Site Museum, one of the most important illegal detention places of that period, is a symbol that the Argentine Republic wishes to intend and preserve so as to promote the construction of a citizenship at the national and international levels, and to give visibility to Memory, Truth, and Justice processes.
