Javier Milei’s government has taken another step to halt the operations of “memory sites” dedicated to commemorating the brutal dictatorship which governed the country from 1976 to 1983.
Last week, the government announced that it would be withdrawing funding to the former Navy Mechanics School (ESMA): a former clandestine detention center which was turned into a museum and UNESCO World Heritage Site. The government announced at the start of this year that the center, based in Buenos Aires, would undergo “restructuring”, with workers told to remain on “passive guard” at home.
Now, the center will receive no funding for 60 days, beginning Tuesday April 1.
On Thursday April 3, Argentina’s Ministry for Justice revealed: “We have cut off a multi-million-dollar fund managed by 13 human rights organizations, which spent more than $3 billion pesos of taxpayer money annually, without any oversight or supervision. The Ministry of Justice has decided to initiate an audit and suspend all payments until there is transparent accounting.”
Argentina’s Minister for Justice Mariano Cúneo Libarona stated on his personal X account: “Human rights organizations were managing an uncontrolled annual fund of $3,359,732,866 [pesos] to maintain the former ESMA site. Just mowing the lawn cost $16,000,000 [pesos] a month.”
Media outlet Clarín reported that the cuts to funding will mean that activities such as the maintenance of the 17-hectare site, in addition to the contracting of staff and security, will cease.
Human rights organization Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence (HIJOS Capital) issued a statement in response to the announcement in which it declared: “We feel compelled to clarify that the administration of the funds of the tripartite Public Entity in all its actions has been signed off by the three constituent parties, which include the City of Buenos Aires and the Secretary for Human Rights of the Nation, Alberto Baños.” The third party is a group of human rights organizations.
The State Workers Association (ATE) has said that 176 workers still employed at the site will not be able to receive their salaries for March.
ATE told Clarín that the government’s announcement came despite the fact it had agreed, following a meeting on Tuesday April 1, to give the museum and its constituent parties until Friday April 10 to respond to “administrative requests” which included the “presentation of financial statements, audit plans, etc.”
In January, Milei also closed the Haroldo Conti Library and Museum, located within ESMA, to the public. The memory site is dedicated to the writer who was “disappeared” during the dictatorship. The site was told that an audit was required, all employees’ salaries were frozen, and many lost their jobs. As with the ESMEA, the remaining staff were put on “passive guard”.
The Virrey Cevallos memory site— another former clandestine detention center— was also closed down in January. That same month, plaques commemorating the military junta trials were removed from Argentina’s Supreme Court.
Read more: Plaques commemorating military junta trials removed from Argentina’s Supreme Court
Then, just one month later, a judge blocked plans by the Argentine Navy to destroy documents from its general archive. The documents were believed to potentially contain crucial information about dictatorship-era crimes.
Milei has previously rejected the widely accepted estimate that 30,000 people were “disappeared” during the dictatorship, instead claiming that the actual number was much lower, at 8,753.
Featured image credit:
Image: ESMA
Photographer: Adam Jones
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adam_jones/5952771768
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
