Between 1976 and 1983, a Navy school on Avenida del Libertador operated as one of the largest clandestine centres of detention, torture and extermination of Argentina's last dictatorship. Around five thousand people are believed to have passed through it, and most are still missing. Today it is a memory site and a UNESCO World Heritage property. Thirteen stops take in the four-column portico, the recovered grounds, the Officers' Club, the basement, Capucha, the Fishbowl and the storeroom, the room of the pregnant women, the Grandmothers' house, the avenue where the cars drove in, the 1978 World Cup stadium, the monument to the victims, the sculpture facing the river and the square where the Mothers still walk. Approximate audio duration: 25 minutes.
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La ESMA: un centro clandestino de la dictadura sobre una avenida de Buenos Aires
Entre 1976 y 1983, una escuela de la Marina sobre la avenida del Libertador funcionó como uno de los mayores centros clandestinos de detención, tortura y exterminio de la última dictadura argentina. Se estima que por allí pasaron unas cinco mil personas, y la mayoría sigue desaparecida. Hoy es un sitio de memoria declarado Patrimonio Mundial. Trece paradas entre el pórtico de las cuatro columnas, el predio recuperado, el Casino de Oficiales, el sótano, Capucha, la Pecera y el Pañol, la habitación de las embarazadas, la casa de las Abuelas, la avenida por donde entraban los autos, el estadio del Mundial 78, el monumento a las víctimas, la escultura que mira al río y la plaza donde caminan las Madres. Duración aproximada de audio: 25 minutos.
Tour stops
13 stops · ~25 min of audio · 15.03 km on foot (~3 h 45 min walking) · about 4 h 15 min in total
You are standing on Avenida del Libertador, in the Núñez neighbourhood. In front of you is a white building with four columns and a pediment, set in lawns. It looks like a university faculty, or a ministry. That appearance is part of the story.
This was the Navy Mechanics School, known by its Spanish initials as ESMA. From the 1920s the Argentine Navy trained its technical petty officers here: mechanics, electricians, operators. The grounds cover about seventeen hectares between this avenue and Avenida Lugones.
On 24 March 1976 the armed forces overthrew Argentina's constitutional government…
2
The Recovered Grounds
You are now walking along an internal road, between trees and low buildings in a similar style. There are signs, murals, people working in offices. This is today the Space for Memory and Human Rights.
Throughout the dictatorship, the whole site kept functioning as a school. Hundreds of cadets and petty officers studied, stood guard and marched along these roads. The clandestine centre operated in one of these buildings, in the middle of that routine.
After democracy returned in 1983, the Navy kept the site for two more decades. In 1998 President Carlos Menem's government even announced it wo…
3
The Officers' Club
In front of you stands a three-storey white building with a red-tiled roof and an attic. This is the Officers' Club, the Casino de Oficiales. In military Spanish, casino has nothing to do with gambling: it means the officers' residence and mess.
This is where the clandestine centre operated. Navy officers slept and lived on the middle floors. In the basement and the attic, below and above them, were the abducted.
It was run by Task Group 3.3.2, under the authority of Admiral Massera. One of its best-known commanders was Captain Jorge Eduardo Acosta, nicknamed the Tiger. Its squads left from …
4
The Basement
You have gone down into the Officers' Club basement. It is a low-ceilinged space with columns and bare walls. Today it is empty, apart from the museum's texts and projections.
The abducted arrived at night or before dawn, hooded, in the boot or on the floor of a car. They were brought in through a side door and taken down a staircase. The basement was the first place they reached.
The torture rooms were here. Victims were interrogated with electric prods and beatings, sometimes for days. Survivors remembered that one of these rooms was called the egg box, because its walls were lined with eg…
5
Capucha, the Hood
You are in the attic of the Officers' Club, under the sloping tiled roof. There are wooden beams, small windows and little light. This space had a name: Capucha, the Hood.
The name came from what the prisoners wore. They spent their days hooded, with shackles on their ankles and sometimes handcuffed. They lay on thin mattresses in cubicles separated by low wooden partitions.
They were not allowed to speak to one another or to look at each other. Guards watched them constantly. To go to the toilet they had to ask permission and were led there in a line.
Look down and think about the layout o…
6
The Fishbowl and the Storeroom
You are in the area where two spaces with innocent-sounding names once operated: the Pañol and the Pecera. In the Navy, the pañol is a ship's storeroom.
ESMA's storeroom held what the task groups carried off from the homes of the people they abducted. Furniture, fridges, clothes, books, appliances. The looting was systematic, and in some cases the perpetrators also took possession of victims' properties.
The Pecera, the Fishbowl, was a set of offices with glass partitions built on this floor. It got its name because the people inside could be seen from outside, like fish in a bowl.
There, a…
7
The Room of the Pregnant Women
You are in front of a small room with white walls. It is one of the hardest places on this route. Abducted women who were pregnant were held here.
ESMA operated as a clandestine maternity ward. Pregnant prisoners came both from ESMA itself and on transfer from other clandestine centres. They were kept alive until they gave birth.
The births took place inside the building, attended by Navy doctors. Some prisoners assisted at those births and later testified about them. Many mothers were able to keep their children for only a few days, sometimes a few hours.
Afterwards, in most cases, the mot…
8
The Grandmothers and the Grandchildren
You are in front of the House for Identity, the building the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo have on these grounds. It is a place of exhibitions and work, open to the public.
The Grandmothers began organising in 1977. They were women searching at once for their disappeared sons and daughters and for the grandchildren who had been born in captivity or abducted along with their parents.
For years they investigated on their own: suspicious birth certificates, children who looked nothing like their supposed parents, tips that arrived by letter. Then they looked for a scientific way to prove kinshi…
9
The Avenue Where the Cars Drove In
You are back on Avenida del Libertador. Around you are apartment blocks, a petrol station, buses. Núñez is a residential, middle- and upper-class neighbourhood.
The task groups' cars drove in and out through these gates. They were often Ford Falcons without number plates. For neighbours at the time, military vehicles moving in and out of a Navy school did not attract attention.
From here, in December 1977, an operation was launched against a group of relatives of the disappeared who met at the Santa Cruz church in the San Cristóbal neighbourhood. An ESMA officer, Alfredo Astiz, had infiltrat…
10
The 1978 World Cup Stadium
In front of you is the Monumental stadium, home of River Plate. It is the largest stadium in Argentina. It stands a little over a kilometre from the Officers' Club you have just left.
In 1978 Argentina hosted the World Cup. The dictatorship used it as a showcase. One official slogan of those years claimed that Argentines were right and human, a wordplay on human rights in reply to the denunciations coming from abroad.
The tournament opened in this stadium on 1 June 1978. The final was played here on 25 June: Argentina beat the Netherlands three to one after extra time, with two goals from Ma…
11
The Walls of Names
You are in the Park of Memory, on the Costanera Norte riverside road, next to the University City campus. Ahead of you a long wound opens in the grass: the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism.
Walk between the walls. They are concrete stelae covered with porphyry plaques engraved with names. The names are ordered by year of disappearance or murder, and alphabetically within each year.
Next to each name is the person's age. Notice how many were twenty, or younger. Beside some women's names is the word embarazada: pregnant.
The monument was inaugurated in 2007. It has room for thirty t…
12
The River and the Wednesdays
You are on the bank of the Río de la Plata. The water is brown, and the river is so wide that the far shore, Uruguay, cannot be seen. A few metres out, standing on the water, is a stainless steel figure: a boy with his back to you, looking at the horizon.
This is the sculpture Reconstruction of the Portrait of Pablo Míguez, by the artist Claudia Fontes. Pablo was fourteen when he was abducted with his mother in 1977. Survivors saw him at ESMA. He is still missing. The figure stands with its back to you, looking out over the river.
Now you can understand the silence of Wednesdays in Capucha. …
13
The Mothers' March
You are in Plaza de Mayo, facing the Casa Rosada, the seat of government. In the middle stands the May Pyramid. Look at the ground around it: white headscarves are painted on the paving stones.
On 30 April 1977 a group of fourteen mothers came to this square to demand news of their disappeared children. One of them was Azucena Villaflor. Because gatherings were banned, the police ordered them to move along. They began walking in pairs around the pyramid.
That was the start of the march of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. Over the years it settled on Thursday afternoons. To recognise each other,…
How long does the "ESMA: a Dictatorship's Secret Detention Centre on a Buenos Aires Avenue" audio tour take?
It has about 25 minutes of audio across 13 stops and a 15.03 km walking route (~3 h 45 min on foot). Plan roughly 4 h 15 min in total, or split it up: you can pause and resume anytime.
Where does the tour start?
At stop 1, "A School on the Avenue" (coordinates -34.5366, -58.4647). The app guides you from stop to stop with a map.
Is it free?
Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.
Why use an audio tour instead of a guided group tour?
No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for. Start at any time of day, on your own schedule. Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route. Works offline once downloaded.
What languages is this audio guide available in?
This tour is available in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian. Switch languages anytime from inside the app.
Do I need wifi to listen to this tour?
No. Download the tour over wifi before you go, then listen without any data connection.
How do I access this tour?
Download Trevurs on iPhone (App Store) or Android (Google Play), then open Buenos Aires and pick "ESMA: a Dictatorship's Secret Detention Centre on a Buenos Aires Avenue". No account required to start.
