ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the former clandestine detention center that operated within the Naval Mechanics Superior School in Buenos Aires (the ex-ESMA). During the dictatorship, this site was the most infamous and largest of the regime’s concentration camps throughout the country. More than 5,000 people passed through this space, most of whom remain disappeared. The discussion in this chapter centers on the theme of justice as recovery as it manifests in three layers. The first layer is an individual one, in which we examine artist Nico Arrúe’s attempt to recover a relationship with his disappeared father through his artistic installation, “Presencias,” in one of ex-ESMA’s exhibition spaces. We then explore a societal layer as we connect Nico’s account and experience with broader collective struggles for human rights in Argentina. A third and final spatial layer provides a deeper understanding of how the ex-ESMA transitioned from naval base and clandestine detention center to memory space and headquarters for a range of human rights organizations. In the conclusion, we return to Nico’s “Presencias” to explore how this spatial layer helps explain the fluid relationship between individual and collective layers of recovery.
