People were tortured and drugged here. After being drugged, they were thrown from cargo planes into the sea. In anticipation of an inspection by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, the stairway on the right (photographed in 2006) was built in order to make the building appear different from the one survivors/ escapees had described. The building was re-renovated to return it to its original form and that stairway no longer exists.

Detainees were held in two attic spaces (Capucha and Capuchita) in the Casino de Oficiales (officers quarters). The word capucha means hood and the spaces were named for the fact that detainees were hooded. I’ve intentionally added a bit of color to this grim space where detainees slept, usually hooded and shackled.

Detained women gave birth here on a metal bench, frequently hooded and shackled. The babies were then taken away and illegally “adopted” by military or police families, or their friends. An estimated 500 children disappeared, either born in captivity or taken as children. 128 have been located, thanks to over 40 years of work by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. These “living disappeared” can now embrace their true identities.

Patricia Roisinblit, the daughter of Rosa Roisinblit, Vice President of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, was allowed to hold her baby Rodolfo for a while in this cell. Rodolfo/Guillermo was located in 2000, thanks to an anonymous tip from a neighbor.

This space is part of the Capuchita. The words are from a different building.

When I showed this image and the two that follow to a friend whose brother disappeared, she saw them as a chronological series. In the first, she saw the dictatorship, with the background suggesting the ominous water and the death flights. In the next, she saw the bright area as representing hope. And in the third, she saw the end of the dictatorship. When I suggested that interpretation to 24 other people in Argentina, they thought it made sense.