Demonstration in the Pozo of Banfield on the 39th anniversary of the Night of the Pencils.

The Pozo de Banfield is a former Buenos Aires Provincial Police station that was used as an Argentine clandestine detention center from November 1974 to October 1978, during the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983.[1][2][3][4] This detention center was an integral part of what came to be known as the Circuito Camps, and was one of the first to operate as such during the constitutional government of Isabel Perón, nearly 18 months before the 1976 coup d'état.[2][4] With the nationwide extension of the 1975 annihilation decrees, provincial police forces were placed under command of the Army, and subsequently the Banfield Investigations Brigade became subordinated to the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Regiment of the Argentine Army.

Location and architecture

The three-storey building is on the corner of Siciliano and Vernet streets in Villa Centenario in the city of Banfield, Greater Buenos Aires. The commander's office, a torture room, and other facilities were located on the ground floor. On the first floor there were cells, offices, the staff dining room and canteen, kitchens, and restrooms, while on the second floor there were more cells and another restroom.[5]

A total of 309 Argentines, Uruguayans, Paraguayans and Chileans were detained in the center. Ninety-seven detainees had been kidnapped in forced disappearances; five were set free and subsequently killed.[2] Among the prisoners were four pregnant women who gave birth while detained, and whose children remain unidentified.[3] Housing women during the last months of pregnancy and separating newborns from their mothers is considered to be one of the main functions of Pozo de Banfield.[6] Most of the students abducted during the Night of the Pencils in September 1976 were detained for three months in the building.[7]

The building had been the headquarters of the Banfield Investigations Brigade since the 1960s, and continued in this capacity throughout its use as a clandestine detention center. In 2006, long after the end of the dictatorship, it was handed over to the Secretariat of Human Rights at the request of social organisations, to use as a memory site (sitio de memoria).[8][9]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Recordarán en el Pozo de Banfield a los estudiantes desaparecidos durante La Noche de los Lápices
  2. 1 2 3 Circuito Camps; Pozo de Banfield.
  3. 1 2 ¿Qué fue el Pozo de Banfield? Archived 9 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  4. 1 2 "El Pozo de Banfield se convertirá en un Espacio de Memoria y Justicia". Tiempo Argentino (in Spanish). 12 September 2010. Archived from the original on 9 April 2013. Retrieved 10 March 2011.
  5. ↑ Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la desaparición de personas
  6. ↑ "Funcionarios y legisladores recorrieron el "Pozo de Banfield"". Rebanadas de Realidad. 13 September 2006. Archived from the original on 18 May 2008.
  7. ↑ "El Pozo de Banfield" (in Spanish). Página 12. 7 September 2006.
  8. ↑ El ex Pozo de Banfield, El País, 24 March 2006
  9. ↑ Eduardo Luis Duhalde recorrió las instalaciones del "Pozo de Banfield", La Nación
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