Navy Petty-Officers School

Navy School of Mechanics
Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada
Former names	Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada
General information
Location	Núñez, Buenos Aires
Country	Argentina
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name	ESMA Museum and Site of Memory – Former Clandestine Center of Detention, Torture and Extermination
Type	Cultural
Criteria	vi
Designated	2023 (45th session)
Reference no.	1681[1]

The Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (Spanish: Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada, commonly referred to by its acronym ESMA) has gone through three major transformations throughout its history.^[2] Originally ESMA served as an educational facility of the Argentine Navy. The original ESMA was a complex located at 8151 Libertador Avenue, in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, in the barrio of Núñez. Additionally, It was the seat of U.T.3.3.2—Unidad de Tareas (Task Unit) 2 of G.T.3.3 [es].^[3]

However, ESMA operated as an illegal, secret detention center for opponents of the 1976–1983 military dictatorship, described as "subversives"^[4] during what was described as the Dirty War. The military took the babies born to mothers imprisoned there, suppressed their true identities, and allowed military families and associates of the regime to illegally adopt them. The Unidad de Tareas (Task Unit) was responsible for thousands of instances of forced disappearance, torture, and murder during this time. ESMA was the largest detention center of its kind during the Dirty War.

The ESMA building has been converted into a memorial museum to show and honor those who were "disappeared" during Argentina's Dirty War. The National Congress passed a law on 5 August 2004 that converted the ESMA complex into a museum, the Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Espacio para la Memoria y para la Promoción y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos). On 10 June 2014 the Museo Malvinas was inaugurated in the ESMA campus, a museum about the islands disputed and fought over by the United Kingdom (calling them Falkland Islands) and Argentina (Islas Malvinas).^[5]

The School, once again legitimate, was renamed Escuela de Suboficiales de la Armada (ESSA; English: Navy Petty-Officers' School) in 2001, and moved in 2005 to the Puerto Belgrano Naval Base,^[6] 28 km from the city of Bahía Blanca, and about 600 km southwest of Buenos Aires.

The site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023 under the name 'ESMA Museum and Site of Memory – Former Clandestine Center of Detention, Torture and Extermination'.^[7]