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Club Atlético, El Atlético or El Club was a clandestine detention, torture and extermination center that operated in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was located at 1266 Paseo Colón avenue, in the block bounded by San Juan, Cochabamba and Azopardo, in the San Telmo neighborhood. The origin of the name refers to the initials of its original name, Centro Antisubversivo.
Period of operation
Club Atlético operated between the months of February and December 1977. At the beginning of 1978, the building was demolished to make way for the construction of the 25 de Mayo highway.1?3?4?5
Characteristics
Atlético worked in the basement of a three-story building that belonged to the Supply and Workshops Service of the Administrative Division of the Federal Police.3
On the first level there was a tiled room, which was accessed through glass doors, where there was a large desk and a small one; they identified and assigned a number to each detained-disappeared. From there, behind a concealed door, the basement was accessed.6?3?
The basement lacked ventilation and natural light. The temperature in summer was between 40 and 45 °C, while in winter it was very cold and the walls constantly distilled water due to the high humidity in the environment.6
The stairs through which one descended to the basement reached a room equipped with a ping pong table used by the repressors. To the side of it was a small guard room and two solitary cells, a torture room and others for nursing. There was also a kitchen, laundry room and showers, these with an opening that led to the external surface through which the guards observed the women.6?7?
From the kitchen towards the interior of the basement there was a cell called a "leonera" (place of concentration of detainees) with low partitions that separated boxes of 1.60 m by 0.60 m. Further on were two sectors of dungeons; one with 18 cells and the other with 23. All the cells were 2 m by 1.60 m and were between 3 and 3.50 m high. Between the dungeon sectors there were three torture rooms (called "operating rooms"), each with a heavy metal table.4?6?7?
Repressive action
According to the testimonies of survivors, when the detainees arrived at the center they were taken out of the cars and violently transported down the stairs that led to the basement. There, all their personal belongings were removed and shackles were placed on them and they were nominated with a letter and a number with which they were called during captivity.3
The task force based at El Atlético operated mainly in Buenos Aires and Greater Buenos Aires, but testimonies are known that show that the kidnappings have reached places as far away as San Carlos de Bariloche, from where Juan Marcos Hermann had been brought in by plane. .1?
The average number of kidnappings was six or seven per day, but there were times when up to 20 people entered in one day. At regular intervals, a large group of detained-disappeared left for an unknown destination.1
The center had a capacity for about 200 people and, according to investigations, between 1,500 and 1,800 people would have passed through there during its operation.3?4? This information was deduced from the letters that preceded the number assigned to each detainee, since each letter He headed a hundred. Due to the testimonies registered in the CONADEP, in November 1977, the letter X of said numbering was reached.1
On the night of December 28, the detainees were transferred to El Banco, located about 200 meters from the intersection of the General Ricchieri Highway and Camino de Cintura, in the district of La Matanza.
Recovery of the center
With the demolition of the building and the subsequent construction of the 25 de Mayo highway, the basement was literally under a mountain of earth. Some of the elements of Club Atléticos infrastructure were used to build the CCD known as El Olimpo.8?3?
After the return of democracy in 1983, various human rights organizations and survivors began to demand the excavation of the site where Club Atlético was located.
On July 7, 1996, the so-called "Days for Memory" began, which were often responded to with police repression. On April 13, 2002, the Government of the City of Buenos Aires began excavation works at the site.84
With the excavation it was possible to find remains of the dividing walls of the cells with inscriptions of the detainees, the most legible being one that reads: Help me Lord (sic). More than 20,000 objects and fragments were also found; the dividing walls of the isolation cells; materials related to the deposit of police supplies were found, such as numerous fragments of uniforms, shoes, caps, clubs, remains of clothing, plastic containers, bottles, coins, and even a ping pong ball was found under the elevator, a game that the police The testimonies of the survivors coincided as frequent among the torturers.4
The project pursues the realization of an archaeological, documentary and testimonial recovery work of what happened in order to create a place of memory where what happened there during the self-styled National Reorganization Process is explained.8?
Interactive virtual reconstruction
Since March 24, 2014, a virtual reconstruction of Club Atlético has been on the web. It is an interactive free access documentary made by the multidisciplinary research group Huella Digital. In it you can see the clandestine center as it was in 1977, visiting it in first person. While the tour is carried out, testimonies of survivors are heard and audiovisual material from the time can be accessed.9?
AWARD | LHN FORMER CCDTYE CLUB ATLÉTICO
Client: MINISTRY OF PUBLIC WORKS
Place: City of Buenos Aires
Opening date: 07/06/2023 12:00 pm
Official budget: $1,200,000,000 See Tender
PRE-AWARDEE: NAVAL WORKSHOPS DARSENA NORTE SACIYN $ 2,268,689,771.12 |
