Human rights organizations face mass layoffs in Argentina

On the grounds of a former naval academy in a Buenos Aires neighborhood, a pearl gray Skyvan PA-51 sits parked on a concrete walkway. 

It appears to be an ordinary plane. But between 1976 and 1983, it was used as an instrument of murder by Argentina’s military dictatorship. Up to 30,000 people are believed to have been “disappeared,” or murdered. 

Anyone deemed to be an enemy of the state could be ordered aboard the Skyvan to take a “death flight:” to be flown out over the Atlantic ocean and pushed out at 10,000 feet.

For decades, the planes used to commit these murders were thought to still exist, but had never been found. 

But an Argentine journalist, Miriam Lewin, tracked an aircraft down and decoded its flight logs, revealing its round trips out to the middle of the ocean. 

Lewin used the logs to learn the fate of 12 women, including two French nuns, who had been “disappeared” by the state in December 1977. She discovered they had been killed on one of these death flights.

In a 60 Minutes interview, correspondent Jon Wertheim asked Lewin why the military would resort to such a cruel method of murder.

“Death flights allowed them to disappear the bodies of the disappeared,” Lewin said. 

“No trail, no clues whatsoever that could incriminate them.”

Argentina’s military regime adopted another inhumane practice during this period: babies of pregnant mothers held in captivity were given to military families that wanted to adopt.

60 Minutes spoke with Guillermo Pérez Roisinblit, who was separated at birth from his biological mother Patricia while she was detained, and then raised by a family with connections to the military.

Wertheim asked Roisinblit how it felt to learn that the family who had raised him for 20 years, had abducted him and were not his biological parents.

“It’s a very, very confusing time… it’s like all the ties that you have at that moment are cut and you’re absolutely alone,” he said. 

The former naval academy in Buenos Aires, La Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, or ESMA, was used as a detention and torture facility during the military dictatorship. Lewin herself was once held prisoner there.

Through a reconciliation process known as Truth, Memory and Justice, ESMA was transformed into a museum and became a home for human rights organizations and government agencies who document and educate the public about the dictatorship’s crimes. 

In September 2023, ESMA was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The National Archive of Remembrance, where primary source documents related to the dictatorship are catalogued and used as a valuable resource for criminal prosecutions, is located at ESMA.

ESMA is also a base for Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, human rights organizations led by the mothers and grandmothers of those who had been disappeared by the dictatorship.

Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo uses DNA testing to identify stolen or missing children from the dictatorship era. They say they’ve found 139 children so far, and estimate hundreds more are waiting to be found. 

The president of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo is Estela de Carlotto. After decades of searching, she found her grandson. Her daughter Laura gave birth to him in captivity and was later killed. 

Carlotto told Wertheim in an interview, just before the current president Javier Milei took office, that government subsidies, that they have received for decades, are critical for their operations.

But President Milei campaigned on sweeping promises of austerity and budget cuts to right the Argentine economy. 

Starting this past December, human rights workers in government agencies, museums, research and investigative organizations have been laid off. 

According to a union representative for state employees, roughly half of the workers in the Human Rights Secretariat have been laid off or fired. 

At the National Archive for Remembrance, half of the investigative staff has been laid off. One employee remains in document conservation, and two people are left in digitization.

State agencies, including the Central Registry for Victims of State Terrorism and the National Identity Commission (CONADI), that help investigate the dictatorship’s crimes, and even the ESMA museum itself have also seen staff cuts.

An entire facility with staff that promotes human rights through the visual arts, the Haroldo Conti Cultural Center, has been shuttered indefinitely for “restructuring,” according to the National Human Rights Secretariat Alberto Baños.

In January, thousands of protestors rallied at ESMA to protest the layoffs and the closing of the cultural center. One of those protestors was Miriam Lewin. 

“We organized lots of activities to support the ex-ESMA, to support the cultural center, to support the archives, to support the workers that were fired,” she told 60 Minutes Overtime.

“We had this huge rally, with lots of young people, with the participation of musicians, dancers, writers, poets, and lots of human rights activists, lots of students, lots of survivors. [And] we had, of course, the Grandmothers and the Mothers for Plaza de Mayo.”

Lewin was at the protest that night when candles were lit. She looked around to see crowds surrounding the Skyvan used for the “death flights.” 

“And it’s [there] and can be seen as a symbol and a proof of state terrorism… so it was very, very moving,” she told 60 Minutes Overtime. 

The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have not received any subsidies from the Milei government, and their questions about the status of the funds remain unanswered.

In early January, Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona wrote on X that he had cut off all government funding to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, calling them a “con.”

60 Minutes Overtime reached out to Minister Libarona to ask about the status of these subsidies, but did not receive a response.

60 Minutes Overtime also reached out to Human Rights Secretariat Alberto Baños. He too did not answer questions about the layoffs.

“If I could talk to President Milei and Vice President Villarruel, I would ask them to stop this policy of destruction,” Lewin told Overtime. “We have grandmothers looking for their grandchildren.”

“I would ask them for empathy… ‘please, have some empathy.'”

The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer. Jane Greeley was the broadcast associate.