IN MARCH 1976, Argentina’s General Videla's military coup seized control of the country, enforcing a dictatorship that lasted six years.

Installing a reign of terror against all opponents, in his inaugural speech he proclaimed his aim: to eliminate subversive elements, ranging from communists, socialists and anarchists to trade unionists, intellectuals and the liberation-theory wing of the clergy, followed by their friends and associates and, finally, any citizens still undecided about the regime.
 
The School of Naval Mechanics (ESMA) was reassigned to the Military Intelligence Service, whose officials Claudio Fava calls “the street sweepers who would clean up the country,” in his novel The Silenced.

ESMA was one of about 340 concentration camps and torture chambers within Argentina and 90 per cent of the prisoners who were kidnapped and tortured there died.