National Congress. Explanations are requested from the Ministry of Justice for the dismissals at Sites of Memory

Concerned about the layoffs at the Sites of Memory, deputies from the Left Front, the Socialist Party and the Union for the Fatherland met last week with workers fighting against layoffs in the sector. This week, at the request of Christian Castillo (PTS/FITU), they presented a Request for information from the Ministry of Justice and its Human Rights Secretariat to find out the reasons for the policy of emptying the staff and the immediate destination of the tasks they perform. In turn, from the Center of Professionals for Human Rights (Ce.Pro.Dh), the lawyer and deputy (mc) Myriam Bregman, made a request for access to public information demanding that the reasons for the dismissals be detailed.

With the @ceprodh We are submitting a request for information regarding the dismissal of workers belonging to the Spaces for Memory and the Promotion of Human Rights, which depend on the National Directorate of Sites and Spaces of Memory. These sites constitute proof… pic.twitter.com/qrT4pLkdz4

— Myriam Bregman (@myriambregman) July 18, 2024

As explained in the project presented to Congress by Christian Castillo, which is also signed by the deputies of the Left Front Nicolás del Caño and Alejandro Vilca (PTS), Mónica Schlotthauer (IS) and Vanina Biasi (PO) and the deputies Esteban Paulón (PS), Juan Marino and Mónica Macha (UP), the Sites of Memory in Argentina are mostly places that were used as Clandestine Detention Centers during the last civil-military dictatorship and are considered historical heritage and material evidence of the crimes committed under the genocidal plan. It is up to the State institutions to guarantee this evidence, among other things, in the trials that are being carried out and that may be carried out.

As can be expected, the work carried out by those who maintain these spaces is fundamental. However, the request for information presented by the deputies warns, for example, that it is not clear what will happen to the tasks carried out by the 28 employees who were laid off, without their already precarious contracts being renewed. These are particularly workers who maintain the Sites where the clandestine detention centers Olimpo, Club Atlético, Automotores Orletti, ESMA, Virrey Cevallos operated, as well as in the National Directorate of Memory Sites and the Federal Council and who work in the areas of Education, Communication and Culture, Research and Archives.

With their dismissal, it becomes a big question mark how they will be able to guarantee the tasks they perform, which range from planning, coordinating and supervising archaeological research tasks on the materiality of the sites where these Clandestine Detention Centers operated to developing excavation tasks, analysis, classification, interpretation of findings; or conserving and restoring the heritage; or monitoring the environmental conditions of the storage space; or documenting and recording the material, preparing the storage system for each collection or guaranteeing the maintenance and comprehensive and specific cleaning of sites and laboratories with non-corrosive materials.

“In addition, the government has decided to defund the budget allocations allocated to the operation of the activities of these Spaces,” Castillo warns, and highlights that overall this is an attack on the fight against impunity of yesterday and today. In the case of the Memory Sites, this is in particular a policy that undermines the fight to end this impunity from the State itself: “The development of trials against crimes against humanity depends largely on the preservation of these Sites and therefore also on the work of those who guarantee their operation: workers whose seniority ranges between 14 and 19 years, who receive low salaries and have precarious contracts that define a labor flexibility that drags on government after government,” denounces the project promoted by the PTS/FITU deputy, whose full version can be read below.

Firing almost half of the small number of employees that these Spaces already had implies moving forward in a process of emptying them, with the prospect of closure by the State, to favour impunity. From the benches of the Left Front they advance that they will insist on the treatment of this and other projects that were presented since the beginning of the year warning about this situation.

In the same vein, those dismissed from the Memory Sites also spread a petition on Friday 19 for reinstatement, where they claim that 90% of the workforce at the Memory Spaces is at risk, threatening the operation of the same and potentially leading to its closure.

With this policy, the Government attacks materially but also symbolically: along with the vindication of the last dictatorship, it promotes official visits to genocidaires imprisoned in Ezeiza to support their claims.

It cannot be ignored. The deniers of the 30,000 are not only seeking impunity for the perpetrators of the genocidal plan, who every day remain silent about where the sons and daughters whose identity they stole are, but also to criminalize the protests and struggles of today, as was recently seen with the response to the thousands of people who took to the streets in rejection of the Ley Bases.

PR_Request for Information_Site… by Sol Bajar