The Cacha. Clandestine Detention Center that operated between 1977 and 1978 on the outskirts of La Plata , Argentina . One of the most sophisticated of the dictatorship for being a center where the Army, the Navy and penitentiary personnel acted jointly in a relatively independent manner. Some of his interrogators were students from the Faculties of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine of the National University of La Plata who had become civilian intelligence agents.
Summary
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- 1 Location
- 2 Historical review
- 3 Description
- 4 Trial of the repressors
- 5 Sources
Location
It was located in Area 113 of the Command of the 1st Army Corps, on the grounds of Prison Unit Number 1 of the Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service, in a building of the old transmitting plant of Radio Provincia, in Lisandro Olmos , district of La Plata .
Historical review
At the beginning of 1977 , the Federal Capital and the province of Buenos Aires were under the military jurisdiction of the Command of the First Army Corps, at that time under the command of General Guillermo Suárez Mason .
The line of command continued in Subzone 11 and ended in Area 113 for the districts of La Plata , Brandsen , General Paz and Monte. In this area, they implemented several clandestine detention centers, the COT1 in Martínez, the Banfield well, the Quilmes well, Arana, the Eighth Police Station and the Investigations Brigade in La Plata and La Cacha.
Colonel Barufaldi was head of the Mechanized Infantry Regiment 7, responsible for the 113 security area (from October 1977 to January 1979 ), responsible for the Arana concentration camps, BIM, La Plata Investigations Brigade, police stations 5 and 8, the Helmet or Arana 2 (depending directly on him), and Infantry Guard of the Buenos Aires Police.
In “La Cacha” the repressors who performed functions distributed different roles, repeating the mechanics used in other similar clandestine centers. There was a separation between “guards” who were in charge of caring for and feeding the detainees and “gangs” who had the task of kidnapping, transferring, torturing and killing.
Description
The construction consisted of a ground floor, a first floor and a basement. On the mezzanine, between the upper floor and the ground floor, the hostages remained chained. Recorders were installed there in order to obtain information on the dialogues between the detainees when they assumed that they were not being watched. Its building structure was completely destroyed by the repressors to erase all traces of its existence.
Trial of the oppressors
On October 24, 2014 , after 10 months of hearing, the trial for crimes against humanity in the clandestine detention center “La Cacha” ended. Fifteen repressors were sentenced to life imprisonment, another three to 13 years in prison, one to 12, while one defendant was acquitted. These were the most relevant points of the judgment of the Federal Oral Criminal Court No. 1 of La Plata.
In addition to the heavy penalties imposed, the judgment had as salient points the exhortation of the Court to the powers of the State to disaffect the places where the Clandestine Center “La Cacha” and the Intelligence Detachment 101 of the Army operated and turn them into sites of memory, and so that “those convicted are discharged by exhoneration” and order “the suspension of the enjoyment of all retirement, pension or withdrawal”.
The trial for the crimes in La Cacha began on December 18 , 2013 . 134 witnesses testified throughout 37 hearings dedicated to investigating the responsibility of the 21 defendants who came to trial for 127 cases of victims who passed through that clandestine center in 1977 and for two homicides that occurred in 1976 on public roads.
