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220 8 UBICACIÓN: COSTANERA NORTE A METROS DE CIUDAD UNIVERSITARIA. M . Acosta J. B. Alberdi Aranguren Avellaneda A z u l Bacacay B a ra d e ro Bogota B o la ñ o s C a n d e la ri a D o lo re s E n s e n a d a Gral. V. Flores Av. Rivadavia Cnel. L. Falcón O . B e n e d e tt i J . M a rt í P e rg a m in o P o r t e la C o n c o rd ia S a n N ic o lá s B a h ía B la n c a E . L a m a rc a J . V . G o n z á le z H e lg u e ra A rg e ri c h A v . N a z c a C a m p a n a C u e n c a Q u ir n o Av. Segurola Yerbal Est. Floresta 167 FCDFS LOCATION: VENANCIO FLORES 3519/21 TRANSPORTATION: BUSES: 1, 2, 5, 25, 36, 49, 55, 63, 85, 88, 92, 99, 104, 113, 126, 136, 153, 163, 172, 180. TRAIN: FLORESTA STATION (SARMIENTO LINE). Operation Condor, the plan that coordinated the repressive efforts of several South American dictatorships, was run out of an innocent-looking location: a car repair shop . Some three hundred people are estimated to have passed through this building that was between a family home and a school, in the midst of an ordinary neighborhood . Survivors recognized the location by the noise of the train that passes in front of the building and the voices of children playing at the school . Description The center operated from May to November 1976 under a series of military nicknames: El Jardín (“the garden ”), El Taller (“the workshop”) and La cueva de Flores (“the Flores cave”) . When it was rented by the State Intelligence Agency (SIDE, Secretar ía de Inteligencia de Estado), its sign read Automotores Cortell, in reference to the owner’s name . Yet it came to be known as Automotores Orletti (Orletti car repair), perhaps through a clerical error . Vehicles carrying prisoners entered through a metal garage door that was opened from the inside when kidnappers radioed ahead with the command Operación Sesamo (Operation Sesame) . They entered a large room divided by a curtain, behind which the prisoners were kept on the concrete floor, which survivors remembered as cold, dirty, and greasy . The floor was strewn with vehicles and chassis, some even belonging to the victims . Sometimes the guards ran the engines to suffocate the prisoners or to drown out the sounds and screams of those who were being tortured . Many witnesses and investigations have demonstrated that the military derived special sadistic pleasure from kidnapping and torturing family 167 . Automotores Orletti THE FORMER CLANDESTINE DETENTION CENTER VIEWED FROM THE TRAIN. FLORESTA 221 members together . In Automotores Orletti this spiteful practice was applied to Carlos and Manuela Santucho, the brother and sister of guerrilla leader Mario Roberto Santucho, who headed the PRT–ERP* (Workers’ Revolutionary Party – People’s Revolutionary Army) . Survivor Enrique Rodríguez Larreta has described what happened to them inside Automotores Orletti . Prisoners were hung from a hook and submerged into a two-hundred-liter water tank that stood in the middle of the room . The soldiers forced the prisoners to watch as they killed Carlos Santucho by submerging him repeatedly while his sister read aloud the newspaper article about her brother Roberto Santucho’s murder that same day . A stairway on the right side of the garage led to five rooms on the upper floor, each of which had a specific function: interrogations, torture, or detention . After the military abandoned the building, the owner had to take down the cardboard and styrofoam sheets that covered the walls, no doubt placed there to muffle the noise and avoid alerting the neighbors . Another large room held the office of Aníbal Gordon, head of operations at Orletti . Actor Marta Bianchi recalls entering after she was kidnapped while leaving the theater: “They took off my blindfold . There was a large desk in front of me; it was an office . Behind the desk was a flag, an enormous portrait of Hitler, one of Rosas, and one of Colonel Villar ” [AO .0467] . The repressors used another room for meetings . Members of a team that inspected the room in 2006 saw “Triple A”* written on the wall next to...

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