Layout
The internal layout and conditions of the ESMA have been partly preserved, partly reconstructed from former prisoners' testimonies. Task Force 3.3.2 occupied the officers' mess (casino de oficiales), which had three floors plus a basement and a large attic.
Detainees were held in the basement, the attic and the third floor. The basement was the entry to ESMA for new prisoners, who were taken there for questioning under torture. It included an infirmary and a photographic laboratory. Its layout was modified in October 1977 and again in December 1978, in preparation for the upcoming visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States.
The ground floor was called Dorado, and hosted the intelligence and planning area, the officers' dining room, a conference room, and a meeting room. The first and second floors were occupied by the officers' rooms, to which the prisoners had no access.
The area termed Capucha (literally "hood") took up the right-hand side of the attic. It was L-shaped, and had a number of narrow cells (called camarotes, i. e. "cabins") lit only by small casement windows, each containing a mattress for the prisoner.
El Pañol, on the left-hand side of the attic, was the storage room for goods taken from the homes of detainees (furniture, utensils, clothes, etc.). Around the end of 1977 part of the Pañol was dedicated to La Pecera.
La Pecera was a series of small offices, plus a press archive and a library, under the supervision of closed-circuit TV surveillance cameras. Some of the prisoners stayed there part of the day.
Capuchita was a second attic for prisoners, similar to Capucha, but with even worse living conditions. It included two torture rooms. It was lent to the Navy's Intelligence Service, the Army and the Air Force for them to keep and torture their prisoners apart from the others. The Task Force also employed it when Capucha was too crowded.
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