The junta established an estimated 340 CCDs across Argentina. La Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada (ESMA), or Navy Mechanics School (pictured above) was the largest, with an estimated 5,000 disappeared (Anderson 211) passing through it's doors. More can be read about ESMA and the other CCDs at www.nuncamas.org.

One of the cornerstones of El Proceso was the elimination of people considered to be a potential threat to the government. Beginning in 1975 with the Independencia campaign in the Tucumán province (Comisión Naciónal sobre la Desaparición de Personas 11), the military secretly disappeared, or kidnapped, and tortured thousands of Argentine citizens. Their goal was not merely to silence these people, but to literally exclude them from public discourse and social reality (Comisión Naciónal sobre la Desaparición de Personas 3).

The people kidnapped by the military were by and large perceived and not actual threats. After the junta it was revealed that the vast majority of Los Desaparecidos were not involved in the violent, leftist guerilla groups. The military targeted social activists, Marxists, left-leaning Peronists, jews, catholic clergy working in slums, student activists and even people considered to have suspicious professions such as psychologists and sociologists (Sabato 4). 

The kidnappings, or disappearances as they became known, were carried out by military and police agents in civilian clothing, usually driving unmarked vehicles. The disappeared were driven to one of the estimated 340 secret detention centers known as Centros Clandestinos de Detencion or CCDs, where they were held indefinitely and subjected to extreme torture including rape, electrocution with cattle prods, beatings, and genital mutilation with razor blades (Anderson 209-213).

Ultimately Los Desaparecidos were either killed or released in a random location with the express threat of violence if they came forward and spoke publicly about their experiences. The bodies of the murdered disappeared were either buried in mass graves, burned, or tossed into the ocean. 

The disappearances occurred almost entirely off record. Los Desaparecidos had no legal recourse to contest their detention and they were never granted trials. Families and friends were not told where their loved ones were held and the bodies of the murdered disappeared were not returned to their families. Only one writ of habeas corpus was ever successfully filed. Even today the exact number of disappeared and their fates are unknown.