The Milei administration has fired the executive director of the Museum and Site of Memory at the former Officers’ Quarters of the Navy School of Mechanics, known in Argentina as the ex-ESMA. Mayki Gorosito had held the position since April 2022.

Gorosito, who joined the museum in 2019, expressed concern for the future of the institution.

“The museum is an indispensable tool for democracy that has been under constant attack,” she told the Herald. “Its leadership is now in the hands of a libertarian who no one really knows.”

Last month, on the ten-year anniversary of the museum’s opening, President Javier Milei placed the ex-ESMA site under the purview of the International Center for the Promotion of Human Rights (CIPDH, by its Spanish acronym). That office is currently being led by lawyer, journalist, and pro-life activist Ana Belén Marmora, although she has not been officially named CIPDH director. 

Marmora informed Gorosito on Wednesday that she had been let go. 

The association for the center’s survivors issued a statement stating that this “cannot be understood as an isolated administrative decision.”

“It is a clear manifestation of the systematic disregard for the policy of memory, truth, and justice, built on decades of struggle by human rights organizations, victims of state terrorism, and Argentine society as a whole.” 

“Those who are promoting these measures today are blinded by ideological hatred, denialism, and revenge and seek to dismantle key symbols of our democracy,” the statement continued. “The ex-ESMA memorial site is not a neutral space: it is a living testimony to the horror of the dictatorship but also to the transformative power of justice and memory.”

A frequent government target

This is not the first time that the administration has targeted the ex-ESMA as part of its chainsaw austerity plan. In December 2024, the government laid off 2,400 workers in the Justice Ministry, including 400 in the Human Rights Secretariat. The following month, it announced that it would be closing the museum’s Haroldo Conti Cultural Center due to “internal restructuring.” Then in April, Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona froze a fund designated for the ex-ESMA complex, citing excess lawn-mowing expenses. Human rights groups maintain that money paid the salaries of 176 employees.

Milei’s latest executive decree, issued on May 19, will reduce Human Rights Secretariat staff by 30%.

Last week, the Justice Ministry confirmed that it will be repurposing one of the buildings within the former ESMA complex as an office for federal prosecutors. 

“This property, previously used for ideological programs and political party activities, will be used to strengthen the judicial infrastructure and contribute directly to the fight against insecurity,” the government explained in a communiqué at the time.

An estimated 5,000 people were detained, tortured, and disappeared from the ESMA clandestine center between 1976 and 1983. Congress passed a law converting the former Officers’ Quarters building into a memorial site in 2004, and the museum was inaugurated on May 19, 2015, under then-President Cristina Kirchner. 

In 2023, UNESCO declared the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory a World Heritage Site.