August 9, 2020
Plaque at location where 2 Cuban diplomats were kidnapped. Photo: Bill Hackwell
The Argentine Movement of Solidarity with Cuba (MasCuba) will lead today a virtual event to honor two young Cuban diplomats who were kidnapped and killed during the last military dictatorship in that South American country (1976-1983).
Forty-four years after those events, in which Jesús Cejas Arias and Crescencio Galañena Hernández were kidnapped, the solidarity activists will use their webinar to honor these two young men, victims of one of the many atrocious crimes committed during one of Argentina’s darkest periods. The event will also take the opportunity to demonstrate the close ties of friendship between the two nations.
On August 9, 1976 Crescencio Galañena Hernández and Jesús Cejas Arias, 27 and 22 years old, respectively, were kidnapped by a group of agents of the dictatorship in the Belgrano neighborhood near the Cuban Embassy in Buenos Aires. They were than tortured and never seen alive again.
In June of 2012, 30 kilometers from the Argentine capital, children playing on an abandoned lot in the Buenos Aires town of Virreyes, in the San Fernando district, found Galañena Hernández’s body in a 200-liter metal tank filled with cement.
One year later, in 2013, after an extensive search in which the remains of Cejas Arias were discovered in another metal tank filled with cement along with the remains of an Argentinean who had worked in the embassy.
Both young men, who were serving as embassy guards, had been taken to Automotores Orletti, one of the many clandestine centers set up by the Secretariat of Intelligence (SIDE) in the Flores neighborhood.
There were other people kidnapped in the area during those events who were working in a commercial office and in an annexed school where the children of the Cuban diplomats attended classes. Only five of those 18 workers survived and only one body that of teacher Maria Rosa Clementi de Cancere, was found in another tank, near where the remains of Jesus and Crescencio were recovered.
Source: Cuba Debate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau