Argentina Honors Cuban Diplomats Murdered during the Military Dictatorship

The Argentine Movement of Solidarity with Cuba, among other institutions, pays homage on Monday to two Cuban diplomats who were murdered during the last military dictatorship in the South American nation (1976-1983).

Forty-five years after that sad event, in which Jesús Cejas Arias and Crescencio Galañena Hernández were kidnapped, prominent figures will join a panel organized to be broadcast live on social media, to honor two of the thousands of victims left by one of the worst periods of Argentina’s history, whose wounds are still open.

The event will be attended, among others, by former Argentine Ambassador to Cuba Juliana Marino and Ricardo Maggio, Coordinator of the Space for Memory and the promotion of human rights in what was once the clandestine detention and torture center (CCDT) known as Automotores Orletti, where the two young men were taken after being kidnapped.

Crescencio Galañena Hernández and Jesús Cejas Arias, 27 and 22 years old, respectively, were approached on August 9, 1976, by task forces of the Argentine dictatorship, very close to the embassy of the Caribbean nation in Buenos Aires, in the Belgrano neighborhood, who kidnapped, tortured and disappeared them.

In June 2012, almost 36 years later, 30 kilometers from the Argentine capital, children playing in an abandoned property in the Buenos Aires town of Virreyes, in the San Fernando district, found the body of Galañena Hernández in a 200-liter metal tank filled with cement.

A year later, in 2013, after a thorough search in which other remains were found in the same conditions, including that of an Argentine woman who worked at the embassy, the body of Jesús Cejas was found.