More than 2,000 people were kidnapped and disappeared by Argentina’s last dictatorship at the infamous “La Perla” death camp, in Córdoba province. Despite this, no bodies have ever been found there — until now.

After a 20-year investigation, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF, by its Spanish initials) has found scattered bones buried on the 14,000-hectare property. The finding could prove the existence of the mass graves long described by witnesses. 

The forensics experts’ hypothesis is that the remains are those of people killed and secretly buried at La Perla, which was one of the dictatorship’s largest death camps. Witnesses say these graves were later removed by the military. 

More than four decades after the end of the dictatorship, the discovery of such burial sites is still a key component of serving justice for the crimes against humanity committed during that period. While military criminals used death flights to disappear many of their more than 30,000 victims, many death camps across Argentina also buried their victims’ bodies in mass graves, such as the Vargas Pit in Tucumán. 

Named after a nearby town, La Perla operated between 1976 and 1978 on expropriated farmland that was turned into an army base. It was turned into a human rights memorial site in 2007. 

“Just like the ESMA victims were sent up [in the death flights], we were taken down [into the earth],” a witness who was held in La Perla stated during one trial examining the crimes that took place there.

In 2014, burned bone fragments of four people were discovered in old lime furnaces inside the premises. The EAAF later confirmed they belonged to four university students who had been kidnapped by a paramilitary unit in 1975, prior to the 1976 coup and before the establishment of the clandestine center. The fact that the most recent remains were discovered in an area witnesses had identified as a burial site suggests that, after decades of searching, the team may finally have found the resting place of dictatorship-era victims.

Judge Miguel Hugo Vaca Narvaja, who leads the investigation into illegal burials in La Perla, announced the findings on September 26, together with Córdoba government officials and EAAF members Silvina Turner, Guillermo Sapriganti and Anahí Ginarte.

The disappeared become murder victims

“When you find human remains and manage to identify them, then that person ceases to be a desaparecido. They become a murder victim,” the judge said.

According to Vaca Narvaja, the remains were found near an area called Loma del Torito.

They will now be analyzed to determine how old they are and confirm whether they belonged to people who were kidnapped and tortured at La Perla during the civic-military dictatorship. The effort to accurately characterize the nature of the findings is expected to last two to three months. 

“Twenty years of searching is a long time, but we’re talking about a 14,000 hectares property,” said Turner. 

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Teams have been searching for bodies at La Perla since 2002, a process that began after years of reports and bureaucracy. They have organized the search based mainly on testimonies given by witnesses in court, but they have also incorporated modern technology. Recently, a light detection and ranging system (LiDAR, by its Spanish acronym) was brought in. It uses laser light pulses to measure distances and generate three-dimensional representations of the area. 

In 2024, researchers narrowed their search down to 23 sites of interest. The most recent intervention zeroed in on an area of ​​approximately one hectare — but a second site, measuring 10 hectares, was also included as a site of interest.

The big breakthrough came when investigators unearthed aerial photographs from 1979 in the Municipality of Córdoba’s land registry. The National University of Río Cuarto’s forensic geology team examined the field results and the 1979 pictures, working on the hypothesis that the original mass graves were removed using heavy machinery. 

“The images from 1979 enabled a new analysis to limit the search to 10 hectares. And five days after starting there, we made a new discovery [of the bones]. This gives us an indication that it’s highly likely we’re working in the right place,” said Turner. 

The current phase of the excavation is expected to last 70 days, and EAAF experts say it is just the beginning. Turner emphasized that, while the findings are not a mass grave, they fit with images that revealed the land was moved around artificially in 1979. “It’s something to be happy about,” said Turner. 

“It’s highly possible that we will have more findings.”

Argentina’s biggest mass grave

A pioneering scientific organization that has worked in the search, recovery, analysis, and restitution of human remains across the globe, the EAAF is also currently working on the Vargas Pit (Pozo de Vargas) in Tucumán province, the largest known mass grave in Argentina. 

The Vargas Pit is located in Tafí Viejo, in the outskirts of San Miguel de Tucumán, the provincial capital. Built in the nineteenth century, the pit is three meters wide and 40 meters deep. It originally supplied water for steam trains, before falling into disuse.

Decades later, in 1975, the military repurposed the pit as a mass grave to eliminate guerrilla victims killed by the army during Operation Independence. Some of the victims who ended up in the pit were dead, but others were thrown in alive and then shot. After the 1976 coup, they continued using it to dispose of bodies — this time, the victims of state terrorism. A year later, it was filled and covered with dirt.

In April 2002 a group of archeologists currently called Archeology, Memory and Identity Collective from Tucumán (CAMIT by its Spanish initials) discovered the pit’s location, and found that there were around 38,000 bone fragments buried at a depth of between 28 and 33.5 meters.

EAAF has been closely working with CAMIT in the identification of the bodies. So far, 149 victims have been found in the Pozo de Vargas, and 119 of them have been identified.