Edificio Libertador

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Edificio Libertador

The Edificio Libertador is a government building in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires . It is the seat of the Argentine Ministry of Defense.

overview

The expansion and modernization of the Argentine military in the 1920s, whose budget has tripled in the decade, made an adequate headquarters necessary. Since the 19th century, the Minister of Defense was housed in the former mint in the Montserrat district. President Agustín Pedro Justo , a former general and former minister of war, therefore ordered the construction of a new ministry and commissioned Carlos Pibernat, the chief architect of the building department, with a design.

Pibernat's 1935 plans were for an imposing office building with three hectares of land to the east of Casa Rosada . The 20-storey building was the tallest in Argentina at the time of construction and was divided into three wings: two side wings that flank a central building 230 meters wide, a portico and four additional floors. The building, completed in 1938, was equipped with elevators and communications networks from Siemens , the installation of which was supervised by German engineers. A security system, libraries, archives and a tunnel to Casa Rosada were also built. Also because the distribution of offices was a lengthy and politically sensitive process, the new ministry could not be inaugurated until April 1943.

In 1950, President Juan Perón renamed the building Edificio Libertador . The occasion was the centenary of the death of General José de San Martín , commonly known as The Liberator (Spanish: Libertador). The tunnel to Casa Rosada saved his life during the 1955 coup . On March 15, 1976, Montoneros carried out an attack in front of the Edificio Libertador, in which a civilian was killed and 29 officers were wounded.

During the military dictatorship , the building played a major role as the seat of the Ministry of Defense. The director Pino Solanas has a scene set in the building in the film South - Sur (1988) to point this out. On December 3, 1990, the Edificio Libertador was in the headlines again when so-called Carapintadas (German: painted faces) tried to storm the building and overthrow President Carlos Menem during the visit of US President George HW Bush . The revolt was put down within a few hours.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Potash Robert. The Army & Politics in Argentina . Stanford University Press, 1996.
  2. ↑ Liernur, Jorge. Arquitectura en la Argentina del Siglo XX . Fondo Nacional de Las Artes, 2001.
  3. ^ Griffin, WEB Secret Honor . Penguin Books, 1999
  4. ↑ Page, Joseph. Perón: A Biography. Random House, 1983.
  5. ↑ Lewis, Paul. Guerrillas and Generals: the "Dirty War" in Argentina. Greenwood Publishing, 1999

Web links

Commons : Edificio Libertador  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 34 ° 36 ′ 35 ″  S , 58 ° 22 ′ 4 ″  W.