The Briefing:
- Federal Judge Miguel Hugo Vaca Narvaja confirmed 8 new identities — 4 women and 4 men, all disappeared in 1976 — at a ceremony held on October 23, 2026 at the Federal Courts of Córdoba.
- The remains were recovered from "Loma del Torito," a sector adjacent to La Perla — Argentina's largest clandestine detention, torture and extermination center outside Buenos Aires — during 2025 excavations conducted by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF).
- With these 8, a total of 38 people have been identified since excavations began in September 2025. The EAAF says more findings are expected as laboratory results from a second excavation phase continue coming in.
A railroad worker. A union delegate on the factory floor. A 20-year-old medical student from Patagonia. A psychologist seized the day after her husband was killed. On Friday, a federal court in Córdoba put names to eight more people Argentina's military dictatorship tried to erase — pushing the running total of identified victims from a single clandestine burial zone to 38 in just over a year.
The announcement arrives as Argentina marks the 50th anniversary year of the 1976 military coup, and as forensic science continues to undo what state terrorism was designed to make permanent.
Eight Names Returned to History
The Federal Court of Córdoba officially confirmed all eight identities on Friday morning. They are: Néstor Albino Acosta, 21, a railroad worker on the Mitre line and architecture student at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba; Pascual Delfín Ludueña, 29, a union delegate at the FIAT Concord plant, seized on the day of the coup itself, March 24, 1976; Claudio Norberto Nardini, 34, a SanCor plant worker with union ties, abducted from his home on April 23, 1976; Juan Carlos Soulier, an electrician who was completing his construction engineering degree at the Universidad Tecnológica de Córdoba, and who was taken on August 15, 1976 alongside his wife and their five-month-old son Sebastián — who survived and is today a plaintiff in the case; Cecilia Alicia Pessina Libro de Ávila, a psychologist and professor of piano who was a militant of the Organización Comunista Poder Obrero, seized on August 14, 1976 in Río Tercero, the day after her husband Benjamín Ávila was murdered; Mónica Protti de Guillén, a teacher and medicine student at the UNC who belonged to the Partido Comunista, abducted on September 21, 1976 in Barrio Villa Belgrano alongside her partner Enrique Daniel Guillén; Mercedes del Valle Ramírez, a secondary school student who worked at a textile shop, taken from her home on July 3, 1976; and María Luisa "Mara" Salto, a 20-year-old medical student from Cipolletti in Patagonia, abducted on July 27, 1976, whose name already graces a memorial in her hometown alongside those of 16 other people who were disappeared during the same period.
None of these eight individuals knew one another. Their cases are unrelated. That fact, seemingly incidental, is at the heart of what forensic investigators believe took place at Loma del Torito.
The Cover-Up the Science Is Undoing
The EAAF's analysis found consistent signs of post-mortem disturbance in every set of remains: fragmented bones, disarticulated skeletons, scattered across sediment layers inconsistent with original burial positions.
The leading hypothesis among investigators: ahead of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visit to Argentina in September 1979, military operatives used heavy machinery to scatter and disperse the bodies, turning what had been organized burial sites into what would appear — to any outside observer — to be empty ground. The forensic fingerprint of that operation is the complete mixing of remains from entirely unrelated victims across the same displaced sediment layers.
Aerial photographs from 1979, cross-referenced against testimony from survivors, allowed the EAAF to pinpoint the precise location of those burials — a method that has now yielded 38 confirmed identities from a single area.
A Site Without Precedent in Argentine Forensic History
La Perla operated as Argentina's largest clandestine detention center outside Buenos Aires from 1976 through late 1978, inside the Guarnición Militar de La Calera, near Córdoba. Estimates put the number of people held there between 2,200 and 2,500; the vast majority remain unaccounted for.
The current excavation campaign, running under federal court order across approximately three hectares at Loma del Torito, brings together the EAAF alongside teams from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, the Geology Department of the Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, and the Instituto de Medicina Forense of the Córdoba Judiciary. The provincial government and the city of Córdoba provide logistical support.
The EAAF isolated 35 genetic profiles from the 2025 excavation material. Of those, 30 had already been identified before Friday's announcement — meaning today's 8 complete that set, with additional material from a second excavation phase (launched in May 2026 and ongoing through October) still awaiting full laboratory results.
A Year of Breakthroughs — With More Expected
Friday's announcement is the fourth identification event at La Perla in 2026. Twelve names were released in March, another 17 came in May, and one more followed in August — Alejandro Ernesto Jesús Jerez Bodereau, a 22-year-old psychology student and IKA-Renault factory worker kidnapped in May 1976, whose identification was also formally ratified at Friday's event.
Judge Vaca Narvaja signaled at the ceremony that more results are coming. The distance between the most recently excavated deposit zones and the earlier dig sites, he explained, makes it unlikely that Friday's announcement will be the last finding from Loma del Torito.
Families Still Waiting: The Call Is Open
Founded in 1984 as Argentina returned to democracy, the EAAF has identified more than 800 individuals across Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay connected to state crimes. The organization continues calling on families of people who disappeared between 1974 and 1983 — particularly those who may have passed through detention centers in the Córdoba region — to submit a voluntary, confidential, and cost-free blood sample for DNA analysis.
Contact options: iniciativa@eaaf.org · WhatsApp +54 9 11 2348-5229 · phone 0800-345-3236.
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