Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Cuban diplomats in Argentina and relatives of victims of the military dictatorship paid tribute on Wednesday to two Cuban diplomats who were forcibly disappeared in the South American country 40 years ago.

Wednesday’s solemn ceremony was held at Automotores Orletti, a workshop located in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores. The place was turned into a clandestine detention, torture and extermination center associated to the infamous Operation Condor, sponsored in the 1970s and 80s by the United States across Latin America.

On August 9th, 1976, henchmen of the dictatorship in Argentina kidnapped Cuban diplomats Jesus Cejas and Crescencio Galañena, and took them to Automotores Orletti, where they were both brutally tortured and assassinated. The remains of the two Cuban diplomats were placed in 200kg metal drums and thrown in a garbage dump.

After some years of search, in 2012 a team of Cuban and Argentine forensic experts finally found and identified the remains of Jesus and Crescencio and returned them to their families in Cuba.

At the ceremony, counselor of the Cuban Embassy in Buenos Aires, Carlos Suanes, recalled the wave of terrorist actions in 1976, sponsored by the U.S. government and executed by the CIA against Cuban officials and offices in several parts of the world.