Visiting
Visiting: Not confirmedas of 4 July 2016
Inside the former ESMA site; the 2016 memorial walk began here; current public access was not confirmed.
Source: Alejandra Dandan, Página/12 (4 Jul 2016), 4 July 2016(opens in a new tab)The Espacio Patrick Rice is at the former Navy Mechanics School, the ESMA, in Buenos Aires. According to the Argentine foreign ministry's 2017 catalogue, the former chapel space at the ESMA was named after Rice. President Michael D. Higgins visited it during his official visit in October 2012.
Patrick Rice was born in Fermoy, Co. Cork, in September 1945 and was ordained a Divine Word Missionary in 1970. He was sent to Argentina as a university chaplain in Santa Fe and in 1974 moved to the Villa Soldati shanty town in Buenos Aires. In October 1976 he and the 18-year-old catechist Fátima Cabrera were abducted after a prayer meeting and tortured for days. The Irish Times reported in 2010 that prompt action by Irish Embassy staff helped save them both. A 1978 document released by the US State Department says Rice was deported in December 1976 and that his account appeared in Amnesty International's March 1977 report on Argentina. Rice was later laicised and married Cabrera, and the two worked for FEDEFAM, which supports families of the disappeared. He died in July 2010.
Sources differ on the date and place of the abduction. The Irish Times and the foreign ministry give 11 October in Villa Soldati; Rice's own complaint to the Inter-American Commission reportedly gives 12 October. In July 2016 the community's first memorial walk for the San Patricio victims started here and ended at the Belgrano parish.
Published sources give different versions. Here is each one with its source, and the wording we use.
The date of Patrick Rice's abduction
11 October 1976, in Villa Soldati
Source: Olivia Kelleher, Mass will celebrate life and work of late human rights activist, Irish Times (16 Aug 2010), 16 August 2010(opens in a new tab)12 October 1976, per Rice's own complaint
Source: IACHR Annual Report 1978, Case 2450 (search snippet), 1978(opens in a new tab)We say: Abducted with Fátima Cabrera in October 1976
The five, El Periodista, 1985–1976
Three Pallottine priests and two seminarians killed at St Patrick's, Belgrano, on 4 July 1976; the order came from Ireland, the case is unresolved and a canonisation cause is open.
1945–2010
A Fermoy-born priest who lived in a Buenos Aires shanty town, was abducted and tortured in October 1976, survived with the Irish Embassy's help and spent the rest of his life on human rights.
Sources