DESTINO FINAL

DESTINO FINAL (Final Destination) is an expression commonly used by commercial flight pilots to indicate the place of arrival of an aircraft. In Argentina the expression acquired a tragic meaning due to the thousands of victims loaded onto military planes and thrown into the sea drugged and unconscious, in the so-called death flights of the military dictatorship.

This work, begun in 2003, combines photography and research and led the photographer Giancarlo Ceraudo to the discovery of the planes used by the Argentine military dictatorship, from 1976 to 1983, to eliminate the opponents of the regime. After more than 30 years, five of the Argentine Navy aircraft used for the “death flights” were located with their respective flight plans. In 2007, the journalist Miriam Lewin, a former “desaparecida”, joined the investigation. Two of the planes, Lockheed Electra model, were found in two cities in Argentina, while the other three, Short Skyvan model, appeared in Luxembourg, England and Fort Lauderdale, USA. The flight plans included the aircraft model, serial number, flight date, itinerary, pilot's name, and mission duration. That is why they later represented incredible and precious evidence of accusation that the Argentine justice system used for the trial against the pilots.

Between December 8 and 10, 1977, some Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, two French nuns and other human rights activists were kidnapped after a meeting in the Church of Santa Cruz in Buenos Aires, taken to the clandestine detention center of ESMA, tortured and allegedly thrown alive on the night of December 14, 1977. A few days after that flight, the ocean returned some of the bodies to the beach of Santa Teresita, 300 kilometers south of Buenos Aires. By comparing the medical-legal reports of the bodies and the data from the flight plans, prosecutors concluded that the victims had been thrown from the PA-51 Skyvan found by Ceraudo and Lewin in Fort Lauderdale.

Thanks to the discovery of these flight plans by Ceraudo and Lewin, on April 12, 2011, a prosecutor requested the arrest of Enrique José De Saint Georges, Mario Daniel Arrú and Alejandro Domingo '', three of the pilots who, according to the flight plans, were in command of the Skyvan PA 51 on the night of December 14, 1977. On November 29, 2017, Arrú and D'Agostino were sentenced to life imprisonment within the framework of the ESMA Megacase.

In 2023, the airplane was bought and repatriated to Argentina by the government, and on this occasion, Giancarlo shot his last picture of this 20-year-long project. The airplane is now part of the ESMA, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

In May 2023, “Destino Final” had a major exhibition at the Centro Cultural Kirchner (CCK) in Buenos Aires.