In September 2016 the association of former political prisoners CRYSOL, acting for the memorial commission, opened a public competition; the jury included former prisoners of the Penal de Libertad. The winning entry, announced that December, was by the architects Raquel Lejtreger and Javier Olascoaga, who are themselves children of men held there. The scheme has five parts and only one of them is a building. The Door is a fifteen-metre open doorway of reinforced concrete carrying the names of all 2,872 political prisoners, with a slot cut through it so that sky and trees stay visible — the memory, in the architects' description, of a hoped-for future. The Path recalls the route the families walked from the highway to the prison gate. There is a single long bench, a grove of cina-cina, and markers that tie the site to Uruguay's other places of memory. The foundation stone was laid on 8 September 2017 and the memorial opened on 15 May 2018.
The memorial commemorates the 2,872 political prisoners held at Establecimiento Militar de Reclusión N.º 1, which operated from 1 October 1972 to 14 March 1985 — a span falling almost entirely within Uruguay's military dictatorship. The plaque on the site states that it also honours the prisoners' families, who walked that road repeatedly "loaded with dreams and hopes of freedom"; the political and social militants who were killed inside the centre; and the townspeople of Libertad, whose town "became a war zone" in that period. The competition was called by CRYSOL, the association of former political prisoners; its jury included two former prisoners, and both winning architects are children of men detained there. The project was financed by the Ministry of Transport and Public Works and declared a work of national interest by the Ministry of Education and Culture on 24 November 2016.
Wikidata Q109120730 · Commons: Espacio Memorial Penal de Libertad - San José - Uruguay - 2.jpg · Photo: PabloGM555 · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0