The Pisagua internment camp ( es, Campamento de Prisioneros de Pisagua) was a
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
in
Pisagua, Chile
Pisagua is a Chilean port on the Pacific Ocean, located in Huara '' comuna'' (municipality), in Tarapacá Region, northern Chile. In 2007, the new province of El Tamarugal was established and the ''comuna'' of Huara, previously within the provinc ...
.
History
An isolated location in northern
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
, Pisagua was used as a detention site for male
homosexual
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
s under the
military dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a dictatorship in which the military exerts complete or substantial control over political authority, and the dictator is often a high-ranked military officer.
The reverse situation is to have civilian control of the m ...
of General
Carlos Ibáñez del Campo
General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (; 3 November 1877 – 28 April 1960) was a Chilean Army officer and political figure. He served as President twice, first between 1927 and 1931, and then from 1952 to 1958, serving for 10 years in office.
T ...
in 1927-1931.
From 1943 to 1945, Pisagua became the site of wartime
internment
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
for citizens of enemy nations when Chile entered
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
on the
Allied side. The complex was turned into a concentration camp for Chilean
socialists
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the eco ...
,
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
s and
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
s under President
Gabriel González Videla
Gabriel Enrique González Videla (; November 22, 1898 – August 22, 1980) was a Chilean politician and lawyer who served as the 24th president of Chile from 1946 to 1952. He had previously been a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 193 ...
in 1947-1948.
Chilean Army
The Chilean Army ( es, Ejército de Chile) is the land arm of the Military of Chile. This 80,000-person army (9,200 of which are conscripts) is organized into six divisions, a special operations brigade and an air brigade.
In recent years, and a ...
Captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...
was appointed to run the Pisagua camp in January 1948.
Pinochet's dictatorship to present
When General Pinochet himself seized power in September 1973, the site again became a political detention center.
It's been alleged that one of the torturers of this camp was
Walter Rauff
Walter (Walther) Rauff (19 June 1906 – 14 May 1984) was a mid-ranking SS commander in Nazi Germany. From January 1938, he was an aide of Reinhard Heydrich firstly in the Security Service (''Sicherheitsdienst'' or ''SD''), later in the Reich Se ...
, a mid-ranking
SS commander in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
and the man responsible for creating the mobile gassing vans. He escaped to Ecuador after the war, and later found refuge in Chile with Germans willing to hide him. Under Pinochet's military dictatorship, Rauff may have served as an advisor to the Chilean secret police,
DINA
Dina ( ar, دينا, he, דִּינָה, also spelled Dinah, Dena, Deena) is a female given name.
Women
* Dina bint Abdul-Hamid (1929–2019), Queen consort of Jordan, first wife of King Hussein
* Princess Dina Mired of Jordan (born 1965), Princ ...
. Its believed he also had ties with the Nazi loyalist
Colonia Dignidad
Colonia Dignidad ("Dignity Colony") was an isolated colony of Germans established in post-World War II Chile by emigrant Germans which became notorious for the internment, torture, and murder of dissidents during the military dictatorship of G ...
which had footholds throughout South America.
In the 1990s, the
Pisagua court case would draw further scrutiny to the prison camp when a claim of illegal burial was presented by the Chilean
Vicariate of Solidarity
The Vicariate of Solidarity (La Vicaría de la Solidaridad) was a human rights organization in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Background
On 11 September 1973 a military junta toppled Chilean President Salvador Al ...
on 31 May 1990.
A mass grave was discovered in June 1990 and was found to contain 20 bodies inside.
These would be later
linked to prisoners and missing persons (''
desaparecidos
An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organiza ...
'') executed at the camp.
Identified persons from mass grave (June 6, 1990)
See also
*
The Pisagua Court Case
Footnotes
References
*
* {{cite book, last=Spooner, first=Mary Helen, year=2011, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0Tt5QpdkNxwC , title=The General's Slow Retreat: Chile After Pinochet, publisher= Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, isbn=978-0-520-25613-2
Anti-communism in Chile
Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–1990)
Defunct prisons in Chile
LGBT history in Chile
Political repression in Chile
Persecution of LGBT people