Pisagua internment camp

The Pisagua internment camp (Spanish: Campamento de Prisioneros de Pisagua) was a concentration camp in Pisagua, Chile.

Pisagua internment camp
Internment camp used many times in Chilean history
The Pisagua Memorial in 2007
Location of Pisagua internment camp within Chile
Coordinates	19°35′48″S 70°12′44″W
Location	Pisagua
Built by	Chilean government
Operated by	Chilean government
Operational	1927-1931 1939-1947 1973-1974
Number of inmates	2500 people (during the 1973-1974 biennium)
Killed	30 people (during the 1973-1974 biennium)

History

An isolated location in northern Chile, Pisagua was used as a detention site for male homosexuals under the military dictatorship of General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in 1927-1931.^[1]

From 1943 to 1945, Pisagua became the site of wartime internment for citizens of enemy nations when Chile entered World War II on the Allied side. The complex was turned into a concentration camp for Chilean socialists, communists and anarchists under President Gabriel González Videla in 1947-1948. Chilean Army Captain Augusto Pinochet 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, a mid-ranking SS commander in Nazi Germany 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. Its believed he also had ties with the Nazi loyalist Colonia Dignidad 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 on 31 May 1990.^[2] A mass grave was discovered in June 1990 and was found to contain 20 bodies inside.^[3] These would be later linked to prisoners and missing persons (desaparecidos) executed at the camp.

Identified persons from mass grave (June 6, 1990)

Order of Discovery[3]	Name[3]
1	Manuel Eduardo Sanhueza Mellado
2	Nicolas Chanez Chanez
3	Tomas Orlando Cabello Cabello
4	Luis Manriquez Wilde
5	Juan Orlando Rojas Osega
6	Hugo Tomas Martinez Guillen
7	Alberto Amador Yañez Carvajal
8	Luis Alberto Toro Castillo
9	Nelson Jose Marquez Agusto
10	German Elidio Palominos Lamas
11	Juan Apolinario Mamani Garcia
12	Jose Rufino Cordova Croxatto
13	Juan Valencia Hinojosa
14	Julio Cesar Cabezas Gacitua
15	Mario Morris Barrios
16	Humberto Lizardo Flores
17	Luis Alberto Lizardi Lizardi
18	Marcelo Omar Guzman Fuentes
19	Juan Efrain Calderon Villalon
20	*Not confirmed by source

See also

• The Pisagua Court Case

Footnotes

1. Spooner 2011, p. 58
2. "El Hallazgo de la Fosa". Memoria Viva. Archived from the original on 16 June 2002. Retrieved 4 July 2012.(in Spanish)
3. "Plano de la fosa común en el cementerio de Pisagua". Memoria Viva. Archived from the original on 5 June 2010. Retrieved 10 May 2013.(in Spanish)

References

• Frazier, Lessie Jo (2007). Salt in the Sand: Memory, Violence, and the Nation-State in Chile, 1890 to the Present. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-822-34003-4.
• Spooner, Mary Helen (2011). The General's Slow Retreat: Chile After Pinochet. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25613-2.