"We saw the desert, large and extensive; the heat increased, we drove slowly. We couldn't talk. The caravan had been travelling more than an hour when we began to see a tall chimney, indicating the presence of the old offices of the Chacabuco nitrate company, Anglo Latauro (a British company). We arrived at some thick walls and entered through a large opening. Some tanks pulled up alongside the buses, pointing their threatening cannons at us. We became more and more nervous, almost trembling with fear. The buses stopped in front of a fence. The Carabineros police handed us over to the Army."
(Excerpt from "Chacabuco y Otros Centros de Detencion," 1994)
Location:
About 110 kilometers from Antofagasta in the middle of the Atacama
desert. It was formerly a small mining town where the nitrate
mining company, Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (Soquimich),
ran an office. The town was abandoned in 1938 and used by the
Army for military exercises.
Duration:
Early November 1973 until April 1975
Prisoners:
The number of political prisoners varied from 600 to 1,000.
Conditions:
The Comite Pro Paz reported in late 1974:
Prisoners lived in adobe corridors, each containing 10 small houses.
Each house had two or three floors and held six prisoners. There
was a common dining room as well as cold-water showers and bathrooms.
The camp had no electrical lighting until July 1974.
The camp was run by the Army First Division based in Antofagasta,
but guard duty rotated between Army, Air Force and Carabineros
personnel.
Many of the prisoners were released in early 1974, a period in
which new prisoners were brought to Chacabuco. The camp began
to gradually empty out starting in July 1974, with prisoners being
transferred to different camps in Santiago and Valparaiso (Tres
Alamos, Ritoque and Melinka).
Projects
In April 2006, The
Chacabuco Project was founded to raise international awareness
of this town's legacy. Through the filming and distribution of
a 30-minute documentary, the project's goal is to cultivate a
more profound understanding of what Chacabuco is. You can support
The Chacabuco Project here.
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