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PISAGUA
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Location:
In Tarapaca province, along the coastline between Iquique and Arica in northern Chile. Pisagua, created in the 1948-52 period ,is comprised of a small town, a prison and a military base.
Duration:
September 1973 until October 1974. Prisoners were brought to the Pisagua military base immediately following the military coup. More prisoners from the northern area were brought there in October 1973.
Prisoners:
The building lodged, at one time, 500 prisoners, far suprassing its capacity. Prisoners from the Iquique Telecommunications Regiment, different regional police headquarters and Valparaiso, including those aboard the Maipo prison ship, were transported there.
Conditions:
No visitors of any kind were allowed to visit the Pisagua camp for the entire time it was open. This included family members, the Red Cross, religious leaders or the Comite Pro Paz.
(Excerpts from the Rettig report) The Pisagua jail was the most important detention center in the region. In the ten first-storey cells, the incomunicado prisoners were held in cells of two by four meters each. On the second and third floor there were eight cells measuring approximately four by ten meters, each holding up to 25 prisoners. Women prisoners were taken to a building attached to the Pisagua theater, prepared especially for this purpose. A warehouse known by the prisoners as the "supermarket" was also specially set up. Torture was systematically practiced in the Pisagua jail.
"On October 11, I woke up early and was taken in a jeep along with commander Larrain (Lieutenant Coronel Ramon Larrain head of the detention camp), and some other vehicles. At that point, I still did not know where we were going or what was the nature of the special mission Larrain had told me about."
(Read Testimony provided by Alberto Neumann L., a medical doctor, imprisoned at the Pisagua concentration camp)
Deaths at Pisagua were generally reported in the press and, in a large number of cases, families were officially notified. In the majority of cases, the victims’ bodies were not returned to their families. Many relatives were not even informed of the whereabouts of the victims' burial or were deliberately misinformed about it.
In some cases, the death itself was denied. In fact, six deceased victims were considered disappeared until 1990. A high-ranking Army officer declared in 1973 that these persons had been released from the prison, leading their families to search for them.
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In June 1990, a judicial enquiry in Pisagua led to the discovery of an unmarked grave, next to the cementery, containing 19 bodies. These corresponded to individuals whose execution had been recognized by the authorities and whose families had been told "they had been given a Christian burial" as well as the six disappeared people mentioned above.
The remains had been disposed in three levels according to the date of death. All the bodies were inside bags and had several bullet wounds. The majority presented clear and unmistakeable evidence of having had their hands tied and having been blindfolded.
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Human remains found in unmarked grave
in Pisagua, June, 1990. Photo by
Nelson Muñoz.
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Other detention centers in the region:
Several centers were used in the northern region to hold political prisoners: the No. 6 Telecommunications Regiment in Iquique, the "Rancagua" Motorized Infantry Regiment in Arica, the public jail in Pisagua as well as that town's theater annexes and a warehouse. In all of these places, prisoners were tortured or subjected to other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
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