Tarrafal concentration camp

Tarrafal concentration camp

Interior of the concentration camp
Location	Cape Verde, Santiago, Chão Bom
Coordinates	15°15′51″N 23°44′38″W / 15.26417°N 23.74389°W / 15.26417; -23.74389
Status	Closed, transformed into the "Resistance Museum"
Security class	Maximum
Opened	23 April 1936
Closed	1 May 1974
Managed by	PVDE, PIDE[1]

Tarrafal was a concentration camp located in the village of Chão Bom, in the Municipality of Tarrafal, on the island of Santiago in Cape Verde.

It was established in 1936, during a reorganization process of the Portuguese Estado Novo prison system, with the goal of incarcerating political and social prisoners. The location was strategically chosen, both for being remote so that testimonies would not come to light, and for having an unhealthy climate, with little drinking water, and many mosquitoes in rainy seasons, which facilitated the appearance of diseases. Its main objective was to physically and psychologically annihilate Portuguese and African opponents of the Salazar dictatorship, isolating them from the rest of the world in subhuman conditions of captivity, mistreatment, and insalubrity.

Ideologically Tarrafal had two purposes. First, it would be used to remove and isolate political prisoners who disrupted mainland prisons through protests and sit-ins. Second, the camp would have harsh conditions to send a clear message to the opposition in Portugal that Salazar's authoritarian regime would not tolerate any kind of political dissent. These objectives were clearly defined in the opening paragraphs of Decree-Law No. 26539 (Decreto-Lei n.º 26 539), the law that was enacted to build the Tarrafal Prison. It stated that the camp – which would be under the control of the PVDE (Polícia de Vigilância e de Defesa do Estado: Portugal's Secret Police) – was only for the exiling of political and social prisoners who had disrupted other prisons and were considered a "harmful element" to other inmates.^[2]

Its first phase, from 1936 to 1954, was aimed at Portuguese opponents. On 29 October 1936, the first 157 antifascist detainees arrived from Lisbon, some of them participants in the Sailors' Revolt of 1936. In the first two years, when the prisoners' only housing was canvas tents, they were forced to work for 45 days in extremely high temperatures to build the camp wall and other infrastructure. When the first illnesses began to appear, the only doctor present had no medicine to treat the patients, so he limited himself to issuing death certificates. Of the 340 Portuguese anti-fascists who passed through the camp, 34 died.^[3] Notable victims include Bento Gonçalves, then leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, and Mário Castelhano, then leader of the General Confederation of Labor.^[3] The "Frigideira" (English: "frying pan"), also called "elimination chamber" or "torture chamber" by the prisoners, was a place of punishment where prisoners were tortured, being deprived of food, light, and under temperatures between 50 and 60 degrees. The "Frigideira" was responsible for the death of 30 prisoners, and the sickness of dozens of others. The current museum states prisoners accumulatively spent 2824 days in the "Frigideira".

In the second phase, which reopened the camp on 14 April 1961, it began to hold militants from the national liberation struggles of the Portuguese Colonial War in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde. 106 Angolans, 100 Guineans, and 20 Cape Verdeans went through Tarrafal. Replacing the "Frigideira", the "Holandinha" was opened, with almost the same objective, being "a little taller than a man standing, a little longer than a man lying down, a little wider than a man sitting down, with a small barred window" and "a real oven". One Angolan and two Guinean political prisoners died in this camp.

Following the Carnation Revolution in 1974, together with the end of the Estado Novo dictatorship, the camp was closed one week later. In 2009 it was transformed into the Museum of Resistance, and a project is currently underway with the aim of applying for the UNESCO World Heritage List. On 14 August 2016, the government of Cape Verde recognized the Tarrafal Concentration Camp in Santiago and its dependencies as a National Heritage Site of the Republic of Cape Verde.^[4] In honor of the anti-fascist struggle and resistance in Cape Verde, 29 October was consecrated as "Antifascist Resistance Day".^[4]