Tarrafal concentration camp

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.