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.Decreto-Lei n.º 26539, 23 April 1936
Its first phase, from 1936 to 1954, was aimed at Portuguese opponents. On 29 October 1936, the first 157 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 who passed through the camp, 34 died. Notable victims include Bento Gonçalves, then leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, and Mário Castelhano, then leader of the General Confederation of Labor. The "Frigideira" (English: "frying pan"), also called "elimination chamber" or "torture chamber" by the prisoners, was a place of punishment where prisoners were tortured, deprived of food, and light, and forced to suffer temperatures between 50 and 60 degrees Celsius (120-140 degrees Fahrenheit). The "Frigideira" was responsible for the death of 30 prisoners, and the sickness of dozens of others. The current museum states prisoners cumulatively 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. In honor of the anti-fascist struggle and resistance in Cape Verde, 29 October was consecrated as "Antifascist Resistance Day".
Names The camp was called "Tarrafal concentration camp" () and informally as the "Slow Death Camp" () or "Tarrafal Camp" (). The official name of the camp was "Cape Verde Penal Colony" () in the first phase, and "Chão Bom Labor Camp" () in the second one. It was also referred to as the "Village of Death", the "Swamp of Death", and as the "Yellow Inferno".
History
Foundation The Tarrafal Concentration Camp was established in 1936 by Decree 26:539 of 23 April 1936, in the context of Estado Novo's reorganization of the prison system, with the purpose of incarcerating political and social prisoners. The location was chosen strategically, both because it was remote so that testimonies would not come to public attention, and because it had an unhealthy climate, with little drinkable water, and many mosquitoes in rainy seasons, which facilitated the appearance of diseases and from which many prisoners died. The construction was the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Works and Telecommunications, and the project was drawn up by Cottinelli Telmo, with the name "Penal Colony of Cape Verde". Cândido de Oliveira says that the true purpose of the construction was not publicized out of fear of Portuguese and international public opinion. According to the "Dossier do Tarrafal" from the Editorial "Avante!", most of the guards were members of the PSP connected to the PVDE and the Portuguese Legion.
Objectives The "Tarrafal Penal Colony" was nicknamed by its prisoners as a concentration camp because it was analogous to the Nazi concentration camps, or "slow death camp", since its main objective was to physically and psychologically annihilate Portuguese and African opponents of the Salazar dictatorship, keeping them away from the rest of the world, in subhuman conditions of captivity, mistreatment and insalubrity. In the first phase, from 1936 to 1954, it was a prison for the opponents of Portugal's regime. Historian Fernando Rosas considers Tarrafal the "peak of repression in Portugal" and the "most brutal form of repression that fascism found" against the resistance, being "a terrain where the struggle of the Portuguese antifascists is joined with the struggle of the anti-colonialists or the patriots of the national liberation movements". The Dictionary of Portuguese History (2000) describes it as an "arbitrary deposit of the regime's opponents", and the "quintessence of state terrorism under Salazar". The way Tarrafal functioned and its method of treating prisoners were similar to those of other concentration camps that existed at the time. On a daily basis, inmates were subjected to punishment, torture, forced labor, poor nutrition, and lack of medical care. Most of the detentions were arbitrary.
The PVDE strongly modeled its camp regime after the Nazi concentration camps. Prisoners were subjected to brutal authority. Strict regulations were enforced and outside information was forbidden. The PVDE used physical and psychological violence against the prisoners, this included sleep deprivation, beatings, and humiliation. Men and women were tortured for information on their organizations and networks in Portugal. The most severe punishment was conducted in a concrete cell called the "Frigideira" (English: "frying pan"). Inside this windowless 6m x3m building, daytime temperatures could reach up to 60 °C. Prisoners could be held inside these blocks for days, weeks, or months. When used elsewhere, being held in cells of this kind had resulted in extreme dehydration, heat exhaustion, and death
First phase The first phase lasted from 1936 to 1954. On 29 October 1936, the first 157 Portuguese political prisoners arrived from Lisbon, 37 of them being strikers participating in the strike of 18 January 1934, in Marinha Grande, and some participants in the Sailors' Revolt of 1936, organized by the Revolutionary Organization of the Navy, linked to the Portuguese Communist Party. In the beginning, the facilities were simple canvas tents with the capacity to house twelve prisoners, without any conditions, and the camp was surrounded by barbed wire and a four-meter deep ditch. There was no electricity, ventilation or wind/rain protection. According to the prisoners, due to the unpredictably rainy weather of the location, sometimes the tents would flood and rot. The wooden buildings were reserved for the secretariat and the warehouse. This was done concurrently with the construction of the sheds. Electricity, air renewal, and protection against the natural elements, especially the sun – which is "unbearable due to the country's climatic conditions" – were non-existent. According to Cândido de Oliveira, the barbed wire barred any direct contact with the outside, although it still allowed visual contact. Manuel Franscico Rodrigues affirms that the construction of slopes benefited the guards, restricted space, and increased the psychological torture on the prisoners. The only stone building was the kitchen, which was partially built. Manuel dos Reis, director of the camp for several years, would receive the political prisoners saying "Whoever comes to Tarrafal comes to die!".
According to the Commission of the Black Book on the Fascist Regime, the prison records of some prisoners sent to Tarrafal have not been found, saying that on examining the existing records, "it soon appears that many of them were not even tried and that others, despite having been sentenced, were not sentenced to imprisonment". In 1944, of the 226 prisoners imprisoned there, 72 had not been tried and 55 had already exceeded their sentences.
The first two years in prison were divided into two phases: in the first, called the "wild brigade", the prisoners were subjected to forced labor for 45 days, under extremely high temperatures, to build the walls of the concentration camp, the road, among others. The second, called the "acute period", which began in 1937, was when the first diseases began to appear – such as malaria, bilious and other infectious diseases – and during this period seven prisoners died. In 1937 the first doctor arrived, but, not having any medicine to cure the prisoners, limited himself to just writing death certificates. Today, on the Museum of the Resistance, there's a quote of his: "I am not here to cure, but to sign death certificates".
In the concentration camp of Tarrafal, there were several first-line communist leaders and cadres, subjected to various types of torture, since its establishment in 1936. Due to the large number of communists that came to the camp, the Communist Prison Organization of Tarrafal (OCTP) was quickly created. Here, the prisoners intended to maintain political debate, doctrinal training, analyze and systematize their own recent historical experience, be it the political situation or party line. However, they were faced with several difficulties, namely the lack of paper and pencils. Sometimes the isolation was so great that any information about what was going on in the world was seized upon, even scraps of paper lost on the floor. Most of the time, the newspaper had been used as toilet paper, which earned the name among the inmates of "shit radio", and was vividly used as a source of information.
After six years imprisoned in Tarrafal, in 1942 the leader of the Portuguese Communist Party — Bento Gonçalves — died, along with four other militants.
In January 1954 it was closed due to the increased influence of anti-regime forces and the defeat of Nazism in World War II.
The "Frigideira"