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Museu do Campo de Concentração do Tarrafal

Tarrafal, Italy

Museu do Campo de Concentração do Tarrafal

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...

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