Chilean Coup of 1973: Dawson Island Concentration Camp

Dawson Island sits smack dab in the middle of the Strait of Magellan at the tip of Tierra del Fuego and is a seemingly innocuous part of Chilean territorial possessions. Being only an hour-and-a-half flight from Antarctica, one can expect that the climate can be less than hospitable. Perpetually cold, windy, and wet Dawson Island is the perfect place for the Chilean armed forces to execute artillery training without fear of harm coming to residents; there are none.

Following the coup of 1973, Dawson Island would serve a new function for the military Junta that had overthrown the Marxist government of Salvador Allende. Immediately after the coup, the Junta led by Augusto Pinochet rounded up and relocated many high value prisoners from the Allende government and sent them to Dawson Island. Prior to their departure for Dawson Island, the prisoners were offered the opportunity to leave Chile and live life in exile, to which they responded in the negative.

The prisoners included many ministers, secretaries of cabinet level positions, department ministers, mayors, and university professors; all of which were seen as allies of Allende. One of the most high profile prisoners to be sent to Dawson Island was Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean Ambassador to the United States and previously the Minister of Defense under Allende.

The living conditions at Dawson Island were deplorable, the cots for sleeping were crowded into a miniscule shack that had only a small wood burning stove for heat and a single window that did little to keep out the Antarctic cold. The prisoners were given very little food or water, adequate cold weather clothing was non-existent; not surprising at all is that most of them were often in ill health.

The prisoners were often forced to participate in calisthenics early in the morning without cold weather clothing, leading to freezing limbs and frequent slips and falls on the half frozen muddy ground. Following the calisthenics, the prisoner would be forced to take a 5 mile long hike to a rocky beach where they would be forced to break boulders for the day. In their time Dawson Island the prisoners would be forced to build roads, tunnels, and telephone lines under the most miserable conditions and with less than adequate tools.

The only source of running water for the prisoners came in the form of a small creek that ran through the camp. Unfortunately for the prisoner, that creek also ran through the soldiers’ quarters as well; meaning the prisoners frequently found fecal matter and other pollutants running with their water.

The prisoners at Dawson Island were frequently the subject of psychological torture accompanying the physical torture they were subjected to. They were constantly sleep deprived, threatened with death, and more than once marines would burst into their shack in the middle of the night yelling and swinging their machine guns around in an effort to intimidate the prisoners.

After some time that the prisoners were imprisoned on Dawson Island representatives from the International Red Cross were allowed to visit the camp to observe the conditions under which these people were being held. As far as the Red Cross was concerned, the internees were political prisoners and were being investigated individually for evidence of insurgency. Despite the best efforts of their jailers, the Red Cross documented the deplorable conditions at the camp and promised the prisoners that their families and the world would know of their location.

About eight months after their arrival at Dawson Island, the prisoners were loaded up and taken back to the Chilean mainland. Very few of the prisoners were released; most of them were merely moved from one prison camp to another, very few staying in the same place for an extended period of time. Their time on Dawson Island had come to an end but their ordeal was far from over.

Unfortunately for the previously mentioned Orlando Letelier, who eventually gained his freedom from imprisonment, he would meet his end in a far more violent manner than the psychological abuse he endured at Dawson Island. In 1976, Orlando Letelier was killed by a car bomb in Washington D.C., where he had fled into exile and was working at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Copyright© 2012 R. Bertz; all rights reserved.

Chavkin, S. (1989). Storm over Chile: The junta under siege. New York, NY: Lawrence Hill & Company.

Munoz, H. (2008). The dictator’s shadow. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Politzer, P. (2001). Fear in Chile: Lives under Pinochet. The New Press.