An isolated location in northern Chile, Pisagua was used as a detention site for male homosexuals under the military dictatorship of General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in 1927-1931.

[1] From 1943 to 1945, Pisagua became the site of wartime internment for citizens of enemy nations when Chile entered World War II on the Allied side.

The complex was turned into a concentration camp for Chilean socialists, communists and anarchists under President Gabriel González Videla in 1947-1948.

It's been alleged that one of the torturers of this camp was Walter Rauff, a mid-ranking SS commander in Nazi Germany and the man responsible for creating the mobile gassing vans.

In the 1990s, the Pisagua court case would draw further scrutiny to the prison camp when a claim of illegal burial was presented by the Chilean Vicariate of Solidarity on 31 May 1990.