Only known picture of Campamento Mara. The camp is on the top left corner.
Campamento Mara (“Camp Mara”), also officially called Campamento Prisao Mauricio Mara, was a concentration camp operated by the Black Hand in Solìs from 1993 to 2016, which held prisoners of war, political opponents, and intellectuals. It is a part of the New and Improved Solís project.
History[]
The camp was built under Ernesto Tobella’s direction of the police and investigation department. Tobella, who was a close friend of Espinosa and believed in the use of force against opposition, created the infamous ANDEPS (National Agency of Police and Security) and set its headquarters in Quya in 1984. In 1986, Solìs’ prisons had already filled to the brim under his strict direction, and so there was a need for a special place to hold those arrested by the ANDEPS. Tobella’s project included the maximum-secrecy prison of La Mazmorra, and the Plano Academia, which included three re-education camps in Wanay, Qachas and Campo Infierno.
In 1987, another project for a work camp to be built near Pueblo Kullu to employ the new workforce in the local sawmill was presented to Tobella and rapidly approved. The construction of the camp began in September 1987, on Mara hill south-east of the village, and only ended officially in 1993, due to bureaucratic hassles. The first prisoners were transferred just two weeks after the end of the construction.
At the start, the camp included 8 barracks for males and 6 barracks for females, arranged in a U shape, warehouses and some administration buildings, but had already undergone expansion in 1995 and in 1997 would include a crematorium and a prison-isolation cells.
It reached its peak in 2003, as the administration buildings were expanded into a whole military base that became ANDEPS’ second base and main archive.
With 2007 and Tobella’s dimissions from chief of ANDEPS, the camp was briefly emptied with intentions to abandon it, but soon restarted in full activity around december of 2012 with the first attacks by the rebels and the consequent arrests; with the start of the civil war, it once again was expanded and then abruptly deactivated as the Liberation Army came closer.
In early 2016, SLA troops occupied the hills around Pueblo Kullu and bombed the village and the sawmill, prompting the troops to accelerate the evacuation process and burn the archives and evidence. The smoke alerted the troops of the presence of an enemy base on the hill, as they had never known so and only attacked the village as there was a garrison inside; Mara hill was bombed and the camp suffered moderate damage.
Liberation.[]
Three days later, on the 16th of March 2016, SLA troops occupied Pueblo Kullu and noticed the expansion of the sawmill; they also found lost prisoner uniforms, weapons, and scrap paperwork, but those were thrown away as nobody suspected the presence of a concentration camp. The troops stayed in Pueblo Kullu until March 27th, and only went to explore Mara Hill on the 1st of April.
The camp was found in a state of total abandonment, but its basic structure hadn’t been lost. The crematorium, prison, and execution wall were all still standing too. Instead, the archives were lost, as part was destroyed in the bombings and part had been saved and transported to the Quya ANDEPS base.
The site of the camp was used as a field hospital by Zapatero’s associates from 2017 to the end of the war, when it was finally shut down. At first it was abandoned, becoming a place of reunion for local kids, but then it was put under military secrecy in 2020. When it reopened, only a year later, the barracks had been demolished as well as the crematorium and all of the south end of the camp. Only the administration had been kept up as a museum.
Life in the camp[]
At its peak activity, between 2013 and 2015, the camp included 11 male barracks divided into 2 sectors, 6 female barracks, an inside kitchen, an execution wall, a prison, a crematorium, a hospital, warehouses, and a wood and a salt refinery.
Its garrison hosted 700 men, of which 250 were investigators of the ANDEPS and the rest soldiers employed as guards, and included the camp’s administration, a postal office, showers, kitchens and a soccer field with track paths.
The camp had a maximum capacity of 1800 men, including a full prison, but ultimately hosted 2313 in august 2015, just before its evacuation.
Its logs and reports were destroyed, but the ones from its last evacuation survived; they list that:
- 76 male prisoners;
- 41 female prisoners;
- 47 staffmen and investigators;
- 80 soldiers;
- 3 trucks;
were evacuated from the camp. Of the 117 prisoners listed here, only 83 survived the war.
The camp’s conditions were harsh, mainly due to the weather as it offered basically no protection. The weak wooden barracks became hot under the scorching summer sun, just as the sawmill and the other industrial buildings, and were not nearly enough to shield prisoners from the rain in the winter; the linen uniforms easily soaked up rain and mud and carried infections. Prisoners were often used as spare body parts and blood reserves to help soldiers injured in the war, and just as usually killed after those forced surgeries. Prisoners were worked to death, beaten, treated brutally and executed for the slightest motives.
Commanders[]
1993-1995: Joa Maria Ribeiro.
1996-2007: Tomàs “Torquemada” Correira.
2007-2013: Mario Leite-Lima.
2013-2016: Enrique Lourerio.
See also[]
The original Campamento Mara.