[1] New paleomagnetic data from the Coastal Cordillera-Precordillera boundary area of northern Chile, east of Copiapo, between 26 degrees 00'S and 28 degrees 00'S are reported. Early Cretaceous to earliest Paleocene volcanics and sediments are nearly completely remagnetized, the remagnetization typically being carried by both magnetite and hematite. In a small minority of sites a pretilting remanence is retained, however, both pretilting and posttilting remanences yield similar directions. These remanences plus primary remanences from Paleocene intrusions indicate a significant >35 degrees rotation of the whole area, in agreement with previous results from the region. The data suggest that the whole of this part of the Andean fore arc has undergone a substantial, regionally coherent, clockwise rotation. This rotation, it is argued, is in response to rapid and highly oblique Nazca-South American plate convergence in the period similar to 60-45 Ma prior to later Incaic deformation in the east of the study area. In the east, heterogeneous rotations associated with the Domeyko Fault System are interpreted as being superimposed on this regional rotation resulting in a highly variable and localized pattern of rotations in the vicinity of the main structures comprising the fault system itself.