Paleomagnetic analyses of Mesozoic lavas and dike swarms from the northern Chilean Coastal Cordillera, between 25.4¿S and 26.4¿S, reveal a clockwise rotation of about 42¿. Magnetizations from lava flows of andesitic-basaltic composition of the Middle Jurassic La Negra Formation pass both fold and reversal tests and are interpreted as prefolding remanences. Five dike swarms of Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous age yield similar directions to that obtained from the La Negra Formation. Four of the five swarms have mixed polarity, suggesting that they too carry a primary or very early remanence. The structural setting of the dikes suggests that they have not suffered any substantial tilting about nonvertical axes since acquisition of the remanence. The clockwise rotation of the area is believed to have been the consequence of transpressional deformation of mid-Late Cretaceous age, post-100 Ma, associated with abandonment of the Jurassic-Early Cretaceous magmatic arc in this region and its eastward migration to form a new mid-Late Cretaceous magmatic arc in the former back arc region. This younger arc is located east of the Coastal Cordillera and lies in the Central Valley region. The clockwise sense of rotation is consistent with other paleomagnetic data from northern Chile and southern Bolivia, south of the Arica Deflection in the Andean margin, although it is the largest yet reported. To the north of the Arica Deflection, paleomagnetic studies report counterclockwise rotations, and several large-scale models have been proposed to explain the overall pattern of rotations. Models include oroclinal bending of an originally straight margin, differential shortening across the margin at a preexisting bend which is subsequently tightened by the passive rotation of the limbs of the bend, and distributed shear throughout the margin as a consequence of oblique convergence at a preexisting bend. In contrast to these models, several workers have argued that rotation is better explained in terms of localized in situ rotations. We review these models in light of our results and present a domino-type model with blocks bounded by left-lateral faults and rotating clockwise in response to mid-Late Cretaceous transpression within a crustal scale shear zone. This is consistent with the observed strike-slip fault systems identified in the Coastal Cordillera. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996