Mega Prison

La 40: arte y justicia

Universidad de los Andes

An architectural phenomenon traverses Latin America: the mega prison. A few months ago, the president of the Republic of El Salvador self-appointed as a leader-architect and, along with his entourage of contractor friends, erected a monument to his absolute and supreme power.

In record time, they constructed a massive complex, far from any urban center, surrounded by multiple layers of high walls, towers, lights, and electrified fences enclosing eight compounds. Two of these silos are intended to house individuals whom an elusive police and judicial system determines to be linked to criminal gangs. The mega prison has the capacity for forty thousand people, but only one-third of this capacity is occupied. The extensive available space and the solitude of its square meters represent a veiled but direct threat to all of the country's citizens.

In a few months, the visibility of extortions, femicides, and robberies perpetrated for decades by various branches of a brutal criminal gang dictatorship has decreased. However, the risk of falling into the hands of the judicial system, whether by action or omission, now extends to the country's 6.3 million inhabitants, instilling fear at the prospect of being ensnared in this menacing architectural design.

Time stands still in the mega prison and the deprivation of liberty amplifies into sensory (no sunlight), aesthetic (lack of intellectual stimulation), and emotional (lack of visits) deprivation. While a portion of El Salvador's population enjoys a noticeable change and an improvement in the sense of security, some who also supported the government behind the mega prison see their loved ones encounter a police gang, and, without explanation, end up entangled in a judicial system that relegates them to the punitive landscape of this closed-door shopping center where humanity is mere merchandise for the trade of prison statistics.

For the victims of gang atrocities, the government provides neither truth nor investigations into what happened. The only response is the immediate bitter pill of revenge. This intoxicating punitive populism offered by the Salvadoran government clouds the national soul but serves to conceal decades of agreements between criminal, business, and political powers. For these elites, war is a business that allows them to promote fear and then sell security.

The theatrical staging of the prison scenario by the Salvadoran government pursues a clear political objective: to viralize the image of an apparent absolute control of the state over the territory, with the intention of ensuring the perpetual re-election of the president and his inner circle in both the presidency and positions of power.

The ominous image disseminated presents a high-angle view at the center of one of the compounds: a painting made with human skin forming a sea of tattooed flesh, depicting nearly naked men sitting with their hands on their heads and their buttocks on the ground. Dozens and dozens of shaved skulls line up in succession, resembling a repeated judicial document. This cunning and humiliating act is intended to depersonalize individuals, to strip them of their humanity, in order to demonstrate the supposed victory of the values of simple, comfortable, and apparent security over the hard work of building a life together in democracy.

In the upcoming electoral period, the Salvadoran government promises the construction of a new mega prison intended to house individuals accused of corruption, with the clear exception, of course, of prosecuting those who operate under the rules set by the current government's dealings. Throughout Latin America, there is a growing clamor from politicians and broad sectors of the population echoing the electoral cry of “Mega Prison!” They see in this controversial architectural promise the solution to all security problems.

A sizable group of incarcerated individuals convenes weekly for drawing sessions at the BibloRed public library, under the Mayor's Office, housed in Bogota's District Jail. For this issue of the Dearq magazine, we tasked them with imagining the design of a new prison, leveraging the potential offered by a blank page and the opportunity to scale down the mega prison to its most mundane dimension, compared to the unlimited potential of freedom of expression.

What you see is the outcome of this exercise: a highly personalized creative and political process undertaken by these individuals who, due to their incarceration, find the opportunity to be unrecognized artists—not living off art, but surviving through it. This perspective offers a different lens on the human poverty within the architectural brutalism propelled by ambitious, enriched, and triumphant politicians, elected by a complicit society that uses democratic rights to undermine the very values of democracy.