The Prisoner’s Body: Violence, Desire and Masculinities in a Nicaraguan Prison Theatre Group

Concentrated Violence: The Influence of Criminal Activity and Governance on Prison Violence in Latin America

“…This can involve protection rackets, in which those in power use violence deliberately to reinforce their power and to impose order, and government officials may participate in these or turn a blind eye (Gundur, 2018). In the same vein, when prisoner-led governance groups no longer meet prisoners’ needs, prisoners may use violence to disrupt their rule; prisoners may also use coordinated violence to exert pressure on formal authorities (Lessing, 2016; Weegels, 2018).…”

“…Some groups form inside prison for specific reasons, such as protection or for managing drug sales (Gundur, 2018). In some countries, such as Venezuela, gang-like groups have near-total control inside the facilities (Antillano, 2015), while in Central America, they negotiate power with staff (Weegels, 2018) and with street gangs (Rosen & Cruz, 2018), and in Chile and Argentina, prisoner-led governance groups exist but are not tied to gangs (Insight Crime, 2017; Sanhueza, 2014).…”

From prison to pit: trajectories of a dispensable population in Latin America

“…Ayala Ugarte, 2017;De León, 2015;Longazel & Hallet, 2021;O'Neill, 2012;Silverman, 2002;Vignolo, 2013). The study builds on our separate but complementary research exploring the long-standing neglect of prisoners and their experiences of social death on the one hand (Weegels, 2014(Weegels, , 2019(Weegels, , 2021, and the marginalisation and invisibilisation of the dead from lower socioeconomic layers of society on the other (Klaufus, 2014(Klaufus, , 2016a(Klaufus, , 2016b(Klaufus, , 2018(Klaufus, , 2021. Drawing from case studies on these three countries, we analyse what happens with prisoners in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, tracking the imagined and real trajectories between the prison and the grave (or urn) in terms of public policies and the experiences of next-of-kin, to uncover the everyday necropolitics of prison worlds and the practices and structures of 'necroviolence' that gird the treatment and disposal of marginalised people's dead bodies.…”

Undoing the “Cemetery of the Living”: Performing Change, Embodying Resistance through Prison Theater in Nicaragua

“…While this reflected their sense of being "bad" men (either as prisoners and/or at some previous point in their lives), it also implied their rejection of the notion that it is the authorities who hold the power to define what being a "good" man is. At this point, it is important to understand that the gendered norms of machismo -here understood as a gendered system of power relations that (re)produces inequalities between men and women, but also among men and women (Lancaster, 1992) -still shape the basic tenets of interaction between and among prisoners and the authorities as men (see also Weegels, 2014). As such, the honor of the prisoners as men both antedates and supersedes the prison context.…”