Liberté: seek dignity with self-management, despite stigmas and obstacles
06/02/2021
The workshop-cooperative of Penal Unit 15 of Batán is presented as a model for the rest of the prisons of the Province. The history, achievements and present of the unprecedented prison device.
(Photos: Liberté Solidarity Workshop)Author: Sebastian Ali
redaccion@quedigital.com.ar@aliseba4
“More than one of us who are here have a friend or a brother who is in prison. This song is not for them, because messing around when you're inside is not good. It is for us to realize that they are subject to the terrible hell“,
Carlos “Indio” Solari (introduction to “Seventh Pavilion”. La Plata, 2008)
Self-management as a way of seeking dignity may not be a novel phrase, but when it is ascribed to a context of confinement it acquires a significant and even more revolutionary semantics. So, in Penal Unit 15 of Batán it is not just another concept. There, since 2014, a group of people deprived of their liberty organized in the Liberté workshop-cooperative has carried out a project that, step by step, is acquiring better living conditions in the face of a State that does not guarantee them, protected by a society that does not Nor is it claimed as it is vitiated by punitiveness and by not understanding the rights of inmates as an unavoidable factor in the prevailing discourse of "security".
In the middle of Penal Unit 15, a library with more than 3,500 books that they distribute to the rest of the pavilions, a store where they can buy food that even their families are not allowed to take them and with its own payment system to circumvent the prohibition of handling cash, activities sports, courses and a unique diploma, connectivity that they themselves pay month after month and share with the institution, a vegetable garden and an apiary.
“Liberté is a 100% self-managed undertaking by prisoners, with everything that the word prisoner means, the word self-managed and that it be 100%. We do it, as our slogan says, to build hope in hell itself and because we are convinced that with dignity and human rights, the person is a person in the face of a system that the first thing that makes you feel is that you are not. We are going that way. Many can say that the prisoners who are here did not previously respect the rights of others and it is very likely. But that has to be changed so that it doesn't do it anymore, since it did it once," Xavier Aguirreal, the initiator of a workshop that today is a model for many units and for the State itself, introduced in dialogue with Qué digital.
THE STORY OF FREEDOM
Xavier relates that they arose because they needed to cover the provision of elements that the State in 2014 did not give them, such as razors, toilet paper, T-shirts or a decent plate of food. “Some asked the families, but the State has to give it to you, it is not our idea,” he questions.
But his family is low-income and Xavier didn't want to ask him for support. "It was a shame, crazy and unfair to them," he defined. And that was how he began to look for alternatives to generate his own resources and came across a prison official who spoke to him about the possibility of carrying out his own production enterprise or workshop, despite the fact that working from prison - he admits - is usually usually linked to donations and not to personal benefit. Despite this, they managed to get the proper authorization: "We were gaining our space and many got used to work being a common currency among prisoners," he said.
Thus, with his cellmate and the sponsorship of an Adventist pastor, they decided to buy a sewing machine with which they started a workshop for making work clothes, to later change their field and start making wall clocks that they sold outside. .
Then, in 2016, when they were about to lose everything due to the removal of the space where they had worked since 2014, they met the Necochea judge Mario Juliano, whom they contacted for advice. Xavier said that, in a matter of hours, Juliano (who died in 2020) solved the problem and became Liberté's godfather: “It changed our way of thinking. He explained to us that not only did we have the right to fight over a packet of rice but that there were a lot of rights that were ours and were being taken away from us.”
Plaque in homage to Mario Juliano. (Photos: Liberte)
In 2017 they had another conflict, although directly with the Penitentiary Service authorities: through a decree, the prison workshops had to start paying a percentage to the Penitentiary Service in order to function. “We were totally opposed, Juliano was also opposed. All the efforts were made and it was not possible. To such an extent that they took me to mailboxes for four days for disciplinary reasons so that I could change my mind,” he said, adding that due to the protests of the 14 members that the workshop had at that time, they were threatened with transfers: “I was destined to the Sierra Chica prison. We got up in the morning and we didn't know if we were going to continue to have the things from the workshop or if they had been thrown at us, ”he said, rueful.
Faced with this, they decided to prosecute the issue and in 2018 they were able to obtain permission to operate in a self-managed manner, with due control by the SPB of the activities they carry out, but now with enough freedom to start earning rights.
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THE FRUIT OF SELF-MANAGEMENT
"With self-management we have managed to buy our food and, for example, be able to read a book," says Xavier as an introduction to each of the steps they have taken since 2018.
Before Liberté, the inmate who wanted to read a book -he says- depended on the authorization of an official to access the library, and it was not uncommon to find negative responses. “So we said, wait, let's put together our own library. And today we have a library with 3,500 books,” he noted. The library was initially formed with donations: the first of 500 books from the library of the Logos Hope ship that arrived in Mar del Plata in 2019, to which was added a donation of more than two thousand books made by a young man from Necochea.
But today not only those who are in the workshop can read, but they have also created a "mobile library" service with which they take books to the rest of the pavilions every day with a cart. “Just as we did with the library, we did with the garden with the help of INTA, with the apiary where we produce our own honey, and with the warehouse that emerged in the pandemic where we supply products that had never before entered prison, such as alfajores, soft drinks, ice cream, chewing gum, which were restricted here”.
workshop-liberte-BIBLIOTECAtaller liberté mobile libraryRegarding the warehouse, he said that they received a loan from the "Mario Juliano Association" with which they were able to start paying for the merchandise that arrives directly from official suppliers, which allows the products to reach the inmates whole, without the need for that they be sliced by the officers of the Penitentiary Service in search of prohibited elements.
“What fills us the most is that we are providing merchandise that there is no way for the prisoner to get it, not even for visits. If the mother wants to bring an alfajor to her son, it cannot be done”, she celebrated and described it as “one of the great achievements”.
With the profits from the warehouse they can even give a salary to those who work there and also, with another percentage, they created a reparation fund for crime victims together with the Victims for Peace Association, which is administered by the organization.
workshop-freedom-warehouse freewarehouse 1The last of the achievements has to do with something central such as coping with the impossibility of handling cash inside the prison due to prison regulations: they use bank accounts through which they acquire supplies, pay for services and where, for example, families of inmates who want to buy in the store make the transfers. They also reached agreements with Pago Fácil, which provided them with the means to expedite payments from abroad and from anywhere in the country.
With the funds they manage to obtain, they can even pay for the internet and the platforms they use to develop their own courses and also those granted by the institution: karate for five units simultaneously, boxing and Latin dance workshops.
THE “HARASSMENT” AGAINST LIBERTÉ
Despite having the authorization of the main authorities of the Unit and even the Penitentiary Service to carry out the multiple sports, cultural, economic and recreational activities in the workshop, in recent weeks Liberté reported that they were the object of what they described as a "harassment" against its operation inside the prison by a deputy director who, faced with the licenses of his superiors, is usually in charge of the facilities.
According to Xavier, normally and with the corresponding permission, some of the inmates work in the workshop until late at night, preparing the food and drink that they deliver to the visitors who arrive at the prison. However, one night they couldn't do it: the deputy director decided to close the workshop about four hours early. Despite the formalized claims, a month and a half later, they had the same conflict with the same official.
In this regard, he pointed out that the director of the Unit himself recognized that it had been a decision without consultation. However, the harassment continued: “The following Monday, he ordered the welding of the rear gates that lead to a sports field that we built, the orchard and the apiary that we built. He cut off our access to all that, ”he said, and recounted that two hours later the director, who was on leave, had to give the order to remove the welding and, again, apologized to them.
workshop liberté sportsworkshop liberté hivesIt is transmitted from the workshop, and has the participation of teachers such as Iñaki Rivera from Barcelona, the judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni or references from the Latin American Institute of Criminology and Social Development of Peru, among others and has 1,500 registered students, including prisoners from other prisons, whose prison units even had to manage connectivity. The classes began in May and will continue for the rest of the year, however, that Saturday the participants of the Penal Unit 15 of Batán could not participate due to the impediment of the same official in conflict. "There were 1,500 students from around the world but the students from Batán could not participate," he lamented.
Xavier assures that the harassment is only against the workshop, although he says he does not know the reasons. “He asked to close Liberté, nothing else. The rest of the spaces where there were prisoners doing activities did not. The motives? I dont know. I imagine that perhaps to come in a full work of recovery of rights and dignity, which is also spreading in different places, ”he pointed out.
Finally, this Wednesday the deputy director, after the events denounced by Liberté, was removed from his position.
DIGNITY AS A GOAL: “WHEN THEY LEAVE, WHAT DO YOU WANT THEM TO BE?”
“Someone out there will hear me talk about recovering dignity and will tell me: Che, but you're in prison, what do you want? Well it is much more complex than that. Prisons are useless, even though they exist. Prisoners are not going to be in jail for life, one day they are going to get out. So the day they get out of there is the crux of the matter: what do you expect them to be? We are prisoners and we want dignity”, stressed Xavier about the founding purpose of the prison space.
There are many people and institutions -such as Easy Payment, for example- that contributed their part to help Liberté, which for Xavier has a specific meaning: "There are many people who think the same, that prison is useless, but that now that exists, that it serves for something. So that the day the prisoner gets out of jail he is not an ex-criminal or an ex-prisoner who has to be taken care of, but is just another neighbor, this is achieved with dignity”, he concluded.
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