ABSTRACT
During 1993 to 1994, I was the director of a study undertaken by the Colegio de Mexico’s Interdisciplinary Program for the Study of Women in order to determine the situation and living conditions facing women in Mexico’s prisons. 2 At the time of the study, women prisoners were a forgotten population, considered too small to merit serious discussion or justify decent facilities. Ten years later, Mexico has become part of the global prison boom, with prison construction being touted as the only solution to spiraling incarcerated populations and entrenched overcrowding. Despite their growing numbers, women in Mexican prisons remain largely invisible to the eye of the policymakers, whether in Mexico City or in Washington, D.C., who help shape the conditions that led to their imprisonment. Making these women visible is the first step in challenging their subordination, both in the penal system and in Mexican society as a whole. Mexican women prisoners share the same demographics as women in U.S. prisons. They are poor, undereducated, and many of them have suffered from physical or sexual abuse. They also share the detrimental impact of drug enforcement policies dictated by the United States. Latinas in Mexico are often doing time for the same crimes as women in the United States, including running and/or selling drugs, theft to support a habit or at the dictates of their husbands or boyfriends, and in some situations killing an abusive partner. Often these women are not drug users but were introduced to small quantities of drugs when visiting their husbands in prison or were “burros” transporting drugs for money to feed their families. As victims of the “war on drugs”, imposed on Mexico by the United States, these women face minimum prison sentences of seven years. They leave behind children and families who rely on them for survival.
