Prisoners of Circumstance

Two-year old Jonas spends hours sitting on the concrete floor tossing around bottle caps and watching them fall back into the pile of colours, with occasional shrieks of “mira, mira” as the bottle caps bounce off each other, creating a cascading effect. Bottle caps and tile spacers have become common playtime activities for the children of the Yanamilla prison in Ayacucho.  The reality for these children exist within the confounds of metal bars, barbed wire and watch guards. A childhood spent behind prison walls is never idyllic- yet Yanamilla is home to approximately 16 children and their mothers.

Jonas (left) playing in the cuna

In recent years, the number of female prisoners in Latin American jails have increased twofold.   The Yanamilla prison houses approximately 1400 prisoners (in a facility built for 700), of which 160 are women. The growth of female prisoners in Peru is attributed largely to the lucrative drug trafficking industry of the Andes. Drug mules, better known as “mulas” are promised sums of money to move cocaine from the Andes to the nearby jungle, onward to the borders of Brazil. The majority of the women in the Yanamilla prison are serving drug trafficking sentences, and depending on the type of drug, the amount trafficked, and the scale of involvement, the duration of these sentences can range anywhere between 1 to 20 years. As these female prison populations burgeon, many countries have allowed women who give birth while incarcerated to raise their children for a period of time behind bars (usually  up to 18 months- after which the children get sent to orphanages).

So what motives these women to take on these small roles, with large risks? Poverty and desperation. Women who simply want to feed their families and clothe their children, do not realize the risks they run nor the kinds of sentences they will serve if they are caught trafficking. A comparative study on the impact of drug policies on the prison systems of eight Latin American countries – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay  revealed that most of the persons imprisoned for drugs are not high- or medium-level drug traffickers, but rather occupy the lowest links in the chain. According to the report, these laws have overcrowded the prisons, but have not curbed the production, trafficking, or use of drugs.

A large portion of this problem can be attributed to the uneven nature of economic growth in this country, which has created a stark division between rich and poor. Peru has been undergoing massive changes over the past two decades- socially, economically and politically- and such changes often lead to inequitable access to new wealth. Drug trafficking is a way of accessing the informal economy when access to the formal economy is barred.

For Jonas and the other children of Yanamilla who spend their days playing in the cuna, life has only existed inside these prison walls. Yet the simplicity of bottle caps and tile spacers is able to occupy the attention of these niños, and warrants excitement and shrieks of laughter in an otherwise sombre environment.