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Located in Obrajes, an upper-middle-class residential area in southern La Paz, Villa María is an older property with more than 7,000 square meters. Since 1956, the land formerly owned by María Isaura Miranda, an elderly millionaire who died without an heir, has been state property and used as a women’s prison. Inside is a post-colonial style building. The legend “Villa María 1915” can be read on the ceramic that decorates the floor. The wide and high corridors of this construction lead to a space of about two by four meters.
The room is narrow and houses two old shelves with at least a hundred books from different eras and genres, as well as a desk that serves as a workplace for the prison’s head of education and an attempt at a library where reading his works can grant some redemption. The Obrajes prison literary archive is one of 47 that are part of the “Libros por rejas” program, a project that seeks to promote reading in prisons in the Andean Amazonian country in exchange for a reduction in prison terms.
Launched in 2019 and sponsored by the Ombudsman together with the Bolivian State, the Ministry of Education and the Prison Administration, the program aims to combat prison overcrowding and the overuse of preventive detention in prisons, and to offer alternatives for the social reintegration of people of the deprived of freedom. “To date, Bolivia should have 165% prison overcrowding and a 65% preventive rate. This implies that the tasks of education, work, psychotherapy, among others, are almost impossible to fulfil,” explains Ombudswoman Nadia Cruz to América Futura.
The functioning and scope of the project depend on the prisoners’ willingness to read. They select a book from the library of their prison and at the end of the work, either through a written test or an essay, they can designate the person responsible for the pedagogical area of the prison for credit, through a certificate, a reduction in sentence taking into account the training achieved – or level of education of the participant. Persons sentenced in Bolivia to the maximum sentence, equivalent to 30 years in prison without parole, do not have access to the program. “The places most treasured by those deprived of their liberty are their sports fields and their libraries. Both work motorically because of the commitment, the will and the time that they put into it themselves,” explains Cruz.
Mildred Solís, 43, was happy when the Ombudsman’s office arrived at Obrajes prison with more than 200 books almost a year ago to announce the implementation of the programme. “I said, ‘Finally we have a space to break away from the confinement a little bit, to free the mind, to let go of ideas,'” he recalls. There he began his literary adventure by reading William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, he says with a mischievous smile. He later continued with Isabel Allende’s Paula and Daughter of Fortune. “I’m reading El mundo de Sofía now to complete La historia de filosofia by Julián Marías,” he adds, with an optimistic touch from the small setting that houses the few works available for reading.
One of the beneficiaries of the “Libros por rejas” program.Andrés Rodríguez
Cruz is positive about the results of the program. When Libros por rejas started three years ago, it had about 160 subscribers. There are currently 865 participants, of whom just over 50% have finished reading a book. An encouraging figure considering that according to a 2021 survey by market research firm Ipsos on reading behavior in the country, 46% of Bolivians do not read a single book a year. “This program needs to grow and release more products. It helps us to get to know more literary genres in terms of novels, history, dramaturgy and plays,” says Idalia Torres, 48, who has 12 years left in Obrajes prison.
Not everything is optimistic for Solís. The prisoner laments that the more than 200 works that arrived in Obrajes, as part of a batch of 14,000 books distributed for the program – including donations from civil society and contributions from the State Vice Presidency’s Social Research Center – were burned in an attempted riot by some of the inmates. He confirms that it was something to be expected because there is no proper place to read. Torres, who has read almost four books since entering the correctional facility last April, agrees with Solís: “It would be good if every institution, whether public or private, saw the need for us prisoners to have a lot more variety. in relation to the bibliography.
Solís’ facial expression changes, indicating sadness. He remembers when prison security officials, checking the cleanliness of the rooms, found four books under his pillow and moved him to another room, arguing that “it’s not normal for someone to have so many books.” “We don’t have enough bookshelves, we don’t have a lot of literary material either. There are no tables or chairs to read in peace. You can’t live like that, you can’t read like that. There were only four books, we urgently need a library,” he says helplessly with tears on his face.
RQ, 54, is another beneficiary of Libros por rejas. He has not yet been convicted and has been in preventive detention for three years in San Pedro Jail, a much more hostile location in central La Paz city. The jail houses 2,566 inmates, although it has a capacity for 400. Self-regulated by inmates and delegates – leaders chosen by the prisoners themselves – behind the walls of this fortress hides a small library, a padlocked room that only opens occasionally to borrow a book or a to teach class. This is due to the risk of material theft or damage that may be caused.
Since joining the project, RQ has been reading If They Let Me Talk, a biography of Domitila Barrios de Chungara, a prominent miners’ rights activist in Bolivia, as well as other titles related to the country’s history. “At each reading, we created our summary and presented it to each of the 20 or 30 participants. There were discussions and analyzes on various aspects that colleagues liked. This program focuses on the development of people deprived of their liberty and how we can manage their reintegration into society on the basis of education,” affirms the inmate from the San Pedro prison library, surrounded by shelves with titles such as El Count of Monte Cristo or modern bestsellers like Twilight.
RQ says it’s not easy to maintain the habit of reading in San Pedro as places are limited due to overcrowding at the prison, with overcrowding at 542%, according to Justice Department data. As in most prisons in Bolivia, inmates are required to do work within the facilities either to stay there or to help their families financially abroad.
They know from the Ombudsman Board that it is not easy to coordinate tasks with the state or with the prison administration; and that there are logistical, bureaucratic and understanding aspects of the importance of educational processes for reintegration that require attention, but that it is a process in which ‘continuous improvement’ is sought. “We managed to get the Department of Education and the national correctional system to embrace books for bars as a program that’s part of the education pillar and accepted by public officials without judgment,” Cruz says.
The Ombudsman believes that all prison problems have a structural root in the mismanagement of the judiciary in Bolivia. Cruz is one of those who believe in a new look at the system, emphasizing, among other things, strengthening indigenous, rural, civil and labor justice so that they can take a leading role in solving the problems faced by the population.
“The state itself and our society, especially in Bolivia, stigmatize people who are deprived of their liberty. Therefore, on the part of the state, civil society, it is necessary to consider women and men deprived of their liberty as people who need new opportunities, who are people who need to continue with their life projects, and there we all have a job, and he continues to contribute and support this to happen,” concludes Cruz.