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Spelling Bee in the CERESOFE

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Yesterday was my first visit to the medium-security federal prison (CERESOFE) since I arrived in Mérida on Thursday night. Maestra Zindy Abreu Barón is teaching an English class inside. For the last day, she organized a spelling bee (which I learned has no equivalent in Spanish, since it is a phonetic language). Maestro Fernando de la Cruz, director of the CIS (Centro de Idiomas del Sureste), and I served as judges. We arrive at 10am at the CERESOFE before passing through a thorough security check. It is a large white block-like building with just a few small square windows. The motif of the square is repeated throughout – the doors we pass through feature a square pattern of overlapping metal bars, the rooms are square, the labyrinth of hallways we passed through also seemed to follow a square pattern of vertical stairways and horizontal halls.

Part of my goal this summer is to compare the old Cereso (fully Mexican funded) and the US-supported and accredited CERESOFE. The United States intervention in the Mexican prison system is relatively unknown and is not generally discussed in academic circles that study incarceration in the United States. Currently, the CERESOFE houses less than 15 women, though it has a capacity of 350. Many of the women in the old Cereso have not yet been moved over. A couple from the workshop I held two years ago are still in the old Cereso.

The spelling bee, organized by Abreu Barón, goes well. The women laugh, cheer, and hiss as we judge their companions. Afterwards, we are served lunch and stay to chat with the inmates and invited guests, who include the prison director. The event feels partly like a public school graduation, part like a political function.

The winner is a woman who had reached a university-level education when she was imprisoned, for being an accessory to murder perpetrated by a male friend, a common story among female prisoners here. Some speculate that she did it out of love, others that she was already living under conditions of violence and acted perhaps under threats or duress. Other crimes I hear of include robbery and the murder of a husband. These new federally-funded prisons are ostensibly meant to fight the war on drugs, according to the text on the Mérida Initiative which appears on the State Department web site:

“The Mérida Initiative is an unprecedented partnership between the United States and Mexico to fight organized crime and associated violence while furthering respect for human rights and the rule of law. Based on principles of common and shared responsibility, mutual trust, and respect for sovereign independence, the two countries’ efforts have built confidence that is transforming the bilateral relationship.”

Over plates of creamy pasta with carrots and trays of hojaldras—pastries filled with slices of ham and cheese or cream cheese—and cups of soft drinks, I chat with one of the students who took my writing workshop last year in the old Cereso. When I first ask her about how things are going for her in the new CERESOFE, she shrugs and says it’s great, in line with the smiles and positive rhetoric that have characterized the cheery atmosphere of the spelling bee. We spend a while talking, sharing memories of our workshop, talking about three of its members who have gone free and two who are still in the old Cereso. I ask her about her preferences in terms of the workshop I am planning—nonfiction, fiction, poetry—and she asks that we work on more Mayan myths, explaining with a smile that Mexico has such a rich culture, and that she’d like to continue to explore it, as we did in the section on Mayan myths in the last workshop. I ask her how it was adjusting to the conditions in the new CERESOFE, and this time she says that they offer less freedom than she had at the Cereso. I realize then that all the women are wearing uniforms—jeans or shorts and black t-shirts—rather than colorful Yucatecan shirts and huipiles the women in the Cereso were permitted to wear. During the spelling bee, they were seated so that there was an empty seat between all of them. They enter the room in a file with two guards and leave with them, unlike the women in the old Cereso who come to and leave class with more freedom of movement..*

After saying our goodbyes, we leave the CERESOFE and walk into a sudden tropical rainstorm. I am looking forward to the workshop, to getting to know the women there, and to learning more about their lives and the stories they wish to tell, from behind these high white walls.

*On the other hand, those familiar with both systems have commented that the accredited CERESOFE does succeed in blocking the passage and traffic of drugs in the new facility, a crucial step in the reinsertion process once the women are back outside. Drug dependence means that inmates can fall immediately back into the necessity of making money through criminal means.


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