Every prisoner is political. A particular prison experience during the last dictatorship in Argentina

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to reflect on some expressions of the continuities and ruptures that were manifested in the prison system, based on the unique experience of a “political prisoner” confined in a prison with “common prisoners” and the inherent interactions to this coexistence, between 1976 and 1982.
Additionally, an attempt will be made to make explicit some of the tools and resources deployed to survive more than five years in this space (Unit 2, Devoto), and thus be able to provide a view from the inside of the prison system of the time.
Coexistence and interaction with “common prisoners”; being detained during the dictatorship; the “Massacre of Pavilion 7th” (1978); the paradigm shift of power within the “prison society”; the organization of the Education Section of the prison as the germ of the later Centro Universitario de Devoto (CUD). These are some of the axes that, based on testimonial history, will be reviewed and contextualized, trying to contribute to the analysis and investigation of a field of memory and history from the time of State terrorism that has not received many recent critical readings.