Social distance
Latin America has some of the most overcrowded prisons in the world and governments are currently scrambling to release inmates before the ‘time bomb’ of Covid-19 infections explodes. For the past two years, photographer Tariq Zaidi has been documenting the prison system and gang violence in El Salvador. With access to six of the country’s main gang-related prisons, he has captured a rare look at life inside these penal institutions
More than 1.7 million people are incarcerated across Latin America in some of the most overcrowded prisons in the world. As coronavirus cases rise, the region has become the new epicentre of the global pandemic, with officials warning that prisons could become flashpoints for new outbreaks.
El Salvador stands out as particularly troubled. As gang violence erupted in the country in April, with 77 murders recorded over one weekend, President Nayib Bukele announced emergency measures within prisons. This included packing rival gang members together, the use of lethal violence by security forces and sealing prisoners within dark cells to ‘prevent them from signalling in the hallways’. On Twitter, Bukele noted that inmates would ‘no longer
[be] able to see outside the cell…
They will be inside, in the dark’. He justified these measures by saying that gangs were taking advantage of the pandemic, and that they were necessary to defend Salvadorans. But will these policies, which make social distancing in prison impossible, lead to a spike in coronavirus cases?
The virus has already spread into prisons. As of late May, at least 160 inmates and prison staff across Latin America were confirmed to have died due to coronavirus, and a lack of testing – only 0.4 per cent of inmates in Brazil had been tested – means the death toll is likely much higher than officials suggest. Across the region, at least 4,100 inmates were confirmed to be infected by late May (900 in a single prison in Colombia), up from 1,400 a month prior. As fears about the pandemic rise across Latin America, prisoners have begun to protest against their cramped conditions. Precautions that the rest of the world is taking, such as social distancing and proper hygiene, are impossible in the world’s most overfilled penal institutions. Many such protests have turned violent. By late May, at least 54 inmates had died in riots across the region, while hundreds more escaped during riots in Brazil and Venezuela.