Mexico to close its last infamous island prison

Mexico will close its infamous Isla Marias prison, the last island penal colony in a hemisphere once dotted with remote island jails like the one depicted in the movie “Papillon.”

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday that Mexico will relocate about two-thirds of the 659 remaining inmates and free about 200 others from the island, 70 miles off the Pacific coast of Nayarit. The four islands will be turned into a cultural and environmental education center.

The prison, founded in 1905 on Maria Madre, passed through periods of infamous brutality. When Panama closed its Isla Coiba penal colony in 2004, Isla Marias became the last one remaining in the Americas.

Lopez Obrador said the new Islas Marias cultural center will be named after Jose Revueltas, a novelist who was imprisoned there and wrote the novel “Walls of Water.”