In the middle of a basketball court, Zeany laughs with her companions like any other young woman her age. The girls play, run and chat as they would in a schoolyard while studying for high school. However, his group is under the watchful eye of several policemen, surrounded by barbed wire and with a pit bull with a barbed collar that patrols the perimeter of the constituent detention community for adolescents in Monterrey, Nuevo León. At just 18 years old, it is the fourth time that Zeany has entered the prison. She is one of more than 1,400 teenagers held in prison for committing a serious crime, from kidnapping to rape to murder.
Like her peers, this young woman believes that things could have been different for her if her environment had been different.
Her signature culminates a list of petitions to the candidates for these elections in order to change the social reality that feeds the vicious cycle of recidivism of many young people like her.
"Since I am locked up here, I would like to use my testimony so that the kids can listen to me, that they know my story and I can help them lead a life free of violence", is one of the demands included in the document.
More information
A Mexican teenager, suspected of 50 murders
"We were like disposable plates for the narco"
Zeany remembers perfectly his last day in freedom. "It was raining a lot. I had gone out to steal so I could buy a tamale for my brother who was at home, but there was no one on the street, ”she says, dressed in a gray tracksuit uniform and her hair tied up in a suspender and perfect bun. He lived then in the neighborhood of Independencia, like his partner in the Heivy prison. "There we are so high on the hill that not even the police go up," he adds about one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city. Many of the boys in the prison, also born or raised in that colony, support him and complain that there was hardly any light at night or that school was too far away to be able to go every day. "I would like my neighborhood to recover a dignified life for all who live there," they have written in the joint petition. Specific,they point out that in the most marginal and dangerous neighborhoods where they have grown up, there is a lack of quality public facilities and services, street safety and authorities that guarantee justice.
A woman is taken to her cell in the facilities of the Women's Reintegration Center.Julio Cesar Aguilar
Like her mother, Zeany began working for one of the cartels that terrorize Monterrey from a very young age. “They shot her and killed her in front of my house when she was 12 years old. It was a rival cartel, so I went to work to get revenge, "he recalls. Around this time, he started using marijuana and later switched to cocaine. The jobs he did for organized crime as a minor were various, from drug sales to murders. However, the police put her in prison for crimes against health. “They tortured me to talk and they touched me, but I didn't say anything. Not because I was brave, but because I didn't want them to go looking for my family ”, he details. Now, she assures that when she leaves she wants to study to be a criminologist.
Alba Lerma, the center's psychologist, explains that the boys come from an environment torn by violence, which makes it more difficult for them to reintegrate into society or complete their studies. Many of them have been raised in a family that lives marginalized in suburban neighborhoods with links to organized crime. “When they leave here and come home, everything is the same. The families are still gang members and they go back to offending, ”he laments. Inside the center, adolescents receive training, career guidance and some are on their way to finish their studies and enter university. "We have many who want to study to be lawyers or psychologists," adds Lerma. However, the reality outside the prison hits the boys' dreams and once they have served their sentence of up to five years,many re-enter for the same crimes. One of the inmates' requests is that within the psychological support they receive once inside the center, family members can accompany them to work together.
An intern participates in the workshop "Mexico in which I grew up; children and adolescents in contact with violence." Julio Cesar Aguilar
Heivy is afraid to go back to her neighborhood. One of the memories he has of the Independence colony is from a friend of his who studied a lot. “He was a comrade who came with our group, but he was not involved in the things that we did. One day he was walking around and another gang saw him, they knew he was rubbing shoulders with the enemy and they turned him over, ”he says. Heivy says that he worked for the cartel from a very young age because of the money and because he was impressed by these "armed gentlemen." "They gave me security and protection," he explains. He insists that as soon as he leaves the prison, they will attack him and he no longer trusts the police. He insists that when he was arrested they put drugs in his pockets to provide a pretext for confining him. Among the proposals that he wants the candidates for governor to read,has stressed that they need more support and scholarships for careers as elite athletes in their neighborhood. His truncated dream was to be a professional basketball player and he would like to see more sports or artistic activities within the center.
There are just nine days left for the elections in which, for the first time, a pilot program will allow people in jail without a sentence - more than 2,000 inmates in Mexico, according to the Central Electoral - to exercise their right to vote by mail. . The
Reinserta
organization
It seeks that adolescents in the center of Monterrey become aware of their role as future voters and that they return to believe in institutions. Among the proposals they have collected, there is a repeated demand for more support from the authorities to warn about the consequences of violence from schools. “I would like students to hear about violence prevention in schools, to recognize when they do violence, as a class on how I can resolve a conflict in a peaceful way or about what it means and how I can practice gender equality to have a home. without family violence ”, reads the document. The boys have also asked for a mentoring and social entrepreneurship program while they are deprived of liberty to learn how to start their own business and not offend again.
Women prisoners carry out a dynamic of movement in the facilities of the Center for Women's Reintegration.Julio Cesar Aguilar
Subscribe here
to the
newsletter
of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of this country