Famous Mexican ‘paradise prison’ is closing, and some inmates don’t want to leave
- Mexico will close its infamous Isla Marias prison, the last island penal colony in the hemisphere
- Most prisoners lived in semi-captivity on the island, free to roam about in the balmy weather beneath its tropical palm trees
More than a century after Mexico established a prison on the Maria Islands – a Pacific archipelago eight hours by boat from the mainland – the country’s new government has decided to close it.
But some prisoners didn’t want to leave the tropical jail.
The inmates and guards on the islands – the Islas Marias, as they are known in Spanish – stayed put even when powerful Hurricane Willa swept over them in October 2018.
But they could do nothing to withstand the force of nature that is Mexican politics.
In February, newly installed leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador decided to close the prison, saying the islands – known for their beauty and biodiversity – should not be a testament to “punishment, torture and repression”.
The jail, established in 1905, will now become the Jose Revueltas cultural centre, named for a Mexican writer and political activist who was imprisoned here twice in the 1930s.