ORIGINAL ARTICLE La Visita: Prisons and Survival in Guatemala Anthony W. Fontes 1 * and Kevin L. O’Neill 2 1 Assistant Professor, School for International Service, American University and 2 Professor, Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto *Corresponding author. Email: awfontesiv@gmail.com (First published online 17 September 2018) Abstract Based largely on research completed in the North American context, scholars of prisons detail the multiple ways in which carceral practices extend beyond prison walls to trans- form a wide variety of spaces, ultimately assessing how carceral imaginaries inhabit the most intimate aspects of everyday life. In Latin America, this division between the inside and the outside of prison breaks down even further when read from the perspective of survival. Drawing on ethnographic research across Guatemala’s penitentiary system, this article explores how the deep interdependencies that develop between male prisoners and female visitors sustain not just these prisoners and their visitors but also the prison system itself. Keywords: Guatemala; prisons; drugs; trafficking; women Introduction Prison studies has made it eminently clear that the prison is not separate from the rest of society. Based largely on research completed in the North American context, scholars of prisons detail the multiple ways in which carceral practices extend beyond prison walls to transform a wide variety of spaces, ultimately assessing how carceral imaginaries inhabit the most intimate aspects of everyday life. 1 There is an added dimension to this observation, however, that is particularly vis- ible in Latin America: survival. In Guatemala, the site of this study, prisoners and non-prisoners depend on each other in the daily business of survival. What is more, these relationships undergird the very survival of the prison system itself. These interdependencies come into stark relief with a focus on the labour that female visitors provide for incarcerated © Cambridge University Press 2018 1 See, for example, Loïc Wacquant, ‘Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh’, Punishment & Society, 3: 1 (2001), pp. 95–133; Dominique Moran, ‘Between Outside and Inside? Prison Visiting Rooms as Liminal Carceral Spaces’, GeoJournal, 78: 2 (2013), pp. 339–51; Megan Comfort, Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind (eds.), Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment (New York: The New Press, 2002). Journal of Latin American Studies (2019), 51, 85–107 doi:10.1017/S0022216X18000731 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X18000731 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 172.245.147.75, on 06 Mar 2019 at 13:25:56, subject to the Cambridge Core