Clandestine prisons in Mexico during the cold war

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the geographic location and the material and immaterial characteristics of the clandestine prisons that were set up in Mexico during the Cold War. In this context and with the doctrinal power of national security, several Latin American countries enforced repressive strategies for the annihilation of the “enemy within”. One common strategy was setting up clandestine prisons where the detainees were confined, making them be considered as disappeared persons. The investigation was performed using a qualitative methodology, which allowed for prisons to be observed as security devices. It also employed the consultation and articulation of documentary and testimonial sources that, although they were not specialized, did provide evidence on the subject. With these data, it was possible to make one of the first national lists regarding the location and constitutive elements of these prisons and the people responsible for their operation. The Mexican regime managed to keep its internal repression secret from the rest of the world until nearly the beginning of the new millennium. Nevertheless, none of the repressive strategies was foreign to it. These strategies were hidden through nebulous and impenetrable mechanisms that disfigured the discourse on recent history within the country's borders. This was possible due to structural impunity, which was erected as a barrier against knowledge of the repression and, undoubtedly, against a most inclusive defense of human rights.