50 years of ¿Guarding and Punishing¿: rethinking torture as a contemporary control device in a Mexican prison 50 anos de Vigiar e punir: repensando o suplício como um dispositivo de controle contemporâneo em uma prisão mexicana 50 años de ¿Vigilar y castigar¿: repensando el suplicio como dispositivo de control contemporáneo en un penal de México
Academic Article in Scopus
Through the case study of a prison located in the Mexican state of Nuevo León, an exercise is carried out to contrast the propositions set out by Foucault in ¿Guarding and Punishing¿ with the reality of the prison, documented through in-depth interviews with five former inmates of the prison. More specifically, it focuses on torture, which played such an important role in maintaining a status quo prior to the present that emerged from the bourgeois revolutions and now seeks to identify what elements of torture are present in contemporary Mexican prisons. The aim is to identify and characterise the form that this ritual technique takes or how it is currently manifested through the experiences narrated by a sample of people who were deprived of their liberty in this prison. The results are articulated around four thematic axes supported by the documented experiences: the exercise of torture as a vertical device of power, its instrumentalisation for the management of suffering and of a certain ¿economy of punishment¿, the hierarchy of values buried under this strategic management of punishment, and the ritualisation and publicity of punishment. Finally, the narratives of the interviewees identify a system of torture, largely ritualised, which transcends an explanation of its existence centred on the mere inevitability given by confinement, and is found to be a premeditated punishment device with the sole purpose of causing suffering and humiliation in order to break rebellious wills.
