San Lucas Island

Today our Latin Cultures class took a trip across the gulf to the Island of San Lucas.   From the 1800's up until 1991 it was a prison.  To be honest it was rather eery walking around this island, everything looked so old an crumbly I couldn't believe that the walls in front of me had spelled death for so many people...and really so recently.  I'll take you on a mini tour through just a couple of pictures. 

This is the prison.  It is the only part that you can see from the ocean.  The rest of it is swallowed by the forest.  I came as a tourist, what would it have been like to approach those gray walls as a prisoner?

This is a picture of the walkway to the main buildings.  The wall you see to the left is one of the two "initiation" buildings.  When you first arrived you would spend anywhere from a week to a year in those buildings, as long as it took to make sure you were completely submissive. 



One of the barracks from the outside view.  I would have put a picture of the insides up...but they are full of obscenities and explicitly pornographic images.  The air inside is hot, wet and oppressive, heavy with smells that claw at your lungs.  Surrounded by profanity, weighed down by the heat and the darkness....I can't quite convey the feeling to you, but I wish I could.  We heard stories about men that had been unjustly accused but thrown in these places just the same to suffer the same fate as the murderers and thieves.  Stories for me, but that was someone's life...their vivid reality.  Many men, by the time they were released, were blind because of all of the time they had spent in the darkness.   

Latin America is marked by its devotion to Catholicism.  Can you believe this church  for the prisoners was used up until 21 years ago?  It looks so haunting now.

The crumbled rocks on the right are the trailing edge of what used to be a pasture for the cows.  More often than they were fed to the prisoners they were fed to the sharks to ensure that it would be almost assuredly lethal to try and swim to safety if you managed to escape.

We walked to the very edge of the island and ate lunch here by the shore.  Isn't this pretty?  This picture makes it look so cool and refreshing...I almost can't remember the gallons of sweat gushing out of my pores.