Behind Prison Walls:
A volunteer bears witness to the other side of Ecuador

By Carolyn Eanes

Siempre voy a volver
mantengan encendida una luz
“I will always return;
keep the light burning”
—
Oswaldo Guayasamín,
1919-1999, Quito, Ecuador

The chain link gate leading out from the prison courtyard had already clanged shut behind me when I saw her. She darted toward me, her bright red sweater drooping off of her slight, five-year-old frame.

“I just want to go home. Please take me home,” the words spilled out desperately, imploringly. “Tía, por favor tía . . . You know the house, it’s right over there,” she pointed vaguely over the tall cement wall crowned with barbed wire, her chin quivering and her eyes gaping with fear. “Ya sabes, tía. . . . The one with the stairs and the black room. You know the one. I’ll show you. Just please, take me home.”

It was Juliana’s first day in El Inca Women’s Prison in Quito, Ecuador. Her mother had been incarcerated the week before and, with nowhere else to go, Juliana was forced to serve a sentence that was not hers.

Sadly, Juliana's story is not unique. More than 700 children live with their mothers or grandmothers in various Ecuadorian jails. Many of them were born there.

I was shocked when I first found out that many children accompany their mothers to jail in Ecuador: a phenomenon that is evidently quite common in the majority of Latin American countries. When I initially made plans to study for a semester in Ecuador, I did not expect to find myself face to face with the jarring reality of the overcrowded, squalid, dangerous conditions that mark the country’s penal system. This is not to say that I anticipated the typical study abroad experience. On the contrary, I had hoped to secure some type of volunteer job that would take me away from the markets overridden with tourists, the malls, the gringo bars, and the privileged university where Americans and the richest five percent of the Ecuadorian population attend classes.

Once in Quito, I found just what I was looking for without even really searching for it. One night, as I was flipping through the TV channels at my host parents’ house, I came across a show documenting the work of a fledgling non-profit organization that was raising funds for the children who lived in prison with their mothers. Children in jail? I wondered to myself. Could this be true? Could this be possible?

I wrote down the organization’s phone number and contacted it the following day, inquiring about its services and the possibility of performing volunteer work in the jail. It turned out that it did not actually work directly with the incarcerated children; instead, the organization raised money for food and clothes, and oversaw the distribution of supplies through other agencies. I was told, however, that I might be able to acquire a volunteer job in the jail on my own. So, with the help of the director of my cross-cultural program, I set up a meeting with El Inca’s prison warden, who eventually agreed to authorize me as a volunteer in the guardería, the children’s nursery.

I returned the following week to begin work. After being searched at the gate and having a stamp imprinted on my forearm, I entered the compound. The children in the class to which I was assigned (two- to four-year-olds) were consuming their breakfast rations: half a hard-boiled egg and a small cup of colada (similar to grits) each. “We force them to finish all their food,” one of the other volunteers explained, “because between this and the bowl of soup they get for lunch, that’s all the food they’ll get.” The prison does not make any provisions for the children in El Inca. Each mother is allotted only one plate of food a day and one bed, regardless of the number of children she has living with her. Some have as many as five.

I looked around at the brood of children in mismatched, worn-out clothes poking at their food, some making furtive glances in my direction. They were quick to smile when I caught their gazes, and soon I became the recipient of nonstop hugs and tentative tugs at the sleeve. “These children are so starved for affection,” the guardería director told me. “If you can just give them that, they will be better off for it.”

So began my venture behind the prison gates of El Inca. Each Tuesday and Thursday morning I entered through the heavy iron door, displayed my identification card, secured my arm-stamps and made my way back to the guardería. There I would spend my mornings attending to mishaps—accidents in the bathroom, stubbed toes, scratches, bumps, and hurt feelings—reading stories, overseeing sharing of the one broken swing set, or trying to teach letters and numbers to the older children.

Often, I left in a state of internal conflict. On the one hand I breathed a sigh of relief to have made it out of that concrete dungeon, but, on the other hand, I struggled each time I fastened the padlock on the guardería gate, leaving all the children trapped inside. As time passed and I got to know the children—and their mothers—individually, I began to learn the tragic circumstances that had condemned them to El Inca. Many of the women had been deceived by former boyfriends or husbands and were unknowingly led into lives of drug trafficking and crime. Countless inmates were victims of rape and aggression at the hands of prison guards—most of whom were male, and many of whom had actually fathered children in the jail. None took responsibility for their offspring though, and no one defended the incarcerated women. One woman was actually prosecuted for assault when she attempted to defend herself by striking two guards who were trying to rape her. No charges were ever brought against the guards.

“I think I glimpsed hell today,” I wrote once after a visit to the prison. “I don’t know how everyone who comes into contact with El Inca Women’s Prison doesn’t leave heartbroken. . . . I’ve come home today with a heavy heart. To me, this place is hopelessness, desperation, coldness—full of stories that echo off those dirty cement walls.”

In spite of all the desolation, I found some source of hope at El Inca. I was surprised to discover that El Inca had attracted a diverse group of volunteers, mostly foreigners, who had come to serve, not for pay or recognition, but simply to do something good for others. Within my first week at the prison, I met two girls from Ireland who were in the middle of a three-month volunteer position there. They told me they were organizing a benefit party in a local club to raise money to buy clothing, diapers, and hygienic supplies for the children in the guardería. They had meticulously taken stock of each child’s most pressing need, down to the details of shoe size and color preference. Working together, we succeeded in collecting hundreds of dollars and assembling individual packages for each of the children. The following Saturday, we entered El Inca, our arms overflowing with bags of supplies.

This was my first time in the actual residential part of the jail. After the time-consuming task of checking all our bags through the meager security checkpoint, we were admitted and found ourselves in the midst of utter mayhem. Since it was a visiting day, the jail was swarming with people—family members, friends, and anyone else who chose to enter. At El Inca, there are no sterile, secure visiting booths like there are in the United States. Instead, visitors and prisoners are free to roam from cells to courtyards during the appointed hours. When we entered the main corridor of the jail, loaded with our gifts, we were mobbed. Even women who had no children tried to petition us for the diapers and toiletries that we had brought. We soon learned the motivation for this: the prevalent drug trafficking and use within the jail had turned every commodity that entered the prison—even diapers—into currency. Still, in the midst of the chaos that day in El Inca, the grateful response from the women and children was ultimately rewarding.

Months after my return to the States, I am still haunted by the stories I heard in El Inca. I find it difficult to reconcile the opportunities and luxuries of my American life with the oppression and tragedy I saw in that prison. But perhaps most difficult was the morning I met Juliana—the morning that I felt the wrenching injustice of a child suffering.

In silence, I hugged Juliana to me, stroking a few wisps of dark hair out of her eyes, not sure what to say. This embrace was but a momentary respite from the ugliness that made El Inca anything but home: the overcrowded rooms, the leaking roof, the knife fights, the angry screaming, the clanging iron doors, the cruel stares of the guards, the scanty rations of morning colada, the locks and gates and fences and walls. I didn’t want this awful place to have to be her home. As I stood there squinting into the intense equatorial sun, every comfort I conjured up was a lie. I just wanted to go on hugging her against me so she wouldn’t have to go back into that dungeon, through the halls that reeked of despair and loneliness and lives forgotten.

“No te preocupes. Don’t worry,” I finally said. “You’ll be okay. I’ll take care of you.” But I knew it wasn’t that simple. I knew I could not carry her with me to the house with the stairs and the black room. I knew at the end of that day, just like all the other days that I spent in El Inca, I would leave alone, through those heavy iron doors, carrying only her story. AV

Carolyn Eanes, Abroad View 2006-07 writing contest winner for the Personal Journey category, is a recent graduate of Messiah College in Pennsylvania . She earned a B.A. in English Composition, as well as a Spanish minor. In 2006, Carolyn studied abroad with Brethren Colleges Abroad (www.bcanet.org) and spent five months in Quito , Ecuador . While there, she studied at La Universidad San Francisco de Quito and volunteered at El Inca Women's Prison, which is the subject of article, “Going Behind Prison Walls” (page 67). In the future Carolyn hopes to do more traveling, especially in Latin America , but at present she is working to obtain teaching certification in English and ESL. Contact her at carolyn.eanes@gmail.com.