Caseros

Domus reconstructs the short and incredible history of the Caseros prison in Buenos Aires. Considered in 1960 as a model penitentiary for prisoners awaiting trial, but instead used as a place to serve one’s time, after the revolt of 1984 it was transformed into a self-organised hell run by inmates and prison guards, and is today nearing demolition. Texts by Patricia Bullrich, Gaspar Libedinsky. Photographs by Gaspar Libedinsky. Portraits and interviews by Malena Perkins. Edited by Gaspar Libedinsky, Karen Marta, Elena Sommariva, Beatriz Arman

Life and death of a model prison
by Patricia Bullrich

On August 8th, 2000, a monument of Argentine neglect closed its doors. The Caseros prison sealed its doors shut for the last time. The last detainee was driven away in a segregation-cell van, abandoning that which in the course of 21 years had gone from being an ultramodern building synonymous with national progress, to one that had fallen into utter decline. The jail’s design had been conceived as a gigantic ‘hotel’ with single-occupant detention-cells. It was designed to house detainees in the process of being heard in court, for short periods of time. An adjacent building, never built, would have contained the courtroom. With the setting of the first stone on June 15th, 1960, the dream of swift justice began, one that would offer modern and high-quality living conditions even to offenders of the law. But democracy did not last, and with it, the utopia of the people who built the prison went up in smoke. Twenty years later, on April 23rd, 1979, the jail was inaugurated under the military dictatorship of Jorge Rafaél Videla. Its cells were filled with both political prisoners and ordinary detainees, destined to live together for decades in restricted spaces meant to be used for only a few weeks at a time. The impressive building proved to be more fragile than it had seemed. Its new permanent inhabitants were unable to cope with the confinement configurations and began demanding from the design that which it could not offer: natural light, recreation yards, handicraft rooms and intimacy for couples. By deciding to convert a short-term institution into a permanent residence, the government broke its social contract. And when in 1984 democracy dawned, the inmates saw the possibility to adapt the building to their own needs. They started pressing for open cell doors, and President Raúl Alfonsín gave in to the requests. However, he was unable to foresee to what extent that decision would mark the institutional history of the budding democracy. In order to guarantee their own survival with the doors of the cells open, the guards were forced to make deals with the inmates and they ended up becoming an integral part of the criminal culture. Thus, two different levels of penitentiary were created: an official and an unofficial one. In the former, a roll call of prisoners was held each evening. There were regular inspections and friends and family of the inmates were searched before each visit. In the unofficial part, the heads of the criminal groups were able to penetrate the whole building via its ducts and constructed thousands of passageways – with the complicity of the wardens. Day by day, the inaccessibility of these hidden passageways to the authorities began to undermine the prison. Caseros had become the “other face”, the complete opposite of a place that can be controlled from one observation point, which is one of the basic principles of the penitentiary system. In this no-man’s land without surveillance, where prisoners hid like rats and could pop out anywhere and anytime, keys had stopped being an instrument of power. After 21 years, it was impossible to tell the difference between who was there to have the law be respected and who was locked up for legal offence. It was the world of Caseros, where everything was sold, and everything was bought. Its culture was shaped slowly and steadily, day by day. It was a framework of violence, corruption and death, where prisoners and guards were part of the most incredible events. Deaths by commission, privileges for those with money, drugs and prostitutes had turned the jail into a factory of criminals, both with and without uniforms. In one of its inner courtyards, we discovered a room ruled by prison guards where the inmates’ duty was to take apart stolen automobiles for re-usable parts. The worst episode involved a detainee and a guard who left the prison to commit a hold-up and ended up killing a police officer. During my visit to the jail as Secretary of Criminal Politics and Penitentiary Matters, I realised that it was not possible to gut and refurbish; the only solution was to close down as soon as possible. That choice implied a profound decision, one that went beyond the simple demolition of a building. It meant re-organising the prison system in a way that would offer political rehabilitation and apply a different logic in the training of the guards and wardens. Six months were needed to reach this objective. No one wanted to leave the prison. When I saw the last human being leave, I meditated upon how little time had passed between the realisation of Caseros as a model institution that represented the pride of a development-driven State, and its shutting down as a corollary of a predator State. The building had become useless in such an insignificant length of time. Its immense mass was slumped like a body after an autopsy, emptied of all its vital organs. The inner passageways that the inmates had bored through the jail had destroyed the heating system and the gas pipes, transforming its solid construction into a flimsy instability. Different studies all ended up demonstrating that it would be less expensive to erect a new building rather than try to salvage the utility plants. The construction’s physical state and social requirements converged in the need to demolish the structure and what it now stood for. Caseros, a symbol of Argentina’s neglect, has now been replaced by two new institutions built in the suburbs and based on a horizontal layout made up of independent units and autonomous cells. There are rehabilitation rooms for study, recreation and work that are set up along the lines of a concept more humane than one of confinement only. Buenos Aires, a beautiful city despite the crisis and the bad governments, must take the decision to move its penitentiaries outside of its boundaries. Urban prisons, in fact, are unable to adequately do their job of social rehabilitation. The Argentine capital still has places of tyranny that it must eradicate, if our idea is that a democratic city needs to be democratic in all its places, including those that it reserves for citizens who do not adapt to society. Where Caseros stood, a school, a park and a commercial complex will be built so that the people can construct a counter-image of that which the land and air holds within. Still impregnated with imprisonment, it must become permeated with education and conviviality. This is what we dream Buenos Aires of becoming: a place of liberty.

Patricia Bullrich was Ministry of Labour under Fernando de la Rúa Government . As Secretary of Criminal Politics and Penitentiary Matters, she was ironically charged with administrating the same prisons of which she had been a prisoner under Argentina’s dictatorship. She is currently president of the political party “Unión por Todos”.

Corrupting Architecture
by Gaspar Libedinsky

Caseros, the 'Modern Model Prison' in Buenos Aires, is being demolished after just 21 years of existence. In 1984, together with the country's re-establishment of democracy, the prison opened the gates of its cells and prisoners gained access to the prison corridors. The corridors were not designed to house inmates. Three weeks after the new regime was put onto practice, on June 6th, a 20 hour riot attacked the core of the prison's system. 17 out of its 20 storeys were massively destroyed. The riot was not carried out in an ‘irrational’, ‘chaotic’ way. On the contrary, it responded to a highly orchestrated ‘master-plan’ by inmates to achieve their desired spatial conditions.
Non-city. The ‘ideal’ prison is designed to transform the ‘criminal mind’. In order to achieve the desired transmutation, no communication should occur between the inmate and the world at large. While the ‘ideal’ prison transforms the prisoner’s ‘corrupted character’ through architecture, ‘Caseros’ represents the inversed equation: the transformation of architecture through corrupted character. Despite being located just 7 minutes drive from the city center, Caseros was not planned to have any contact with the city. On the contrary, it was designed to be its ‘exclusion’. The individual cell - the key to the whole system - had no windows. Light and ventilation were provided through the strip of continuous windows located on the corridor, high enough to avoid inmates from looking through them and be seen from outside.
Masterplan. Caseros’ inmates had a scheme: - to re-define their own living conditions which were imposed and dictated by the cell system - to achieve the desired communication the entire system was designed to prevent. The opening of the cells to the corridors in May 1984 marked the collapse of the existing system. Once inmates controlled the corridors, never again were prison officers allowed to access them for inspection. The riot in June 6th created the necessary infrastructure for the scheme to develop. The destruction of each of the different targets was not made randomly. On the contrary, it guaranteed the creation of a desired new spatial organization. The destruction of a system became the construction of another.
Holes. were made in facades in order to be permanently connected with the city. These were made by banging fire extinguishers against the corridor walls which, unlike the concrete cell walls, were just made out of hollow brick. The new porous façade established an ‘interface’ between the prison and the city. Caseros became permanently surrounded by the inmates’ girlfriends who talked to their beloved ones in an inversed ‘Romeo and Juliet’ fashion.Through these holes prisoners could talk to the city 24 hours a day. Facades and inhabitants fused. Walls talked.
Smurfing. 1. Holes served as a communication system between inmates. Through these holes prisoners accessed the facades and climbed in a ‘spider-man’ way from hole to hole and floor to floor. The activity became known as ‘smurfing’ (‘pitufeo’). 2. Inmates destroyed their in-cell WC in order to prevent authorities from locking them up again in their cells. By removing their WC they also managed to access the void along the ‘wet wall’: a space for ‘internal smurfing’.
Pigeons. Inmates destroyed their mattresses to create fabric cables to exchange property, drugs and weapons between different levels and the surrounding streets.
Tents. Inmates destroyed the glass visiting cabins in order to get contact and sexual relations with their visitors. After the riot contact visits were allowed to take place in the prison’s internal playgrounds. In their search for privacy, inmates created ‘tents’ by hanging blankets from cables attached to the ceiling. Sexual relations were then impossible to prevent.
D.I.Y. Prisoners destroyed the food production and distribution system in order to bring into the prison their own original lifestyles. After the 1984 riot inmates were allowed to bring into the prison their own food, fridges, ovens, microwaves, and sinks.The State only supplied the inmates with the physical space, and water, gas and electricity connections. Social classes developed within the prison. Some prisoners lived in luxurious ‘neighborhoods', others lived in ‘slums’. A parallel urban condition was re-created inside the prison.
Partner-in-crime. Caseros was conceived as a paradigm of ‘modern’ architecture: its form followed its function. Architecture was transformed into an enemy of surveillance rather than its primary means. Despite its extreme transformation its form remained related to function. What was inverted, however, was for whom form functioned for. The transformation of its façade from its original impermeable nature to its new porous condition revealed the inversion in architectural servitude.

Gaspar Libedinsky is an architect. He studied at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the Architectural Association (AA) in London, where he has also taught. He has worked for OMA in Rotterdam and currently works for Diller Scofidio+Renfro in New York. The subject of his article and the resulting hypothesisis is the result of a series of interviews with the Director of Caseros and with the detainees, as well as his studies on Caseros and other penitentiary institutions.