Unionization of incarcerated workers and collective censorship in Argentina

Abstract

This article seeks to describe the history of the Sindicato Único de Trabajadores Privados de la Libertad (SUTPLA), a unique experience of unionisation of incarcerated workers in federal prisons in Argentina. It examines its moments of emergence, consolidation and decline, drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in the Federal Men’s Prison in the city of Buenos Aires, including observations, focus groups and interviews with prisoners, prison officials and external actors linked to this experience. First, the article explains how this initiative was possible, describing the practices of the incarcerated workers, but also of the external actors linked to the University of Buenos Aires’ programme of university education in prisons and the trade union movement, in the context of a favourable political climate linked to post-neoliberal governments. Second, it describes the consolidation of the SUTPLA, paying particular attention to its forms of collective organisation, struggle and resistance, how they were structured by the language of (prison and labour) law and its main effects. It then focuses on the decline of this experience and the conditions that help to understand it, both inside and outside federal prisons. In order to make sense of the style of collective organisation, struggle and resistance that SUTPLA incarnated, the article turns to the idea of ‘censorship’, originally introduced by Thomas Mathiesen, but mutating its original connection to an atomistic landscape. In this way, the use of the language of (labour and prison) law is highlighted as a defining feature that distinguishes it from other traditional forms of collective resistance and struggle by prisoners in Argentina and, more generally, in Latin America.