Inmates at Mexican women’s prison find escape in music

Posted: 2/04/08

Inmates at Mexican women’s
prison find escape in music

By Analiz González

Buckner International

MEXICO CITY— The windows at Santa Marta Prison face in, so the inmates can never look out to see the surrounding peeks, which rise around the prison at night like solid beacons of hope. All they ever see is gray—walls, floors, ceilings.

Delia Ramirez is 19, but could pass for 14. She was assaulted by a man who tried to rape her. So she killed him. Now she sits in prison with a khaki uniform, which means she’s still awaiting trial. She is a child among women.

“I am not a Christian,” Ramirez said. “I would like to be one. But I just can’t bring myself to believe in God. It’s hard to believe in anything good when everything is so unfair.”

Santa Marta Prison in Mexico City is surrounded by barbed wire. All of the prison's windows face inside, so inmates cannot see outside the walls.

Another prisoner said she is incarcerated for accidentally running over a child and killing him. No one can bail her out. Another said she stabbed her husband when she caught him sexually assaulting their child.

Not all of the women have stories like this. Some have been in and out of prison multiple times for theft or violence. But they all long for freedom. Their eyes fill with tears when they talk of the children they will never raise.

For many, they find their only escape in music classes taught by Jorge Quezada from Iglesia Bautista Horeb. And through those classes, some have found faith in Christ.

Quezada teaches the women rondallas, or traditional Mexican tunes. One of their favorite songs, their “anthem,” as Quezada calls it, tells the story of a repentant rebel who was never loved.

“But I would like to be like that child, like that man who is full of joy,” they sing. “And I would like to give everything in me, all in exchange for that friendship and to sing, and to smile and forget all of my anger, and to laugh, and to live and to give only love.”

One of the inmates wrote a letter of thanks to visitors from Buckner International and Iglesia Bautista Horeb.

“The important thing,” she wrote, “is that we can express feelings though music and be able to share the loneliness that lives with us in this place. … We know that we are somewhat marginalized by society, but we know we have the company of an all-powerful God.”