Colombia’s Medellin builds mega-prison inspired by El Salvador’s CECOT
The mayor of Medellin on Friday touted the construction of a mega-prison in his city, Colombia’s second largest, becoming the latest Latin American leader to emulate El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele’s iron-fisted approach to gang violence.
The high-security prison will house more than 1,300 inmates, according to Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez. It will be financed by public and private funds.
The city, located in central Colombia, was once one of the most violent in the world before the death of drug lord Pablo Escobar in 1993.
A city hall official told AFP on Friday that the mega-prison was modeled on Bukele’s CECOT model, which has been criticized by human rights groups for reported abuses.
The move is the latest prison project in Latin America to copy CECOT’s approach, notably in Ecuador and Costa Rica.
Chile’s far-right president-elect Jose Antonio Kast also recently visited CECOT and asked Bukele for help improving his country’s prison system.
Gutierrez visited the prison construction site Thursday and promised the facility would be guarded by its own security team, not agents of the state prisons agency.
Powerful criminal groups remain active in Medellin.
The prison, expected to be ready in 2027, will be equipped with technological systems to prevent inmates from communicating, as one of the most common forms of extortion in the country comes from prisons.
Detainees will be “deprived of many privileges,” Gutierrez told reporters.
With presidential elections taking place on May 31, security is a major concern for Colombians.
The favorites are left-wing senator Ivan Cepeda, one of the architects of President Gustavo Petro’s controversial policy of negotiating with armed groups, and right-wing lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella.
De la Espriella, supported by Gutierrez’s party, proposed building mega-prisons where inmates would be “ten floors underground” and survive on “bread and water.”
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