Malqueridas: a portrait of the affection of mothers in prison

A black box and the sound of a mother singing to it kid with a horse to his bus to calm down. We also hear the sound of some gendarmes closing the gate of a cell with a chain. so it starts spoileda documentary that tells the stories of women mothers in prison and who, these days, participates in the 38 Settimana Internazionale della Critica de Venezia.

Directed by Tana Gilbert and produced by Paola Castillo, follows the daily life of a group of mothers deprived of their liberty in Chile. Their children grow up far from them, but remain in their hearts. In prison, they find affection with other colleagues who share the same situation. The mutual support between these women becomes a powerful form of resistance.

“I always had a special interest in prison, I didn’t know why, until the day when, during an investigation, I discovered that my father had been deprived of his liberty in the United States when I was three years old. This is where the family secret comes in. And it started to make more sense. He was deprived of his liberty for about a year, my mother traveled to accompany him and we stayed with my grandmother. I don’t remember it, but from then on I started to sort things out. Six years later, the Malqueridas project began,” says Tana.

But it is not only prison that interests her, but also gender relations in the family, care, motherhood and affection. And this documentary is the reflection of all that.

“The film is a collective construction that recounts the experiences of maternity wards in prison through different testimonies. We create a common story of affections that is expressed through the story of Karina, the voice of the film. This voice was created from in-depth conversations we had with over twenty women. and reinterpreted from Karina’s own experience, deprived of her liberty for more than six years,” adds Tana.

This woman is going to jail with her newborn son and has to spend up to two years with him, which is the allowed time. At that point, they are to separate, and Karina spends the rest of her sentence in a long-distance relationship with her son, while having affection with other women and people inside the prison.

The story told by Karina is the mirror of a collective story.

This documentary has a particularity, and it is that It is saved in vertical format. And that’s because he constructs the stories of these women solely through photos taken by themselves with cell phones inside the prison, recovering the collective memory of an abandoned community.

“We started the film from documents that I found on the Internet: the news of a Guatemalan who is in prison and who threatens another who is going to enter it. And to say it, they publish a screenshot of their Facebook, without any proof of their identity. I started to search if there were more of these images and I found many women deprived of liberty in Chile and I started to realize a world parallel to my echo chamber on Facebook or others networks, where everyone records and publishes their life. , including those who are deprived of their liberty,” says Tana.

They applied for access to the prison through workshops on prison law, and then started seeing some of these women during family visits. This is how research begins to be ordered, explains Tana. “Obviously We collected some images before entering, on their Facebook pages, because we also learned that there: that these social networks, for many, are the only way to tell their children or loved ones who are outside: ” Here I am “. I miss you”.

One of the care taken by the filmmakers in telling this story, not wanting to make the mistake that is usually made when documenting life in prison, was not to fall into the stigmatization or victimization of these women.

Today, more than 50% of women deprived of their liberty are there for offenses related to drugs, microtraffic and trafficking; and on the other hand, 92% of women deprived of liberty are mothers. “The film gives the possibility of entering this world which is there all the time, but which we do not see, and unfortunately when we see it, we tend to demonize it” Paola said. And he continues: “We know that drug trafficking has always been a means of supporting the household, because the world is more complex than whether you are a good or a bad person. Many of these women want to get out, but they go there and have no networks because their networks are in the drug trade where they want to escape from; or they are lucky enough to find a job that pays them the minimum or where they are badly treated. Women who can earn three times as much by committing crimes, working half a day at home and being able to take care of their children. So reintegration is super complex, there is a system that constantly boycotts his life course.”

“And to this is added that many of them When they come out of prison, it is very difficult for them to reconnect with their children, because they have been away for so long. For micro-trafficking, it can be a five-year sentence, if a mother stops seeing her son at the age of two, when she leaves she finds him at the age of seven, she is another person. How do they reconnect emotionally? It’s like taking a child from someone and it ends up being a circle of violence, because by cutting that link, you end up creating people who are more fragmented, more hurt, and because of the same circles that they live, these children will likely end up committing acts of violence as well. crimes,” adds Tania.

And it’s not about not paying for their crimes. The women who are there – continues Paola – recognize that they have committed crimes and understand that they are paying for it. “But another condemnation is that they cannot see their children, that the conditions are not created to have a family relationship. And they are not created since they cannot use cell phones, there is no communication. The only way to see it is in these visits that they have to sign up for and that we know that in practice it is to expose a child to a super violent process”.

Inside the prison there is the concept of “mother canera” and “daughter canera”. They create roles, and the mama canera is the one who hosts you, who takes care of you and whom I take care of. This is the objective –says Paola–, which is not only biological motherhood, but that there are other forms of motherhood and other types of affection.

“Despite the distance from children that the prison system creates, affections are the force that sustains and connects us to the subjectivity of these experiences. Malqueridas challenges the dominant narrative through its collective construction in an attempt to preserve its stories, its existence and its humanity,” adds Tana.

It was these same ailments that she was able to witness that also made her doubt the name Malqueridas. “The angst before the release brought me down because I thought it might be misunderstood. I thought who I was to tell them they weren’t loved. So I asked them, the protagonists. They told me “we are not liked”, so we are not going to change that.

Unloved by a complete society which gives us spaces, which judges them, which isolates them. But also “beloved” between them. “It’s the most beautiful thing we’ve seen there, that in prison women find affection with other compañeras who share the same situation. The mutual support between these women becomes a powerful form of resistance,” they conclude.