The “black” palace of Lecumberri. One of the cruelest buildings in Mexico.
One of the prisons in the history of Mexico is the Lecumberri Palace, built at the time when Porfirio Diaz He was in power between 1876 and 1911: from Pancho Villa to the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros passed there after attacking the Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky.
Ang Palacio Lecumberri, inaugurated in 1900, has been certified, for over 70 years, with the strongest and safest prison building in Latin America. Over the years, the excessive population of prisoners, due to increasing delinquency, has meant that venue security becomes increasingly vulnerable.
Despite all this, Lecumberri is one of the places most feared by Mexican criminals because, due to the harassment, they go completely insane.
The “black” palace of Lecumberri. It is currently the headquarters of the General Archive of the Nation. image/file
The history of the Lecumberri prison
The design and construction of the prison was its purpose psychologically torture the prisoners, because it obeyed the commands of the panopticon: a surveillance system that was not only unsolvable but also installed the idea that the prisoner was constantly monitored by his guards.
The original capacity of Lecumberri Palace was 800 prisoners, but when it stopped working it housed more than 8,000 detainees. This overpopulation resulted in a bloody battle that ended in several deaths.
Lecumberri’s official records confirmed that the prisoners were located in the prison corridors. Even in 1954 Lecumberri began accepting female prisoners.
Pancho Villa. He is confined to Lecumberri. Photo/File
As a result, Palacio Lecumberri, a time bomb, became increasingly unstable due to lack of food, something that often happens in conjunction with the death of some prisoners due to fights and various diseases.
The worst cell of Lecumberri Palace
Cell 614 is a real hell because it’s behind the boilers and had a completely metal structure. In other words, it heated up so much that over the course of a day there the prisoners suffocated.
Furthermore, in 1968, Lecumberri housed the leaders of the 1968 movement. They were in an open-air cage, in a place where there is no shade because they have no roof and are exposed to sun and rain.
In such conditions, very bad and violent, there was some chaos with thousands of dead prisoners. Until now it is not known how many people died in that cage.
The imprisonment of David Alfaro Siqueiros at Lecumberri Palace
In the early 1960s, Siqueiros, one of Mexico’s most famous plastic artists and member of the Mexican communist party, was arrested on charges of social dissolution, as he was the president of the Committee of Political Prisoners and the Defense of Democratic Liberties. ..He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment at Lecumberri, however, he served only four.
David Alfaro Siqueiros. He was imprisoned four times in Lecumberri. image/file
In addition, he was accused of attempting to assassinate Leon Trotsky, a Russian revolutionary and Stalin’s opponent in the Soviet Union. Siqueiros spent his confinement in cell 40 of Cell 1 at Palacio Lecumberri.
During the four years he was incarcerated, Siqueiros had several benefits. He was able to continue painting and received visits such as Mexican journalist Julio Scherer, who collaborated with the muralist to make the book La piel y la entrail.
Finally, the Palacio Lecumberri ended his days as a prisoner on August 27, 1976. It currently contains the General Archive of the Nation of Mexico.
Source: Clarin
