Ayllu and Mestizaje

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the intersection between the penal system, colonialism, and patriarchy in the Latin American region (particularly Peru) and, to do this, it adopts a decolonial feminist perspective. It seeks to create connections between critical criminology and decolonial feminist theories and draws on an empirical study within a women’s prison in Peru conducted in 2018–2019. On the one hand, this work follows the main arguments of the modernity/coloniality project to provide a better understanding of the historical interweaving that constitutes the political context and modern-colonial-capitalist-patriarchal-heteronormative matrix that configures the prison as a ‘modern’ institution. On the other hand, the chapter seeks to advance discussion on how to decolonize criminology by incorporating two categories from the South. First, the term Ayllu is introduced as an Andean category that may be helpful for understanding women’s communitarian organization during imprisonment. Second, the concept of Mestizaje is analysed as a non-precise identity category. This chapter argues that the intertwining of both concepts is helpful for accounting for women prisoners’ relational dynamics inside Santa Monica. Moreover, it concludes that decolonial feminist epistemology may provide theoretical lenses to analyse punishment, imprisonment, and criminalized communities. It puts in agenda the domination processes while simultaneously focusing on the subjects’ capacity to strategically incorporate and use to their benefit discourses and practices of resistance.