La Nacha: A Story of Repression and Terror in Mexico’s Tlaxcoaque Prison

The Mexican government’s Truth Commission has invited those who have been victims of torture in the notorious Tlaxcoaque jail in Mexico City, a place full of history and pain, to share their testimony.

In Nahuatl, Tlaxcoaque means "place from where one watches the snakes." Hundreds, or perhaps thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, have passed through this building that for years housed the General Directorate of Police and Transit and later the Division of Crime Prevention Investigations: members of social movements and militants of political organizations, homeless people, sex workers, and members of the LGBT+ community. Most of them were victims of human rights violations.

The building that once stood in what is now the plaza was destroyed after the 1985 earthquake. A small Franciscan chapel survives on its slab and, underneath, there are still the basements that were the site of torture, rape, and other violent and inhumane acts that were perpetrated for more than 30 years, as long as the cells were around.

"I imagined everything that was going to happen to me because at that time they were talking about... Everyone was raped, even men, not just women," Ana Ignacia Rodriguez, who was transferred to Tlaxcoaque after being arrested for her participation in the 1968 Movimiento Estudiantil (student movement), told Sputnik.

October 2, 1968 marked one of the most infamous days in modern Mexican history. The country's armed forces shot and killed or made disappear hundreds of students during a rally held in the Tlatelolco area, very close to the capital's downtown area. Ana Ignacia was there.

Three days after the bloody incident, which she managed to get out from alive, La Nacha, as she is known, was arrested in an apartment where she was hiding. That day, her destination became the dreaded cells of Tlaxcoaque.

"We were there for several days, I don't remember how many, because you lost track of time there. That is to say, the cells we were in were all bars and the guy who was guarding them would pass by, moving his keys all the time, but they had no wall, it was all bars, so they could see everything: what you were doing, why you were doing it, how you were doing it... We couldn't even go to the bathroom," Ana Ignacia recalled.

She assured that she was not physically tortured or sexually abused, as that was the instruction of her police superiors. However, she did suffer psychological torture, as agents forced her to see how other detainees were tortured.

"They took me out of the cell and put me in the corridors and I saw all the high school kids coming in, there were a lot of them, I remember, and they put them all in front of me. I said, well, what could it be and I expected the worst. And then they stripped them naked and with that fire hose, which is very strong, they soaked them and then the guy with the cattle prod came by and gave them electricity on their testicles, for me that was horrible, because I saw his pain, and when I would bow my head, they would lift my face, as if to say: 'we can't rape you, we can't touch you, but we are going to screw you with this'".

After her time in the cells, La Nacha was arrested months later and transferred to the Santa Martha Acatitla women's prison, where she acquired her nickname. She remained there for more than a year and was released in December 1969.

In October 2021, Ana Ignacia returned to Tlaxcoaque and went down to the first level of the basement, where the vestiges of decay and death still remain, she said.

"An overwhelming feeling. First, the smell, the filth, the garbage. Everything you remember, everything that comes to your mind. And then, what my colleagues saw. What did I feel? Horrible. It was too much, but I said to myself, I have to do it because I stayed for something and I am fighting for something and asking for justice," she said.

On October 2, the Mexico City Government announced that Tlaxcoaque would be a memorial site against police torture. Furthermore, the Mexico City District Attorney's Office stated that it had initiated legal proceedings against those responsible for the acts that took place in the basements at the site. But why is this memory important?

"Memory flourishes, yes it flourishes, at least in our people, in our committee and in this [...] In that flourishing, young people are getting the concept of the past, that people really experienced it. Not everyone has experienced it. If we are the generation that is leaving, and we are leaving or trying to leave a little seed, that seed will bloom," the Mexican activist said.