Food and order. An ethnography of daily meals and contamination in a Bolivian self-governed prison

Abstract

This article examines inmates’ nutritional and culinary choices within the Bolivian male prison of San Pedro. The analysis focuses on the daily meal offered by the institution and its complex semantic and symbolic ramifications. I show how the idea of contamination related to prison food is a powerful medium to establish an internal order within this self-governed prison. I look into the discourses shaped around daily meals and the tranquilizer, the mysterious substance the prisoners believe they ingest through prison food. The tranquilizer is considered responsible for the long-term intimate transformation of inmates in terms of their compliance with the mechanisms of power and oppression characteristic of this peculiar context.