Modelo, the prison of Bogota | M6 | Zone Interdite

The Modelo prison is a place unlike any other: a genuine version in reduced scale of Colombian society and culture. Within, there is the on-going drama of intense political rivalry which has shaken the country for decades. Extreme left guerillas, extreme right paramilitary militia, drug traffickers, big bosses, and petty delinquents all find themselves housed here under the same roof of the Modelo Prison. And behind its walls, an incredible determination to reproduce the reality of daily life outside. The northern quarter is controlled by the extreme left guerilla, the southern quarter by the extreme right paramilitary militia. In the middle is the high security wing where the big-name cocaine traffickers are housed. Each group jealously keeps watch over its own territory. Each one has its own armed security force which controls all comings and goings and can close access with its own keys. These security forces maintain a police activity, preventing and/or punishing theft and fights, or unpaid debts. Each group has its chief, its rules, its poverty or wealth, its order and disorder, its solidarity. The Bogota Modelo is one of the strangest prisons in the world.