Carceral Citizenship in Post-Protest Nicaragua: Political Imprisonment and Civil Death

By Julienne Weegels University of Amsterdam

This paper demonstrates how the extension and intensification of penal power across Nicaragua following the 2018 protests has produced particular experiences of carceral citizenship. In order to fully understand these experiences, it is necessary to take into account that states can enforce carceral citizenship (and its restrictions, benefits, and duties) not only legally, but also extralegally. As such, I examine the tenets of carceral citizenship in relation to the country’s hybrid carceral system, conceptualizing how such citizenship may be produced and policed. Following from this, I elicit how political prisoners are acted upon by (para)state actors and excluded from prison’s co-governance arrangements, which pushes some of them to engage in (dis)organizing practices of their own. Following them into their post-release lives, I examine the tight ‘transcarceral grip’ they are subjected to. This produces a state of de facto civil disenfranchisement, understood by ex-carcelados as “civil death.” In spite of their predicament, however, released political prisoners continue to organize in the face of the Sistema and the violations it has committed (and continues to commit). 

EUROPEAN REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES, No. 116 (2023): July-December, pp. 163-183