In Argentina prisons, rugby tackles to help convicts turn their lives around
The Tehuelches team made up of prisoners is a result of a social reintegration programme aimed at reducing the tendency of convicts to commit similar offences.
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It is cold. It’s not just the winter. It is the concrete, the iron bars, and the loneliness. In prison, coldness is intense and penetrates the bones and the mind. It freezes life in a time in which survival is the goal. Warming up can provide a break, and that is why 24 members of the Tehuelches XV team from Detention Unit 11 in Neuquén (a province in the Argentinian Patagonia) go out to the rugby field to put their bodies and their future in motion.
Eduardo got up early, as he does every Sunday when he has to go to U11. He put on warm clothes, grabbed two bags of tangerines, and drove to the Parque Industrial neighborhood. Everything was at a standstill. For the city, it was a day of rest; for him, it was a day of commitment.
Once outside the penal, he waited for a while until Juan Pablo, Flavio and Thiago arrived. To enter a prison, one must cross an infinite number of doors. After the first one, a woman asked them for their IDs. At the second door, another woman asked for their cell phones and car keys. In the third one, a man said that “they were already taking...
