An archive acquired through the LLILAS Benson Archiving Black América–Black Diaspora Archive initiative documents scenes from prison visiting days

Brazil is among the top incarcerators of women worldwide, with Black women accounting for 65 percent of this population. The largest women’s prison in the country is the Penitenciaria Feminina Santana (Santana Women’s Penitentiary) in São Paulo. Every weekend, families of incarcerated women arrive to visit their loved ones on the inside. On Avenida Ataliba Leonel, the busy thoroughfare just outside the prison, two tents, or barracas, serve as informal storage sites where visitors pay to store their belongings prior to lining up to enter the prison. The tents also offer food for purchase.

In the archive Dias de Visita/Visiting Days: Strategies for Connections, Affections and Black Encounters in Latin America’s Largest Women’s Penitentiary, LLILAS PhD student Ana Luiza Biazeto has assembled images and oral histories from her visits to the barracas, where she interviewed family members of incarcerated women, as well as some of the people who set up and run the tents. Biazeto became familiar with the prison and the visiting area during research for her master’s thesis, which was about Black incarcerated women in the prison.

While many incarcerated women are completely separated from the lives of their families and loved ones during their imprisonment, others are visited by family on a regular basis. During her first year as a PhD student, in a 2022 seminar on urban Brazil, Professor Lorraine Leu asked Biazeto some pointed questions about the women she had interviewed in the prison: How were their children doing? Who were their families? Leu’s questions inspired Biazeto to think more deeply about the dias de visita and what she could learn in this setting. She applied for, and received, an Archiving Black América–Black Diaspora Archive (ABA–BDA) archival acquisition award, which afforded her an opportunity to better understand the dynamic of the families.

“I learned of things that I never would have imagined,” said Biazeto in an interview during spring 2025. “I was in connection with many mothers, many grandmothers, who visit women. There were many children, running around there on the avenue. And as I interviewed, I cried along with the women. The children came and showed me the drawings they were making, many the age of [my youngest child]. And just as my master’s thesis involved a painful process, it is also a painful thing to confront these realities.”

Barraca da Loira and Barraca da Adriana, named for the women who run them, are part of the informal economy and are protected by the Primeira Comanda da Capital, or PCC, an organized crime unit in São Paulo that is sometimes called upon by the state to act. Biazeto says the PCC might be on hand to make sure people line up in an orderly manner to visit the prison.

During her fieldwork, Biazeto conducted interviews with Adriana, who runs one tent, and with Karina, the daughter of “a Loira” (“Blondie”), who runs the other. Additionally, Adriana and her son, Paulo, recommended visiting family members for Biazeto to interview.

“They knew the people, they heard their stories, they sold them coffee, they welcomed the people,” Biazeto said.

In the excerpt below, Biazeto discussed her fieldwork in more depth. The following conversation is translated from the Portuguese and condensed.

Q: What were some of the things that surprised you?

Biazeto: I saw a mother putting on makeup to show her daughter that she was ok. Because she said that her role was to maintain her daughter’s well-being inside the prison. She said, “I cry here with you, but I go in there with a smile for her to have hope, that I’m waiting for her out here, and that everything is all right.” So she puts on makeup, she applies eye shadow, puts on lipstick, fixes her hair.

I also saw—although the statistics say the opposite—I saw many men going to visit their women. Taking their kids. So this happens in a way that research doesn’t show. These men are also invisibilized. Principally Black men, because when we talk about the Brazilian prison system, we’re principally talking about race. I saw a grandfather bringing a grandson to see his daughter. I saw a father bringing a little girl in a stroller, giving her a bottle. Cooking for the women. Breaking those gender barriers somewhat.

Professor Christen Smith commented [on my research], “You are bringing in new viewpoints [novos olhares].” Because it’s the man who works the dawn hours as garbage collector, street sweeper; comes back home, cooks, takes his daughter, and goes to the gate of the penitentiary. So those were the things that surprised me.

Also, mothers who brought food not just for their own daughters, but for the cellmates, and the block-mates, because they didn’t have visitors. A mother said, “My daughter shares the food I bring, even if it’s a spoonful for each person.”

Q: What are these women serving time for?

Biazeto: In general, it is drug trafficking. Sometimes it’s a family business; sometimes inherited from the mother, or along with a male partner. Generally it is the user who is criminalized, not the dealer.

Q: What more would you like to share about your work?

Biazeto: [I’ve been encouraged by Lorraine Leu to think about the (im)possibilities of Black futures in the context of the prison.] To see the children running around there, in the middle of a busy avenue, is to think about Black resistance. Right there, you witness the formation of a community that supports and sustains its members somehow, whether it’s sharing information on legal issues, or the workings of the prison system. Many times, this information comes from outside, from family members exchanging information between themselves. I could see a solidarity among those family members. I think that this archive keeps alive the memory of people who are resisting the Brazilian police state. It is a new way of resisting.

Ana Luiza Biazeto will spend the 2025–2026 academic year in Brazil to continue her dissertation research on resistance and resilience among Black women and their families in the Brazilian carceral system.

The contents of the Visiting Days archive can be reviewed via Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO). The Black Diaspora Archive is an initiative of Black Studies, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, and the Office of the President. The archive is housed at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.