Pavon Prison (''Granja Penal de Pavón'') is a

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where Prisoner, people are Imprisonment, imprisoned under the authority of the State (polity), state ...

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

. It is located outside the town of

Fraijanes Fraijanes is a town, with a population of 60,288 (2018 census), and a municipality in the Guatemala department of Guatemala. It is known for its fine tasting coffee, which is slightly more acidic than that of Antigua Guatemala. History Archbi ...

near

Guatemala City Guatemala City (, also known colloquially by the nickname Guate), is the Capital city, national capital and largest city of the Guatemala, Republic of Guatemala. It is also the Municipalities of Guatemala, municipal capital of the Guatemala Depa ...

. It is a part of the Dirección General del Sistema Penitenciario de Guatemala. It was built in the late-1970s and over time it became overcrowded and authorities decided to only control the perimeters of the prison and let the prisoners run the interior on their own. Since 1996, a society developed, with

cocaine Cocaine is a tropane alkaloid and central nervous system stimulant, derived primarily from the leaves of two South American coca plants, ''Erythroxylum coca'' and ''Erythroxylum novogranatense, E. novogranatense'', which are cultivated a ...

operations run by Colombian drug lords incarcerated there.

Authorities regain control

On Monday September 25, 2006, 3000 police officers and military forces overran the prison and reestablished authority. This led to the death of seven inmates. Among those killed was Luis Zepeda, a leader of the inmates and the head of the prison government.Inter-American Yearbook on Human Rights Page 392 Inter-American Commission on Human Right - 1993 "Another reported incident of mistreatment and torture resulted from the uprising at the "Pavon" prison farm. On 26 March 1989, at 1:00 p.m., a group of over 200 of the 1500 common prisoners held there seized control of the facility. "

Capital punishment

Pavon Prison houses the Guatemalan

death row Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting executio ...

and an

execution chamber An execution chamber, or death chamber, is a room or chamber in which capital punishment is carried out. Execution chambers are almost always inside the walls of a prison#Security levels, maximum-security prison, although not always at the same p ...

to carry out executions by

lethal injection Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person (typically a barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium) for the express purpose of causing death. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but t ...

Executed inmates

Manuel Martínez Coronado Manuel Martínez Coronado (1964 or 1965 – 10 February 1998) was a Guatemalan mass murderer, convicted for the killing of seven people on 17 May 1995. Coronado was sentenced to death for the murders, and was executed in 1998, the first executi ...

: Mass murderer *

Amílcar Cetino Pérez and Tomás Cerrate Hernández Amilcar Cetino Pérez and Tomás Cerrate Hernández were two Guatemalan men convicted of murder. They were both executed on June 30, 2000. Their execution was televised on Guatemalan television. Cetino was 35 and Cerrate was 39. The executions, bot ...

: Convicted of kidnapping and murdering a businesswoman

References

External links

Inmates ran prison for 10 years
" ''

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper in ...

''. September 30, 2006. Prisons in Guatemala Guatemala Department {{Guatemala-struct-stub Execution sites