Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippines, has a long history of incarceration. The Spanish Empire built its first penal colony in San Ramón, Zamboanga, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Instead of sending deportees, Spanish officials incarcerated Filipinos to “try out” (“ensayar” in the documents) new methods of colonization through agriculture and the displacement of non-normative bodies from North (Manila) to South (Zamboanga). The project looks at the racial, ethical, political, and social issues involved in the penal colonization process in the Philippines. It exposes the legacies of colonial incarceration in the uses of the San Ramón prison, which still exist today.

Speakers

Aurélie Vialette (Yale University, Department of Spanish and Portuguese), specializes in 19th-century Iberian cultural studies, focusing on the Filipino and Catalan contexts and engaging with acarcerality, disability, transatlantic movements, slavery networks, archives, popular music, journalist discourses, mass and working-class organizations. Her current book project is tentatively titled. “The Trial Run: Gender, Disability, and Penal Colonies in the 19th-Century Philippines.”

Neni Panourgiá is the Academic Adviser at the JIE Scholars Program. Her work centers on confinement in all its forms, from the benevolent (hospitals, schools) to the sinister (concentration camps and prisons). She is the author and editor of multiple award-winning books and articles on the subject, most recently Foucauld’s Node: Leros and the Grammar of Confinement. Since 2022, she has co-organized and co-directed the Leros Humanism Seminars.

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