In May 2026, what had been kept as a rumor for months was confirmed: Ward 7 of Unidad Penal N°15 in Batán will never again be a solitary confinement ward. The renovations carried out throughout 2025 were not temporary. The isolation cells have been permanently abolished. After nine years of campaigns, denunciations, and a radio program built without institutional permission, Proyecto Mecha announces its closure — its mission accomplished.
The organization was founded on November 7, 2017 by Pampa Aguirreal, a member of Liberté, with a single purpose: to abolish the isolation cells at the Batán prison. That goal has now been achieved. There was no official ceremony, no stamped resolution. There was an on-site verification and an informal call to the Servicio Penitenciario leadership in La Plata. Ward 7 is now just another ordinary ward.
A prior clarification
The closure of the isolation cells was the work of a far wider network than any name that appears in this article. Judges with rulings, lawyers and public defenders with sustained demands, incarcerated people facing punishment every day, family members suffering from the outside, and also prison staff who saw — and still see — that this punishment is illegal. Without that fabric, both the visible and the invisible, none of what is told here would have been possible.
How it began
The origin was not a plan. It was retaliation. In 2017, the Taller Solidario Liberté had a conflict with the Servicio Penitenciario bonaerense, which intended to take half of the cooperative's output. Mario Juliano, Liberté's godfather at the time, attempted dialogue. He exhausted every avenue.
During those days Mario stopped by the Taller and left behind a phrase:
You've already lit the fuse — don't let it go out.
That phrase would later become the project's name.
On a Friday night, without formal justification, Pampa was taken to solitary confinement. He was held through Saturday and Sunday. On Monday he was released. While he was locked up, he witnessed what other incarcerated people were living through: extreme isolation, physical and mental deterioration, punishment without any legal framework.
On the Sunday of that confinement — October 22, 2017, the day of the legislative elections — he was in a cell with no light, no water, no communication. He had a piece of paper and a candle. With those he wrote down the objective of a project that did not yet exist: to abolish the isolation cells. And he made himself a promise.
I promised myself I would keep my beard until the isolation cells in Batán were gone. During those four days in solitary I couldn't shave. Now they've been abolished. And the beard — I've gotten comfortable with it, so I'm keeping it anyway.
November 7, 2017: two announcements at the same time
He left solitary on a Monday. Two weeks later, on Tuesday, November 7, 2017, an Open Doors event was held at the Taller Solidario Liberté in Batán. That afternoon, two simultaneous announcements were made in the same space. Mario Juliano announced the creation of a mechanism — still unnamed — to work together with the Servicio Penitenciario toward the permanent closure of the isolation area. Pampa announced the launch of Proyecto Mecha.
The simultaneity was not coincidence, but neither was it prior coordination. Mario had spent years thinking about how to dismantle the isolation cells, and had already been working in parallel on building the mechanism alongside Diana Márquez — today president of the Argentine Society for Restorative Justice — and Adolfo Christen, of the Asociación Pensamiento Penal, among others from outside the walls. Liberté did not know them at the time. They were two lines advancing separately. Their crossing would come much later.
The Comité de Prevención y Solución de Conflictos (CPySC) is managed by the Servicio Penitenciario bonaerense and today operates, in rudimentary form, in all of the province's prisons. Liberté co-founded the CPySC, was part of it for years, and withdrew of its own accord.
The actions
Proyecto Mecha launched an international campaign called Basta de Aislamiento. The most widely circulated graphic piece carried the slogan "Aislamiento es tortura. Tortura nunca más," produced together with the Comisión Provincial por la Memoria and the Asociación Pensamiento Penal. A Facebook page, now closed, sustained the campaign's reach for years.
Artist Betina Ferrara made a strong contribution with the video Basta de Jaulas. Josefina Ignacio, Liberté's godmother at that stage, intervened at a critical moment to prevent the transfer of Taller members to other units. The measure had been planned as collective punishment and was defused through her efforts. That detail was not public until today. Juan A., from the Comunidad Pastoral Universitaria (CPU) in Batán, was there from the very beginning.
The second stage
In 2018, when Pampa focused more on Liberté, coordination of Proyecto Mecha passed to Canela Melina Bella, who later became a reporting point for the Comisión Provincial por la Memoria. When Canela's schedule no longer allowed her to continue, and at the same time the central objective was beginning to come within reach, it was decided to hold on until the formal closure of the isolation cells before declaring the organization's work done.
When it was my turn to coordinate the second stage, it was deeply gratifying. I felt I was healing scars and trying to bring a little color back into so much darkness.
December 28, 2018: the first judicial filing
Under Canela's coordination, the organization took an institutional step. On December 28, 2018, the first formal petition to abolish the isolation cells was filed at the Juzgado de Ejecución Penal N°1 of Mar del Plata. The document was not drafted by lawyers: it was written by the people who had lived through solitary confinement themselves — incarcerated people and those who had been released.
The petition called for the abolition of the isolation cells "in the way they are currently used by prison services" or, failing that, for them to cease operating under the Servicio Penitenciario, "which will be reflected in a reduction of torture, punishment, and disciplinary control." The filing was understood as a gesture: "we do not expect direct results but rather positive secondary effects," read the organization's statement.
The radio program made inside the prison
The radio program was Proyecto Mecha's most unlikely and risky undertaking. It was made in the very belly of the beast, continuously pursued by the search team, and yet for an entire year, every single week, the program went to air. One episode was even recorded from solitary confinement itself: when Pampa was sanctioned again — this time not transferred to an isolation cell but confined to his own cell as punishment for "disrespect toward the noble authority" — the program was made anyway. The search team never managed to stop it.
Inside, thematic audio segments and testimonies were recorded — arriving from prisons in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, and from family members in Spain and other countries. These were then sent to three contacts on the outside. Nathalia Ruway coordinated Proyecto Mecha Chile, the Chilean counterpart that sustained local broadcasts in support of the Argentine original. Gabriel Camilo coordinated Proyecto Mecha Uruguay, the Uruguayan counterpart with the same logic. Celia contributed from Spain with introductions, closings, and greetings from afar. Each sent audio that was returned to the country and, from inside Batán, assembled, edited, and sent out to FM stations in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Each program ran for one hour.
Nathalia Ruway has spent years running art workshops inside Chilean prisons, from a critical perspective on the prison system. When the invitation to join the radio program reached her, it was already circulating among anti-prison activists connected to the arts. She accepted for a concrete reason: it was direct action, not support from the outside. Incarcerated people were managing their own struggle. She ended up coordinating Proyecto Mecha Chile, the Chilean counterpart that sustained local broadcasts in support of the Argentine original.
The fact that the program was produced from inside Batán was fundamental to me, because I felt I was contributing to a genuine project. We weren't people allied with those in incarceration — they themselves were managing a tremendous battle.
I didn't think the goal would actually be achieved — I thought it would more likely become the engine for doing many things, for making the horror visible, for educating, containing, and supporting. But I doubted that something as structural as abolishing the isolation cells could be achieved, which is why this result moves me deeply. The repressive structure rarely offers these cracks through which to feel hope.
I hope the program was for you a rebellious kind of companionship, that our work accompanied you not only hoping to fill a void, but also as that fuse we always thought of lighting. A fuse that sought to illuminate from within and from without, feeling ourselves to be allies in a struggle that concerns all of us, beyond physical borders.
Gabriel Camilo writes books for children. He began doing so inside the Penal de Libertad in Uruguay — a prison that, paradoxically, carries that name — in the La Piedra sector, maximum security. With a small piece of pencil and sheets of paper shared by fellow incarcerated people from the wing above, he put together books for children, first in a wooden format, donated to public schools. Later, Uruguay's Dirección de Primaria printed a paper edition of Recuperar mi Libertad and distributed it to every public school in the country, in Spanish and English. After his release, he founded Nuestros Hijos Nos Esperan, the organization he has sustained ever since and from which he earns his living: in his own words, he stopped living "from what he stole" and started living from his books. He came to Proyecto Mecha through Edgardo, a fellow incarcerated person at Unidad 4 de Comcar, and ended up coordinating Proyecto Mecha Uruguay: the local counterpart that sustained Uruguayan broadcasts in support of the mother organization in Batán. He describes his friendship with Pampa as a bond of mutual admiration.
Every audio we sent toward Unidad Penal N°15 in Batán, where Pampa was waiting to put the program together... Once Pampa forwarded me messages from people who had listened over in London, in England. Wow, I said: the cry traveled far. Our voice is being heard.
It's one thing to speak from out here, where the storm has passed and there are no reprisals. But in there, people pay dearly. I see enormous courage, enormous awareness, and enormous vision in what is truly being sought.
In that place so dark, so grey, so rough, so damp, so lonely — there, someone like Pampa decided to build, with a group of deeply committed people, that radio program and that demand: to close the punishment areas, the isolation cells. That disgusting and repugnant way of repressing, punishing, and humiliating human dignity.
The editing was sustained by Daniel Q., also a member of Liberté at the time. He taught audio and editing skills, accompanied the process for much of its duration, until the editing could be sustained from inside. Later, Miguel Ángel M. joined — today the coordinator of Liberté's radio.
In April 2019, when the laptop used to produce the program broke down, a gesture occurred that marked the radio like few other things. Pampa told Mario, and Mario arranged for a new one to arrive so that neither the program nor Liberté's activities would stop. The laptop came from Víctimas por la Paz: it was donated by Andrés Castagno and Diana Márquez — today secretary of Cooperativa Liberté. A crime victims' organization materially sustaining an informal organization of incarcerated people. Hard to believe, and yet true.
The programs can still be heard. They were archived on YouTube and at proyectomecha.org. That domain remains active as a historical record of the campaign.
December 31, 2019: the retaliation
The radio program made people uncomfortable. On the last day of 2019, the search team of Unidad Penal N°15 entered Ward 3 — one of the most peaceful wards in the prison — and destroyed Pampa's cell. It was the only cell ransacked in the ward. They broke his belongings, gutted his mattresses, left everything upended. They were looking for a cell phone. They never found anything: the phone was used for cultural activities and for producing the Proyecto Mecha programs. To those who witnessed it, it was direct retaliation for the radio broadcasts.
Mario Juliano published the photos the next day. He announced that he would meet with the unit warden. The public denunciation stopped the escalation. The radio continued.
Who made it possible
Proyecto Mecha was a network. Mario Juliano sustained institutional support from the very beginning. Diana Márquez and Adolfo Christen worked from the outside, for years, building the mechanism that Mario presented that afternoon. Betina Ferrara made the video Basta de Jaulas. Josefina Ignacio stopped the transfers at the most tense moment. Juan A. from the CPU was there from the start. Daniel Q. taught the craft of editing. Miguel Ángel M. carried it forward. Nathalia Ruway coordinated Proyecto Mecha Chile and Gabriel Camilo, Proyecto Mecha Uruguay; together with Celia from Spain, they built the program's international voice. Canela Melina Bella sustained the second stage, alongside La Colo and Celeste in administering the WhatsApp groups. The Comisión Provincial por la Memoria and the Asociación Pensamiento Penal contributed their logos, voice, institutional backing, and concrete actions: denunciations, monitoring, and legal filings. Many incarcerated people who sent their testimonies from units across the country — often anonymously — gave each program its real content.
Today Canela is a Promotora Territorial of the Buenos Aires Province Ministry of Justice and runs the initiative LaReVi.
The institutional mechanism that Mario presented that afternoon was sustained over time through the work of others such as Ricardo Augman, Lidia Pérez, Marcela Altamirano, Larisa Zervino, and other members of the Liberté team, alongside prison staff including Adrián Escudero, Gabriel Cufré, Nancy Caballero, and the prison chaplain, el padre Hernán. Many more contributed their part to make this possible, from both inside and outside the walls.
This list does not exhaust those who were part of it. Many more contributed their skills, time, voice, or reach: fellow participants from inside and outside, MECHActivistas from several countries, family members, and anonymous allies. Without that broader network, the path would have been impossible.
To everyone, thank you.
For those who are no longer here
There is one name that Canela holds close. María S. died in the isolation cells of the Junín prison. Her name closes this article because there is no stepping back.
From Proyecto Mecha, I will never forget María S., who died in the isolation cells of Junín. Like so many women. She marked my life forever.
The archive remains
I thought people saw us as a bunch of dreamers, that we'd have to set the isolation cells on fire rather than just paint them. Today we achieved it: there is no longer a specific ward of isolation cells used as punishment — at least not a concrete, dedicated ward.
A legacy that democracy has not yet fully eradicated
Human rights organizations have been saying it for years: prolonged isolation as a prison disciplinary tool is not a flaw in the current system — it is the survival of a model. The Comisión Provincial por la Memoria, the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), and the Procuración Penitenciaria de la Nación agree across their reports, inspections, and legal cases: the physical structures of the isolation cells, the discretion with which prison personnel impose sanctions of prolonged solitary confinement, and the current disciplinary regulations keep intact the repressive matrix that emerged in the 1970s — perfected during state terrorism to isolate and cut off communication with political prisoners, and later applied systematically to the general prison population.
It is — in their words — a model of "disciplining through suffering" that democracy has still not managed to eradicate from the prison system's structures.
The isolation cells in Batán have been abolished. Ward 7 is now an ordinary ward. Proyecto Mecha closes. The site proyectomecha.org remains online as a historical archive, with all the radio programs. So does Pampa's beard.
The isolation cells fell, yes. But now there are mini-isolation cells scattered throughout the wards, disguised under a polished name: "Admission Cells."
The fuse hasn't gone out. This is a pause to start again with full force.
