Spanish conquistadors first visited Gorgona in 1524 when it was discovered by Diego de Almagro. He named it San Felipe. Three years later, in 1527, Francisco Pizarro arrived on the island from Gallo Island during his second expedition to Peru, having fled from attacks by the local population. Pizarro and thirteen of his men remained on Gorgona for seven months, awaiting the arrival of supplies and preparing to continue their efforts to conquer Peru. Pizarro, who considered the island a "hell," named it Gorgona after losing many of his men to insect bites and the large number of snakes that inhabit the island. The name refers to the mythological Gorgon, Medusa, whose hair was made up of live venomous snakes. Bartolomé Ruiz was sent from Panama to rescue them. Since Ruiz's ship was the only one available to Pizarro, they all left Gorgona to conquer Peru.
In 1679, the English pirate Bartholomew Sharp seized Gorgona, naming it "Sharp's Island." He stayed there for just over a month. The island served as a refuge for English privateers Woodes Rogers and William Dampier in 1709. The island, rich in fresh water and valuable wood, served as a transit base for ships traveling from Panama to Peru and back.
Gorgona remained mostly uninhabited until 1960. By that time, island correctional colonies such as Coiba in Panama, San Lucas in Costa Rica, and Isla Marias in Mexico had become popular. Therefore, the Colombian government decided to turn Gorgona into a prison for the country's most dangerous criminals. Until 1984, this 26-square-kilometer island, located 55 kilometers off the Colombian Pacific coast, was a place of detention for particularly dangerous criminals, including political prisoners and dangerous criminals serving sentences, sometimes for life.
Away from prying eyes, the prisoners were at the mercy of the island's cruel guards and fellow inmates. "Cursed be this place," wrote one former prisoner in a poem. The prison was modeled after Nazi concentration camps, and there were many reports of human rights violations. Murders within its walls were commonplace. For twenty-five years, it was a living hell for the two and a half thousand prisoners who served their sentences there. Today, thirty years after the prison was abandoned, deadly threats still exist, but they are now protected as part of a national park.
"Many legends surround the Gorgona," says Corason de Jesus Agino, park technician and local celebrity. "Most of them cannot be verified, but what is certain is that this was a place of punishment and terrible suffering."
Over a thousand prisoners passed through the prison, including murderers, rapists, and political prisoners who participated in "La Violencia," a ten-year civil war in Colombia.
"Visitors are sometimes just horrified," admits De Jesus Agino, who watches over the abandoned prison buildings. Most of them have already been hidden by encroaching jungles, but one remains, displaying a row of wooden bunk beds without mattresses. "Each prisoner was assigned a number," he says. Visitors were rare, and outdoor walks were only allowed for prisoners who helped clear the forest. One place embodies the horror of the prison more than any other: the disciplinary block, where isolation cells are fenced off with heavy iron bars.
Here, the most terrifying punishment was called the "canning" - an 80-centimeter wide pit where prisoners were forced to stand in dirty water up to their necks for days on end. "Torture, cruel treatment, contaminated food...when I arrived, Gorgona was a hellhole," says the last director of the prison, Miguel Dario Lopez.
Appointed to the position in 1981, Lopez proudly claims to have put an end to the cruel treatment by the guards and "calmed down" the prison. "The guards here were thieves, corrupt, they retaliated against the prisoners," says Lopez, now retired.
"Ten 'cans' were still in use. I stopped all of this. There were also hunger tortures. Prisoners were only allowed to eat potatoes and a little rice, and sometimes a piece of barely cooked snake. "They often cried, they all had mental problems. They killed each other with homemade blades or strangled each other with simple rags." In total, according to him, "almost 150 prisoners died in Gorgon.
"The food was improved by teaching some prisoners how to catch fish. The number of visits was increased."
"With the help of music, painting, and even Latin, we were able to calm down the prisoners and teach them to forgive," said Lopez, showing a large scar on his palm, received while trying to stop a stabbing. "There were no more deaths with me," he added, showing a faded photograph of himself posing next to an escapee who was caught after three days at sea on a makeshift raft. Most escapees were picked up by passing ships and returned to the island, but "five or six managed to run away."
Among them was Eduardo Muneton Tamayo, nicknamed the "Colombian Butterfly" - in honor of the 1973 movie with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in the lead roles - who escaped in 1969 but was caught three years later. Serial killer Daniel Camargo Barbosa, known as the "El Charquito Sadist", escaped in 1984, and authorities insisted that he died at sea, but two years later he was arrested in Ecuador and confessed to killing 71 young women there, although it is believed that he killed more than 180 people.
The prison was closed in 1984 under pressure from human rights organizations, as well as environmentalists and scientists seeking to protect the island's natural paradise after the inmates cut down 70 percent of its jungles. Since then, the jungles have reclaimed their lost territory.
The only way to reach Gorgona is a two-hour boat ride from the coastal town of Guapi, hidden among mangrove thickets. Gorgona is a humid mix of volcanoes and jungles, where daily rains fall, and waters teem with dolphins and whales.
Nowadays, only a few crumbling prison walls remain, and the island is better known as an ecotourism center, attracting scuba divers and nature enthusiasts eager to explore Colombia's incredible biodiversity.
Considering how quickly the ruins are being engulfed by vegetation, "the government will have to decide what it wants to preserve from the prison," said one national park employee. Is it a cultural or historical heritage? Or should it disappear forever?
Sources:
