Jailhouse rock: Guards and prisoners united through music at Modelo penitentiary in Bogotá

“Moshing and headbanging” at a death metal concert. That’s paradise for prison guard Lelio Camacho, a member of the psychosocial support team at La Modelo medium-security prison in Bogotá. A metalhead to the core, he says he’s unique among the 17,000 employees of Colombia’s National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC). “With great humility, I consider myself unique for doing what I love at my job,” he says, sitting in the prison’s courtyard number one. In 2022, he fulfilled his dream of forming a band in prison. But not just any band: half the members of Simbiontes, as they named the group, are INPEC staff; the other half are inmates. “It’s a symbiosis, a fusion,” he says, gritting his teeth and clasping his hands, excited, before taking the stage in the prison auditorium to play for the visitors. The audience cheers.

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