La Cana: weaving new opportunities for women
La Cana empowers women in Mexican prisons, offering decent livelihoods and social reintegration, gender equality and education.
By Maira Baudouin
The issue we don’t want to talk about
In a country like Mexico, poverty, lack of access to basic rights such as education and healthcare, and precarious and violent contexts deeply tear apart the social fabric and marginalize a significant portion of the population.
Many people in prisons are guilty, while others are not. What is certain is that the possibility of building a dignified life and avoiding recidivism after serving their sentence is extremely limited, if not almost non-existent. Those who have been deprived of their freedom, guilty or not, have gone through truly difficult situations. Even when they are firmly determined to change their lives, the system seems designed to prevent that from happening. It’s like in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, where they carry a scarlet letter on their chest, making it impossible to build a new life and seize a new opportunity.
“It’s important to change this social consciousness we have: prison is not synonymous with justice, and justice and revenge are not the same thing,” says Daniela Ancira, co-founder and general director of La Cana.
How did La Cana begin?
La Cana was founded by Daniela Ancira and three co-founders while they were in university. Daniela, then a law student, had her first contact with prisons through a university volunteer program at the Barrientos Penal in the State of Mexico. The original plan was to provide legal advice. However, upon listening to the women in the prison, she discovered a harsh reality: they faced not only the deprivation of liberty but also the daily struggle for survival in an environment where everything, from water for bathing to basic hygiene items, came at a high cost.
It’s estimated that to survive in prison, about 200 pesos are needed daily. How can this amount be obtained without sources of income? Ironically, the way to get money was to commit crimes from within prison: extortion, theft, and even prostitution in the men’s prison for a few pesos. “It was the first time I asked myself… Why do prisons exist? Why do we have 200,000 people in prison? People were not studying, not working, not learning anything new. What will happen the day they get out with a criminal record and it’s almost impossible to get a job, a place to live, a life? We tend to think that when someone is imprisoned, justice has been served,” Ancira shares, but that’s not necessarily true, and she adds: “We don’t think about what will happen to that person’s family, what they will live on, what will happen to their children, and what they will do when they get out.”
In this sense, Selene, a beneficiary of La Cana who was in prison for two years and seven months, shares her experience: “I had left my son outside; he depended on me; I was a single mother. I was imprisoned, but my mother and my son depended on me. All of this affected them in many ways, but also economically: I was the one who supported the family.”
All these experiences were the catalyst that led the current director of La Cana to seek a solution that offered real change and the possibility of a second chance for many women. Inspired by her paternal grandmother, who worked on philanthropic projects with incarcerated people, Daniela Ancira and her co-founders began to develop a project that, besides offering work within prisons, also prepared women for a dignified and productive life once released.
Being a woman in prison
Women end up in prison for very different reasons than men, not only because of the type of crime but also because of the stories and circumstances behind these acts. Often, these women were partners, and daughters, or were subjugated to men they were victims of, and they were dragged into criminality because of their relationship with them. The criminal justice system is also harsher on women, imposing longer sentences for the same crimes as men, partly due to the social expectation that they should be good and selfless women. When they deviate from this role, they are more severely punished by family, society, and the penal system itself.
Prisons are not designed with a gender perspective: there are rarely exclusive penitentiary centres for women. Instead, they are usually sections within men’s prisons, without adequate facilities for their specific needs, such as spaces for children, pregnant or nursing women, and specialized gynaecological care. Eight out of ten women in prison do not receive visits, reflecting the great abandonment they face, even more so compared to men, who are often regularly visited by their mothers, partners, and other family members. This lack of support and inadequate conditions make women in prison face a level of abandonment and isolation much greater than their male counterparts.
“Where I was, there were men and women. Not mixed, we were separated by a wall. But I saw during visits: that the line to visit the men was huge, the women’s line was not. When I was in prison, I think there were about 300 of us and about 50 received visits,” describes Selene.
The possibility of a new beginning
The primary goal of this organization is to offer sustainable sources of income for incarcerated women, training them in various trades and skills that allow them to obtain dignified employment upon release, avoid recidivism, and have the opportunity to build a future for themselves and their loved ones. La Cana’s workshops and programs promote values such as discipline, effort, commitment, and teamwork, fundamental for the personal and professional development of the participants.
In addition to job training, La Cana offers mental health programs addressing issues such as depression, anxiety, and gender-based violence. It also promotes education, art, and culture, with activities such as yoga, meditation, reading clubs, and computer classes. These programs aim not only to improve the quality of life within prisons but also to prepare women for successful reintegration into society.
Forging new paths
In its eight years of existence, La Cana has expanded its work to 12 prisons in the State of Mexico, Mexico City, Zacatecas, and soon in Querétaro. The organization not only works with women inside prisons but also offers follow-up and support to those who have been released, providing psychological care and tools to continue their education and find employment.
The organization has annually benefited 700 women in its various lines of action and achieved an impressive non-recidivism rate of 97%, in contrast to Mexico City’s average of 40%. This success is partly due to the comprehensive care the beneficiaries receive, including psychological support, professional training, and a strong focus on gender equity.
“La Cana helped me overcome everything that living inside prison entails, to get a dignified and well-paid job, and also to change many things in my life. Today, I have a stable job and am about to complete my nursing studies. Additionally, without La Cana, I wouldn’t have been able to help my mother, and perhaps my son wouldn’t have finished his studies; now he’s studying law. I didn’t want my son to go through what I went through,” shares Selene.
“The organization has a halfway house in Xochimilco, where women who gain freedom can live temporarily because women are so abandoned in prison that, upon release, they have no one, nowhere to go, and the easiest thing is to return to life on the streets, to sex work or organized crime,” Daniela points out. This house is a safe space where they can live and receive psychological and medical care while they reorient their lives and find work.
Roots of the challenge and alliances
Ancira emphasizes: “The real challenge is that the problem is structural, it’s not just a few isolated stories; it’s an entire system, from how women are educated in Mexico, the role expected of women, this extremely macho and patriarchal society, to the injustice of the penal and prison justice system. We are lagging in our vision of justice, and that’s the main challenge: the urgent need is to address the causes from the root.”
La Cana has various institutional alliances, such as USAID, the Inter-American Development Bank, the German Embassy, the UK Embassy, as well as brands and individual donors. They also collaborate with other organizations working in the same area to have a greater impact. However, resources are always insufficient.
Nevertheless, she admits: “There are also many companies that do not want to associate with us in any way because it might look bad. They still have this perspective.”
Selene adds: “I think society should include us a bit in this. Yes, we want crime to end, but we also need to understand why it exists. Because people who have problems with addiction, incarceration, obviously didn’t have a proper childhood and didn’t have the possibility to study and many other things.”
