One way of seeing the union of two opposing elements or entities is a coin, which has two different sides, generally opposite; another way is the idea of a symbiosis, that is, the relationship of interdependence between beings of different species. These beings are called symbionts, and that is what some guards and prisoners of the La Modelo prison in Bogota aptly named the heavy metal group they formed.
In 2022, Simbiontes was formed at the initiative of guard Lelio Camacho, from the psychosocial care team of the prison. Half of the members are part of the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute of Colombia (INPEC) and the other half are persons deprived of liberty. “It is a symbiosis, a fusion,” Camacho told the newspaper El Pais of Spain, and they declare themselves the first band in Colombia, and perhaps in the world, to do what they baptized as “prison rock.”
Everything is conceived within a project of resocialization through music, Camacho, who is guitarist and leader of the musical band, explained to the same media. Also part of the group are officer Oscar Betancourt (“Lobito”), an amateur musician and current bassist of Simbiontes, and inmate Jonathan Pedraza (“Cabito”), guitarist, vocalist and main composer of Simbiontes, who since a young age was a musician in a Christian church.
A band that is a song of hope
Two other members of the group are the person deprived of liberty Miguel Angel Barrero (“El Profe”), who plays the saxophone and has been a professional for years, and the officer and drummer Jeffrey Otavo (“Otto”), who refers to the nature of his group: “There has always been a stigma that the guard and the inmate have nothing to do with each other. We are a union to generate music, on stage we are a family. We break that wall.” And Barrero also adds in El Pais: “Before being guards and inmates, we are human beings with a taste for music.”
But Simbiontes is not limited by the prison walls. According to the Spanish newspaper, it has played on several stages outside the walls, including the Casa de Narino (seat of the National Government), and they would like to do a “prison tour” through all the prisons in the country. But their biggest dream is to perform at the Rock al Parque festival, which takes place every year in Bogota and is one of the largest free festivals in Latin America.
And they have what it takes to perform on a stage of that size. They have built a broad repertoire of covers in Spanish and English, as well as seven original songs that speak about their experience in prison. They sing about anxiety, overcoming, even love, the same newspaper reports. Finding creativity in prison is not complicated, but the themes inevitably tend to repeat themselves, Camacho says: “Loneliness, strength, overcoming…” “The most difficult thing is to project happiness, which does not manifest itself as such, but through things like resilience,” he adds.
It would seem impossible for something like this to emerge from inside a prison designed for 2,662 inmates, but which houses 4,496, although Camacho claims there are 5,000. Overcrowding is perhaps the best-known fact. Life in any prison is very hard, and what happens in its cells and courtyards is almost never known. For this reason, the existence of Simbiontes and the fact that this band is made up of guards and inmates is a true song of hope.