LEISURE, RACE AND COLONIALITY IN THE BRAZILIAN PRISON SYSTEM: CULTURAL INVISIBILIZATION AND THE NON-IMPLEMENTATION OF LAWS 10.639/2003 AND 11.645/2008

Resumen

This article analyzes leisure in the Brazilian prison system as a device shaped by power, race, and coloniality, focusing on units organized under the APAC model. Through discourse analysis of academic productions on the APAC model, the study examines how leisure practices are institutionally regulated and how this regulation affects the cultural expression of incarcerated individuals, who are predominantly Black and from vulnerable backgrounds. The theoretical framework brings together critical theory, decolonial studies, and ethnic-racial education, in dialogue with Laws No. 10.639/2003 and No. 11.645/2008, also incorporating critiques of the social reintegration discourse and epistemic hierarchies that delegitimize knowledge built on experience, the body, and collectivity. The findings show that leisure, rather than functioning as an autonomous space, is often instrumentalized as a disciplinary mechanism and structured by a logic that privileges hegemonic cultural repertoires, especially Euro-Christian traditions, to the detriment of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous practices. This dynamic reveals a symbolic control that reproduces racial and epistemological inequalities and sustains a pedagogy of invisibility. The study concludes that the absence of institutional policies aimed at valuing cultural diversity demonstrates the non-implementation of current legislation and highlights the need to reconfigure these practices from an intercultural, decolonial perspective guided by Human Rights Education, understood as a horizon for social transformation within the prison context.