Michael Fox, Narrator: In an upscale neighborhood of Montevideo, dozens of men move quietly. Silently. Crawling their way to freedom. The year is 1971. September 6. Uruguay. South America. The country is not yet a dictatorship. That will happen two years later. 

But it’s on the way.

Government repression. Political prisoners. Torture against supposed subversives, taught by US advisers. But the Tupamaros are pushing back. They’re an urban guerrilla group. One of the most successful in the region. They take their name from Tupac Amaru II, one of the last Incan resistance fighters, who tried to lead a rebellion against the Spanish in present day Peru in the 18th century. 

But the Tupamaros have faced setbacks. Many of their people have been detained. Arrested. They’re held in jails like this one, Punta Carretas. There, hundreds of political prisoners are being held. But that is going to change for many of them tonight. 

It’s past midnight. September cold. Still winter in Montevideo. Across the prison, dozens of men slip out of their beds. Bricks slide out from the walls of their cells. Bodies slip out silently. They move into a tunnel that has been chiseled and dug slowly and silently for eight months, and they creep one by one underneath the prison.

It is the stuff of movies. Or of legends. Or of cartoons. 

The only sound is the ruffle of their prison uniforms and the occasional scrape of knees and hands on the ground. No words are spoken. Just movements and gestures. They crawl one after the next, after the next. Hearts pounding. Sweat pouring despite the chill. Hoping they are out and far away before they are discovered missing.

Time seems to stand still. Each breath, each movement an eternity.

And then… they’re crawling up past floorboards into a house. One after another. After another.

Signs point them into a neighboring home. Silent embraces. They’re given new clothes. Weapons. And then trucks whisk them away into the night. By the time the guards discover they are missing, they are long gone… Distributed in safe houses throughout the city.

A total of 111 men escape from the Punta Carretas prison that night. 

One hundred and eleven. Most are members of the Tupamaros. But not all. 

Among those who crept out that evening was one of the historic founders of the Tupamaros organization, Raúl Sendic, and Pepe Mujica, who, four decades later, would become president of Uruguay.

The prison break was known as “El Abuso.” The abuse. Because that’s exactly what the prison guards and the government felt by the escape. Today it is still considered the largest jailbreak of political prisoners in history. The prison break occurred on September 6, 1971. 

Uruguayan Filmmaker César Charlone won an academy award for his cinematography on the movie City of God. He is currently working on an eight-part series about the prison break.

“At a time when the world was deeply divided, this jailbreak symbolized freedom for an entire region,” Charlone told a news outlet earlier this year.

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.

I have been wanting to do something on this story for years. So glad you are finally getting a chance to hear it. And please keep your eye out for a much more exhaustive look at this prison break and the resistance to the Uruguayan dictatorship in the upcoming season two of my podcast Under the Shadow about Plan Condor and the role of the United States.

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This is the latest episode of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series produced by The Real News. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.

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