La Última Copa: Alcoholics Anonymous as Behavioral Health Care in Puerto Rico’s Oso Blanco, 1950s-1960s

Abstract

Drawing from a prisoner-produced publication titled Realidad (Reality) as well as other sources, this article explores the history of Alcoholics Anonymous in Puerto Rico’s premier carceral institution in the mid-twentieth century, the Insular/State Penitentiary at Río Piedras. An analysis of the AA penitentiary group La Última Copa (The Last Drink) under colonial populism—an era in which Puerto Rican carceral care revolved around rehabilitation—shows that incarcerated people deemed the group’s activities and their magazine as viable, efficacious behavioral health care options. Socio-humanistic therapeutics like group therapy and testimonial writing were of particular consequence for inmates, who in turn produced multiscalar knowledge about alcoholism and served as frontline practitioners.