Mexico has announced that its infamous prison camp island, Islas Marias, has been turned into one of the country's top tourist attractions.

According to Daily Mail, the prison camp is known to have housed killers, drug traffickers, and thieves. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador celebrated the opening of Islas Marias Tourist Centers on Friday night as part of an effort to attract history enthusiasts to Islas Marias, located about 62 miles off the coast of Nayarit state.

Lopez Obrador described the island as a "paradise that before became like hell," but is now back to its glory. The improved Islas Marias will have villas that will accommodate international and mainland tourists. It will also feature a museum, restaurant, café, and beaches.

The Mexican government is targeting the former prison camp to be like Alcatraz, the infamous prison located on an island in the San Francisco Bay.

Islas Marias' entrance also has an arch named after Nelson Mandela. Mandela is known to have spent around 18 years in prison on South Africa's Robben Island before he was elected the country's president.

The government of Mexico reportedly hailed the former president of South Africa as a role model that "even behind prison walls, ideals and change can live on for those who want to change history."

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Islas Marias as a Tourist Attraction in Mexico

The government has announced tourist packages to the island. There will be ferries to the main settlement of Puerto Balleto starting next week.

Mexican Navy will run the center, which is considered to be part of a protected UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the island will be tourism for "excursions, to explore, to live with nature."

He added that it is "something exceptional" and extraordinary to recreate history. The first visitors on Wednesday will depart from Mazatlan, Sinaloa, on a ferry. They will then arrive at the main settlement of Puerto Balleto.

Islas Marias Prison Camp

The Islas Marias was a prison camp in 1905 under dictator Porfirio Diaz and was in almost constant use until it was closed by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2019.

The prison also housed political prisoners such as Jose Revueltas. He is known to be an influential Mexican writer imprisoned several times for his left-wing activism.

He also wrote a book inspired by two imprisonment periods on the island. It eventually helped him make one of the most famous former inmates of the prison camp.

When Lopez Obrador closed the prison, he said he wanted to promote "more schools and fewer prisons." The Mexican president noted that the prison camp has a history of "punishments, of torture, of repression over more than a century."

Two hundred of the 600 prisoners on the island will be released, while the rest will be relocated to prisons on the Mexican mainland. Experts expressed disappointment in Lopez Obrador's decision to close down the prison.

National Human Rights Commission noted that Islas Marias is considered one of Mexico's best-run and most human correctional facilities amid the country's reputation of jails being rife with corruption and controlled by inmates.

Paola Zavala Saeb, a former director of the Mexico City government's Social Reinsertion Institute, said the government has closed down a penitentiary "that has the only efficient model of social reinsertion."

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: México Inaugura El Centro Turístico Islas Marías, Antes Era Un Penal Ahora Un Destino Para Visitar - From Conociendo Mexico