For decades Vamos Juntos, one of the groups that were members of Praxis, acted as a vital support for people held in London prisons. Starting from 1993, London-based Latin American migrants and refugees would regularly visit other Latinos serving a prison sentence.

Getting access to prisons wasn’t easy, but Vamos Juntos’ members established vital contacts with chaplains across a number of London prisons, who helped arrange visits. Through these visits the group would provide emotional support to a growing Latino community that had fallen prey to drug trafficking - such as women who had been pushed to smuggle drugs to a country they have never visited or held no connections to. These days, we would consider many to have been groomed or to be ‘modern slaves’.

Visits with members of Vamos Juntos were often the only opportunities people had a chance to speak in their native language or eat the snacks members of the group were allowed to bring with them, such as empanadas or buñuelos. For those imprisoned, these visits were also a precious opportunity to talk about their families, to share jokes, and to forget about prison for a while.

Over the years Vamos Juntos developed its own zine that it would distribute in dozens of prisons across the UK where there was a Latino population, as well as mixed tapes with music and news.

Members of Vamos Juntos also offered links with Latino communities in London, or with family members back in the prisoners’ home countries. The group was also able to advocate for extra support for individual cases.

This was a pioneering group in the UK, which inspired a burgeoning movement of other groups that would mirror the work of Praxis and Vamos Juntos.