Peña Duro, is an infamous prison located in Santa Prisca, a Caribbean country in the DC Comics universe. It was where the Batman villain known as Bane was born and raised. Inmates of the prison were also used as test subject for the steroid Venom.
History
Referred to by many of its inmates as the armpit of the Earth, Peña Duro was a prison island used to house Santa Prisca's most dangerous criminals. Many considered it as the world's most dangerous prison.
Bane was born here to serve the life sentence of his father, and his childhood was spent behind its hellish walls. Though imprisoned, Bane's natural abilities allow him to develop extraordinary skills within the prison's walls. He read as many books as he could get his hands on, built up his body in the prison's gym, and learned to fight in the merciless school of prison life. Despite his circumstances, he appears to have found teachers of various sorts during his incarceration, ranging from hardened convicts to an elderly Jesuit priest, under whose tutelage he apparently receives a classical education. It is here he commits his first murder at the age of eight, stabbing a criminal who wanted to use him to gain information about the prison. During his years in the hellish prison, Bane carried a teddy bear he calls Osito (Spanish for "little bear"), whom he considered his only friend. It is revealed that Osito has a hole in his back to hold a knife that Bane used against anyone who bullied him.
Bane ultimately establishes himself as the "king" of Peña Duro. The prison's controllers take note and, eventually, force him to become a test subject for a mysterious drug known as Venom, which had killed all other subjects. It nearly killed him at first, but he survives and finds its effects enhance his physical strength. Years later, Bane escaped Peña Duro, along with several accomplices: Trogg, Zombie, and Bird.
In Other Media
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Peña Duro as it appears in Batman: The Animated Series
- Peña Duro appears briefly in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Bane". Like the comics, it was used as the holding ground for Bane and was the trial ground for the steroid Venom, until he escaped with a sample of the drug. Records of the prison are shown whilst Batman researches Bane after encounter the criminal in Gotham.
- Inmates of Peña Duro appear as enemies in The New Batman Adventures tie-in game Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu. According to in-game files and its novelization, Bane broke into the prison and offered freedom to the most powerful inmates, provided they killed the others. The twelve survivors serve as his enforcers when they break into the Batcave.
- Peña Duro is mentioned in Batman: The Enemy Within, as a former prison where Bane and the mercenaries hired by the Pact were kept. It is revealed that the Riddler also briefly held at the prison, only to lead a mass escape from the penitentiary and murder the warden.
- The Peña Duro prison is mentioned in the fifth season of the TV series Gotham. It was the prison where Eduardo Dorrance was imprisoned until he was freed by Nyssa al Ghul.