by Rusty Young
When I woke up the following afternoon, I was still tired so I went back to sleep for a few hours more. However, each time I woke up, I still felt tired. In fact, it seemed the more I slept, the more tired I became. I had to spend the next few days in Ricardo’s room, regaining my strength.
The first time I needed to go to the toilet, Ricardo showed me where they were. The toilets stank. They were cleaner than I had expected, but they were still horrible. Ricardo said they hadn’t been fixed up since the prison had been built over a hundred years before. They were hosed out three or four times a day, but the sewerage system was so ancient that nothing could be done about the smell.
For urinating, there was a heavy, cement trough that was moulded into the wall, but on the wrong angle, so the urine never drained away completely and there were always a few centimetres of it collected at the bottom. A sign on the wall said you were supposed to dump a bucket of water in the trough after urinating but no one ever bothered, so the piss just sat there, bubbling and frothing and stinking the place out.
For defecating, there were five partitioned cubicles in a row, each with its own swinging door. Inside each cubicle, there was no actual toilet; just a hole in the concrete floor that you had to squat over. At first, it was a strange sensation not having a seat, but you very quickly learned where to position your feet and after a while, you got used to it. When you’d done your business, you had to throw a couple of buckets of water down the hole to wash away any spillage and to help push the waste along the open pipe that ran beneath the floor and out of the prison. For the sake of hygiene, the inmates enforced this rule, although the waste never ran freely along the pipe, so there was often a horrible build-up that no one volunteered to clear.
The second time I needed to go to the bathroom I went by myself. There were a few inmates hanging around and they hissed at me and called me ‘gringo’. This time, they also spat on my back. I pretended not to notice, but when one of them started pushing me, I hurried back to Ricardo. After that, I was afraid to leave his room. When I had to go the bathroom, I did so very early in the morning before any of the prisoners were awake. I didn’t even take a shower until Ricardo suggested that I smelled a bit. Even then, I tried to find an excuse not to go to the bathroom.
‘But the water’s too cold. I’ll get sick again.’
In fact, the water in the showers wasn’t just cold; it was icy, particularly in the early mornings when the temperature in La Paz could drop to below freezing. Ricardo couldn’t argue with me on that one. The showers were supposed to have hot water, but at that time they weren’t working properly so he usually showered after midday, when the temperature of the water in the pipes had risen a few degrees and he could sit in the sun afterwards. Instead, he brought me a bucket with soap and hot water, which is what he used himself when it was too cold for a shower.
It took me several days to fully catch up on all the sleep I had lost and get my stomach used to accepting normal amounts of food again.
After that initial period of tiredness, I felt a little better every day, although I still had a severe chest infection.
‘You’ve still got a nasty cough,’ Ricardo looked at me with concern. ‘You’ll have to get some more medicine.’
‘I have to wait to get money.’
‘I’ll cover you. But for this week only. Then you have to find your own place and pay me back. I’m writing it all down.’
Ricardo went to the prison pharmacy and got me some more antibiotics. He also did all of the cooking those first weeks, he lent me some old clothes and, in the end, he refused to accept full payment for all the nights I slept on his floor. I am forever grateful to him for the help he gave me; without him, I would have died.
I wanted to repay him in some way as soon as I could. When I started eating properly again, I passed the seven balls of cocaine I had reswallowed at the FELCN. I washed them off and took them straight to Ricardo.
‘Ricardo, I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough for what you’ve done for me. Maybe you can help me to sell these and I can give you some of your money back.’
Ricardo looked at the packages in my hand, one of which I had cut open, and laughed. ‘Is that cocaine?’
‘What’s wrong with it? It’s good quality. I guarantee it.’ I held up the open ball for him to inspect, but he just waved it away.
‘There are a lot of things we miss out on in prison, inglés. But cocaine isn’t one of them.’ I looked at him curiously. ‘This is where the coke comes from, my friend,’ he explained casually. ‘It’s made in here. The best in the world.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I wondered whether this was another of Ricardo’s jokes, but he seemed serious.
‘The inmates set up laboratories at night and sell to people on the outside. The stuff in here is purer and cheaper than what you can get on the outside. This is the source, Thomas.’ When he saw my disbelieving expression, he added, ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this just yet, so keep your mouth shut, OK?’
‘You’re joking!’ I had guessed that the prisoners would take drugs, which is why I had swallowed the stuff as an insurance plan in case I got caught, but I never expected that they would actually manufacture drugs inside. ‘Don’t the guards do anything?’
‘They’re in on it. How do you think the chemicals get past the gates?’
All this sounded incredible. However, after what I had been through with the Bolivian police in the past weeks, I believed anything was possible.
‘But it must be worth something?’ After all, it was still seventy grams of pure cocaine.
Ricardo shook his head. ‘Sorry, inglés. You would have been better off smuggling bananas into prison. Or in your case, antibiotics,’ he laughed.
‘So, it’s worth nothing?’
He looked doubtfully at my merchandise again. ‘You’ll get something for it. But it will be less than what you paid for it, that’s for sure.’
There was a question that had been bugging me for days. Every morning when I went to the bathroom, I saw female prisoners walking around. I finally asked Ricardo after breakfast one day, as he was doing his hair.
‘Isn’t it dangerous to have male and female prisoners mixed in the same prison?’
‘The women aren’t prisoners. They just live here,’ he answered in his usual casual manner, turning his face sideways to study a small patch on his neck that he had missed shaving. ‘Shit. Damn razor.’
‘What? What for?’
Ricardo kept checking himself in the mirror. ‘To be with their husbands.’
‘But why?’ I couldn’t believe that anyone would actually choose to live in a prison.
‘There’s no other choice. It’s the only way the family can stay together.’
‘Why can’t they live outside and just come in to visit?’
‘This is Bolivia, Thomas. There are no jobs on the outside. The economy is dead.’ Ricardo put down the brush, applied some shaving cream to the tip of his finger and gently picked away with the razor at the whiskers he’d missed. ‘How can a woman get a job if there aren’t even jobs for the men? And if she gets a job, how can she afford to pay rent, look after the kids and support her husband in prison at the same time?’
‘But surely there’s some way? Can’t the government help?’
‘Don’t be so stupid, inglés.’ He turned to me in irritation. ‘We’re not in Europe. There is no social security. If you don’t have money in this country, you starve to death. I thought you would have worked that out by now.’
‘And the kids live in here, too?’ I asked.
Ricardo nodded.
‘But … don’t you think …?’ I was about to say that I thought it was unfair that children should have to grow up in a prison. The women I could sort of accept; at least they had a choice. But the kids hadn’t done anything wrong. Ricardo interrupted me.
‘I know what you’re going to say, inglés. Just trust me. It’s sad. But it’s better this way.’
‘Just drop it, will you?’ Ricardo’s voice rose slightly and he snatched up the brush again. I could see he didn’t want to talk about it. But I had to know.
‘But isn’t it dangerous?’ I asked softly.
He thought for a minute. ‘Sometimes.’
‘What about rapists and child molesters?’
‘There are no rapists or child molesters in here. They’re not allowed.’
‘What do you mean, “They’re not allowed”?’
Ricardo looked at me sideways in the mirror and opened his mouth as if he was about to say something. Then he changed his mind. ‘I’ll tell you about that later. Right now, you’ve got more important things to worry about.’
‘But –’
‘Just drop it, I told you!’ Ricardo snapped, slamming his brush on the bedside table and storming into the kitchen. It was the first time he had raised his voice with me since I had been staying with him and I didn’t want to push him any further. I let the subject drop.
At first, Ricardo was like my mentor in prison, but he very quickly became my best friend. I’m sure that part of it was the situation I was in: I had no one else to turn to because all the other prisoners seemed to hate me, so it was only natural that I came to depend on him. But to this day, I have yet to meet anyone who was as kind to me as Ricardo. He became like a father to me. He was very easy-going and had only one house rule: ‘No smoking base in my room. If I catch you, you’re out. No questions. Straight out.’
Base was apparently what those men had been smoking in the abandoned building on my first day. It was the raw paste which they used to make cocaine powder in the prison laboratories; less refined, but cheaper and far more addictive.
‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured him. ‘I don’t even take cocaine.’
He laughed. ‘Oh you will, my friend. You will.’
Aside from educating me about drugs, Ricardo also took it on himself to educate me about the ways of prison life. Without his help, I don’t know how I would have got through those first weeks. San Pedro was no ordinary prison; there was a lot to learn. As I recovered my health, Ricardo taught me something new each day. The first piece of real advice he gave me I remember very well: make sure that all the other prisoners know where you are from.
‘You must learn the expression “No soy americano,” he advised me, ‘because it might save your life one day. This means, “I am not an American.” You have to be certain that everyone knows you are English. Remember that you are inglés. You are from Inglaterra. Now repeat!’
I noticed that Ricardo always made a point of calling me ‘Inglaterra’ or ‘inglés’ whenever there were other people around. Apparently, it was for my own good as well as his; if people thought I was American, being friends with me might cause him problems. This was the second time Ricardo had mentioned the Americans. Although I had already been picked on for being a foreigner, I still didn’t understand why the Bolivian prisoners hated Americans so much. However, it wouldn’t be long before I found out how dangerous being thought a gringo could be.
Unfortunately, my body hadn’t yet fully adjusted to normal amounts of food and I got diarrhoea. The need to rush to the toilet struck without warning, at any time of the day or night. I didn’t like going to the bathroom at the best of times; it was small and cramped and dirty, and there was only one door. Once you were inside, you had to go back out the same way, which meant you could be trapped. At least during the day, the door was kept open and there were people around in the courtyard. In the evenings, the bathroom was locked and you needed a key to open it from both sides. I wasn’t happy about going down to the toilet after dark, and worse still, by myself, but there was no choice with diarrhoea; I couldn’t do it in my pants and I couldn’t ask Ricardo to hold my hand and wait outside the cubicle every time I needed to go.
Luckily, when I went to the bathroom for the first time at night it was around eight o’clock and there was no one else in there. I breathed a sigh of relief. Crouching down to the floor, I checked under the partitions for feet, just to be sure, then I shat the liquid out as quietly as possible, listening intently for the sound of anyone entering. The only noise was a shower that had been left dripping. However, when I came out of the cubicle, there were two men in the narrow passage that led to the door, blocking my way. One was bent forward at the basin, slowly washing his hands; the other was standing directly behind him, leaning against the wall, as though he was waiting to use the basin next, even though there was another one next to it. I hadn’t heard them come in.
Not wanting them to hear my foreign accent, I nodded coolly to the man leaning against the wall. He didn’t respond. I waited a while longer for the other man to finish washing his hands. But when he eventually did stop, he left the tap running and stood there with his hands on the rim of the basin, watching the water going down the plug hole. Neither of them showed any sign of moving.
‘Perdón,’ I said, but they didn’t look at me. The one at the basin began rinsing his hands again and, from the corner of my eye, I saw him looking at his friend in the mirror.
I had to get to that door. There was no way around them and no other way out of the bathroom. If I hesitated any longer, they would know that I was afraid.
‘Perdón,’ I said more forcefully, moving forward to squeeze between them, but they stood firm and wouldn’t let me pass. I took a step back and waited a few more moments, all the while readying myself in case they attacked.
Finally, the one at the basin stood up and faced me. He had mean eyes and a fresh cut across his forehead. He said something threatening to me in Spanish. I only understood the word ‘gringo’, but it was obvious they wanted money.
‘I don’t have any,’ I said, patting my clothes. Luckily, I was wearing some old, loose-fitting pyjamas with no pockets that Ricardo had loaned me, so they could see I wasn’t lying. The two looked at each other and there was a brief exchange. I could tell by their facial expressions that they had decided to let me go. The one against the wall nodded to me and jerked his head towards the door, saying something about giving them money later.
‘Gracias. Perdón,’ I managed to mumble as I slipped through the small gap they had created for me, trying not to brush against them. I fumbled to insert the key in the lock. It wouldn’t go in and I started panicking. It must have been Ricardo’s room key, so I shakily tried the other one, but that was the wrong one, too. Eventually, I got the first key to work. ‘Gracias,’ I said again as I hurried out of the bathroom. They stared after me without saying a word. Next time I would have to pay the toll.
7
RESEARCHING THE HOUSING
MARKET
I stayed inside even more after that incident and was afraid to go to the bathroom at all. The part of the prison that Ricardo lived in was Pinos, the five-star section. It was one of the safest parts of the prison. However, inmates from other sections had the right to go wherever they wanted during the day, so it was difficult to stop the gangs from entering. After nine o’clock each night, the section locked its gate and Ricardo told me that that would be the safest time for me to go. I still didn’t like going down when it was dark.
Fortunately, my diarrhoea was cured very quickly. Ricardo brewed me up a special concoction to settle my stomach called maté de coca, which was a tea made from coca leaves. The Bolivians had been using it for centuries as a remedy for every type of illness under the sun and it seemed to work. He also said that I could stay on his floor for a week more, free of charge, until I felt safer. But after that, I had to get my own room. I didn’t have any idea how I was supposed to get a prison room, but Ricardo promised to help me. He began by explaining the cell arrangements in great detail. After hearing about the women and children in the prison and the cocaine laboratories, I didn’t think there could be many more shocks. But there were.
Although they had tried to rip me off on the price, the police hadn’t been lying to me on my first night ab
out having to buy my own prison cell. San Pedro was comprised of eight sections – Posta, Pinos (where Ricardo lived) and Alamos, and the rundown inside sections San Martín, Prefectura, Palmar, Guanay and Cancha. After you paid the entrance fee – el Ingreso – to the police for the privilege of being allowed into the prison, you then paid another fee to become a member of one of these sections. And all that was before you spent more money buying your own cell and then having the cell title transferred into your name.
‘And you can’t just go out and buy anything,’ Ricardo warned me. ‘You have to know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you’re going to get completely taken for a ride.’
The system was very complicated and there was a great deal of information to take in. It took a long time for Ricardo to explain everything to me, since I kept interrupting him to express my disbelief or to ask questions. Once Ricardo started talking, it was hard to stop him, especially when it had anything to do with his favourite topics: economics and politics. The way things worked in San Pedro was astounding. Everything was about money. And I mean everything.
There were inmates who acted as freelance real estate agents, scouting around for potential buyers on a commission basis. There were restaurant owners who advertised lists of the various properties that were for sale, charging a small fee to the sellers. The section delegates allowed advertisements – known as ‘propaganda’ – to be placed on the section noticeboards, because room sales generated income for the section. Even the police were involved, since they were in the best position to get hold of new arrivals who didn’t know how things worked. Luckily, I hadn’t had any money with which to buy a cell on the first night; the police usually added fifty per cent to the price as their commission.
The first step was paying the twenty-five bolivianos to the police, for which you received a receipt. Then you paid the section entrance fee. This was non-refundable and the amount varied according to which section you joined. When I found my own place, I paid one hundred and fifty bolivianos, approximately thirty US dollars. In the dangerous sections it was much cheaper. This money was placed in a fund that was used to cover section expenses such as maintenance, administration, cleaning, renovations and the occasional social event such as the Prisoners’ Day party every September, when the section delegates cooked a barbecue and hired a band for the inmates.
