by Rusty Young
A crowd gathered around us instantly and began cheering. It was already two against one, so I was lucky that no one else came in on their side. When Jorge was about to pass out, I threw him to the ground and turned to fight his father, but he thumped me in the head. I was dazed and the only thing I could do was knock him against the wall and charge at him. We locked up in a desperate struggle and then Jorge managed to get back to his feet and the three of us grappled, with knees coming from all directions and fists flying everywhere.
The whole fight lasted less than two minutes before someone hissed that the police were coming and the spectators pulled us apart.
‘You’re dead – both of you! You can’t hide forever. I’m going to get you!’ I yelled at the Velascos as they scuttled back down to their room. The other prisoners urged me to keep quiet so that the police wouldn’t know who had been fighting.
After the fight, I went back to my room to calm down. I couldn’t get any rest because people kept knocking on my door, wanting to hear what had happened. It seemed that everyone throughout the whole prison was talking about the fight, and I was worried the guards would hear that I was involved. At the time, they were really cracking down and you could be sent to Chonchocoro on the slightest pretext. What use would I be to Abregon if I was stuck there in maximum security with him?
Then, a strange thing happened: the Velascos sent word via one of the taxistas that they wanted peace. They had the money ready and I should come and get it from their room. I smelled a trap immediately. For a start, how did they have money now if they hadn’t had any before? And if they did have money, why had they suddenly decided to pay it to me, rather than keep it for themselves? No one had won the fight, so it wasn’t like they were afraid of me.
At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the message, because they might blame me later for not going when they’d said they had the money. I sent a guy we called El General, who worked for me in my shop, with a note authorising the Velascos to pay him. El General came back empty-handed, saying that the Velascos didn’t want any possibility of confusion – they would only give the money to me directly. This convinced me that it was a trap. However, I couldn’t let them think that I was afraid. If I didn’t go then, that would mean they had won and there would never be any chance of getting the money for Abregon. So, I had to go. But there was no way I was going on my own.
I asked Julián, my section delegate, to come with me. No one answered when we knocked on the Velascos’ door the first time. We knocked again and this time a voice from inside told us to wait a moment. Julián suggested that we stand back from the door, just in case. As we waited against the railing a few doors down, I looked around and noticed that all the inmates were leaving. Within half a minute, the balcony was completely empty and everything had gone dead quiet. I could almost see what was about to happen next before it actually did.
Suddenly, there was a rush of footsteps as police sprinted up the stairs and swooped on us from both directions. They ignored Julián and came straight for me.
‘Don’t move! Stay right where you are.’
I did as I was told and stayed calm. I had suspected that something like this might happen, which was why I had brought Julián along as a witness.
Two of the police held me while the others knocked on the Velascos’ door. At first they wouldn’t come out, but when the police threatened to kick it in, they opened up. The police told Julián to stand back and me to accompany them inside to witness them searching the room, but I refused.
‘What for? It’s not my room. I’m from a different section.’
‘What are you doing here, then?’
‘Nothing. I’m here with my delegate,’ I said pointing to Julián. The police hadn’t reckoned on him being there and were a bit confused as to what to do. They told Julián to leave, but he said he had to stay as a witness.
‘What are you doing out of your section?’ they asked me again.
I repeated my answer of before. I didn’t want to mention that I was about to visit the Velascos or that they owed me money. It was best not to give the police any information to go on, even if it was completely legitimate and explained everything, because they would find some way of twisting your words.
Julián was ordered to leave and, despite my protests, the police made me follow them into the room. Jose Luis and Jorge Velasco were inside with a third inmate I didn’t know. None of them would meet my eye. We all watched as the cops turned things over and pulled their possessions apart.
‘What’s this?’ asked one of the policemen, who was standing at the bookshelf unravelling a poster that he had slid out of a cylindrical container. Inside was a long, thin plastic bag containing cocaine. All the police looked at me.
‘It’s not mine. This isn’t my room.’ I pointed at the Velascos. ‘Ask them!’
The police took us all outside to question us separately. They had nothing on me but that didn’t stop them from trying to get a bribe. They assumed that, because of the tours and because I was a foreigner, I was a millionaire. They wanted two thousand dollars. Normally, I would have given them something, nothing like that amount, but just something to avoid problems. This time, however, I had nothing to give.
‘I have never been inside this room. The door was shut and when you came I was outside, several metres away, where you found me. It’s their room.’ I pointed to the Velascos again. ‘Ask them.’
The guards had no case against me and they knew it. They could have changed the facts, except that I had a reliable witness with me to say that the door was shut and I had never been inside. They reduced their offer.
‘OK. One thousand dollars, then.’
Still I refused, so they searched my pockets thoroughly. When they found nothing, they insisted on searching my room. I gave them the key on the condition that my delegate be present so that they couldn’t plant anything. They didn’t find anything there either and although they weren’t happy about it, they had to let me go.
When the guards left my room, I was shaking. I sat down to think about what had just happened. Something big was going on. First Abregon being transferred, then this. The whole thing was so obviously a set-up. The police had intended to catch me in the room and say the drugs were mine, but they were stupid and had come too soon. Also, they hadn’t counted on me bringing Julián along. I suspected that the Velascos were behind the whole episode and when they weren’t charged either, I was sure of it. How could the police find over a hundred grams of cocaine in someone’s room and not charge anyone?
That should have been the end of the incident. However, eight days later, someone informed the media about what had happened. There was a television report that several inmates had been caught with two hundred grams of cocaine inside San Pedro, but that no charges had been laid.
The cops came and got me straight after lista, just like they had with Abregon.
‘Where are you taking me?’ I demanded. I already knew what it was about.
‘The punishment section.’ My heart sank. There was to be an investigation. The culprits had to be found.
‘Chonchocoro?’
‘No.’ The lieutenant shook his head. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
‘Where then?’
‘You’re in luck. They’re sending you to La Grulla.’
40
SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
La Grulla was the new solitary confinement section to replace La Muralla, although there was nothing new about it. And there was nothing lucky at all about being sent there, either. That place was hell on earth. It was like they had run out of funds halfway through building it. The walls were dirty and unpainted. The taps didn’t work. The toilets were permanently blocked. There were light sockets, but no globes. There were beds, but no mattresses or blankets.
My new life was made up of four elements: coldness, darkness, silence and boredom. The daily routine is simple enough to describe: twenty hours in the cell and four hours out. Inside, the cell was small and co
ld and dark. The walls and floor were made of cement and there were no windows and no light, other than the small amount that came under the door or through the small observation hatch in the door, which I could prop open when the guards weren’t around. The bed was just a few planks of wood that I inserted into holes in the wall at night and dismantled during the day to make more space.
There were six of us in the cell block together – Characoto, Chapako, Ramero, Chino, Samir (my Brazilian car-thief friend) and me – and the guards let us out together for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, although we were banned from talking at all times. When out of the cell, I had to watch my back. Those guys were tough. La Grulla was supposed to be where they sent people as punishment for specific misdemeanours. In practice, however, they used it to house the hard and violent cases that they couldn’t control and didn’t know what to do with. It was the last step before Chonchocoro. Most of them didn’t care about anything, not even themselves.
Ramero was in for punching a guard in the face. Chino spent most of his time in solitary for fighting. Characoto and Chapako were in there for stabbing an inmate to death with a screwdriver. Those two had nothing left to lose; they were already in prison for thirty years for another murder and they probably wouldn’t live that long anyway. Besides, if they got a second conviction of thirty years for the stabbing, there was a loophole in the law that would allow them to serve it concurrently with the first sentence, so it made no difference to when they would get out. And Samir? I don’t know what he was in for this time, but it was usually something to do with drugs or fighting. The only reason they didn’t send him to Chonchocoro was because he was always threatening to expose the police involved in the car-theft ring.
During those four hours we could go to the toilet, have a cold shower, move around in the small exercise pen or eat some food, if there was any. The meal system in La Grulla was the same as in the rest of the prison – a bucket of watered-down soup was sent out from the prison kitchen twice a day to all the sections. That was all you got and if you didn’t like it, you had to feed yourself. In La Grulla, there was a small kitchen area next to the bathrooms with running water and a cooker, but it was of no use to us since we couldn’t get to the shops. Sometimes the guards forgot to send us our soup and we went hungry unless the inmates from the neighbouring section of Posta sent us their leftovers, which was never enough for six men to survive on anyway.
The conditions in solitary got to me quickly. I was constantly hungry and lost a lot of weight. After one week, I had diarrhoea and a chest infection. A few days later, I started pissing blood because I had a urinary tract infection. But there was something worse than the physical conditions and the sickness: the mental torture that went along with it.
The guards in La Grulla were bastards. Real bastards. And they wanted to make an example of us because we were the first group to go through, so that everyone would hear about it and be afraid of being sent there. They did a good job of it, too. They called us dogs. They hit us like dogs. And after a while, we started to believe that we were dogs. The guards were our masters. We were dependent on them for everything: food, water, toilet breaks, even company. They made us beg for everything. If you misbehaved, you would be locked in your cell without food or water. After several days of severe thirst and starvation, there is nothing that even the toughest man in the world won’t do for something to eat, no matter how degrading. When Samir was being punished one time, the guards made him lick their boots while they pissed on him. Afterwards, they threw him scraps of food on the dirty floor and he thanked them for it.
Our communication with the rest of the world was cut off completely. We weren’t allowed visitors, we weren’t allowed phone calls, we couldn’t send a message to anyone in the main prison or even call for a doctor if we were sick. Communication with each other was forbidden. And communication with the guards was limited to nodding and shaking our heads. We weren’t even allowed to look at them. When they yelled at us, we had to keep our heads bowed. If they asked you a question and you answered it, they would strike you with a wooden baton for speaking. But if you didn’t answer, you would be beaten for insolence.
There was no point in fighting back. The guards could do whatever they wanted and no one would ever know, because La Grulla was separated from the main prison. One of the other tricks they used to control us was punishing everyone when one person disobeyed the rules, which built up tension among the prisoners and stopped us from uniting against them. Usually, the punishment involved depriving us of yard time or food, or both. When that happened, I wouldn’t see another human being or eat a thing for days on end. The only noises I would hear were the ones I made myself – my footsteps pacing up and down the cell, or my own voice when I talked or hummed to myself. We had buckets for shitting in, but I kept mine filled with drinking water for emergencies. Instead, I shat in the corner of my cell on a piece of newspaper and wrapped it up tightly to stop the smell getting out. It never worked, though. On top of all this, I was constantly worried about my future.
I replayed the events in the Velascos’ room over and over in my mind, until I thought I was going crazy. The police had no evidence against me, and in any normal country I wouldn’t have been concerned. But things were different in Bolivia. They could easily change a few details in order to make me look guilty. Ricardo’s joke was no longer funny. ‘What could they do to you if they catch you with drugs in prison?’ he always asked. There was an answer: ‘Keep you in there a lot longer.’
On the scale of cocaine offences, two hundred grams wasn’t much. But the amount wasn’t that important. Dealing in jail carried a heavy sentence no matter what, since it was a second offence. I didn’t know what the exact penalty was, but I guessed the judges could add anything between five and fifteen years to my sentence if the case went to court. And the worst thing about it was that I was actually innocent this time. I have heard that for some people, knowing that they are innocent is the only thing that keeps them going while in prison. For me, it was the opposite; it made it worse. It made me realise that being innocent or guilty wasn’t relevant. They could do what they wanted with you, and you were completely powerless to stop them.
I hadn’t forgotten Abregon, either. What he was going through in Chonchocoro must have been far worse. I had no way of helping him from where I was. There was now no chance of getting any money to him; I couldn’t operate my shop or restaurant; I couldn’t run the tour business; I couldn’t even sell any of my possessions or mortgage my room. And worse still, I didn’t have any way of telling him what had happened to me. For all he knew, I might have been part of the plot to send him to maximum security in order to steal his money.
I often thought of Yasheeda. I had a lot of time to think about our relationship. I kept remembering one crazy night in particular, when we were both drunk and high, and we both said some crazy things to each other. We decided that we were going to get a little house together somewhere. It didn’t matter where. Maybe we would have to rent at first, but we would both work hard in order to save up. I was going to quit trafficking. I didn’t care what I had to do to get by. Maybe we could stay in Bolivia where everything was cheaper and I could teach English. I would clean toilets if I had to. Anything to be with her. We made love all that night and smoked marijuana and laughed in between times. I think I even proposed to her.
We never mentioned that conversation again, but I remembered it and I’m sure that she did too. We were crazy that night, and the things we said to each other were crazy, but they were true at the time. Part of me still wanted them to be true. But they couldn’t be. Not if I was locked up in prison. I wondered which country Yasheeda was in now and what she was doing. I realised how stupid I had been, driving her away like I did. If she had been in La Paz still, I knew that she would have saved me. Or even if she had known where I was, I felt that would have somehow made me stronger. She could have thought about me from the other side of the world. But ther
e was no way that she could have known. No one on the outside knew where I was. I could have died and no one would have known.
Night-time was the most painful. The nights were cold, colder than I had ever imagined. It was difficult sleeping on hard wooden planks, but there was no choice – the concrete floor was colder. Without blankets, I couldn’t stop shivering and thinking about all these problems. I knew there was nothing I could do while I was locked up, so I tried not to think about them. But it was impossible. I couldn’t get away from my own thoughts, not for one minute. Being stuck in solitary confinement was like being a prisoner in your own head. In the dead cold of night, I became convinced that I was going to die before morning. I knew that I had to get out of there. I would go crazy otherwise.
Julián eventually managed to get past the La Grulla guards, claiming that he had an obligation as delegate to check on the prisoners’ welfare. I was so relieved when he arrived. He was my main hope of getting out of there and of proving my innocence.
‘How are you holding up, Thomas?’ he asked, lifting the flap and poking his arm through the observation hatch to shake my hand and slip me a stack of coins he had taped together for bribing the guards with.
‘I’m OK, but how’s Abregon? Does he know I’m in here?’
‘He hasn’t called.’ Julián paused and added slowly, ‘Someone spotted his woman in Cochabamba.’ According to Julián, there were rumours going around that Raquel was dressing nicely and spending up big. It was what I had suspected, but that didn’t make it any easier when I heard.
‘Can’t you send him something?’
‘We’re trying our hardest.’
‘Julián, I need you to get me out of here. I need to speak to the governor.’
