Marching Powder

by Rusty Young

  43

  A SPECIAL VISITOR

  Samir took several days to recover from his beating. When he did, he was sentenced to another ninety days, and conditions in La Grulla went back to the way they had been when I first arrived there. All privileges were withdrawn: they took away my heater and all our blankets; they fed us on soup twice a day; they removed the light bulbs from their sockets; and yard time never lasted a minute longer than four hours. Things probably would have stayed that way, if it hadn’t been for the arrival of a very special visitor.

  The politician, Gabriel Sanchez, arrived, escorted by two policemen. He was wearing a suit and tie and walking ahead of his escorts, who were wheeling two large suitcases. As he walked down the corridor, the other inmates rattled their doors and hissed at him. He ignored them, but he looked tense.

  ‘You’re dead, Mr Politician,’ Chapako whispered, spitting on the back of his suit. His police escorts didn’t say anything.

  Sanchez had been sent to La Grulla for his own protection. It wasn’t difficult to have someone killed in a Bolivian prison – families of murder or rape victims did it all the time. Some of the poorer inmates would do anything for money, but in the case of a politician who had stolen forty million dollars from the Bolivian people and spent it on plastic surgery and a beach house in Miami, they would have performed the service for free. The only other place the politician might have been safe was in Posta, with all the other millionaires. But even there, someone probably could have got to him.

  ‘Wait ’til tonight, cabrón!’ yelled Chino. ‘You’d better have your money ready or we’re going to cut you up alive.’

  Sanchez was placed in the seventh cell. By then, the guards had moved the remaining contraband elsewhere. As they closed the door behind him, Samir shouted, ‘Señor político, we’re going to give you a new face that your plastic surgeon won’t be able to fix!’ On their way back down the corridor, the guards were smiling to themselves. I didn’t think the politician would last long.

  His first night was hell. The others stood at their doors explaining to him in great detail what they were going to do when they got hold of him.

  ‘No one’s going to save you in here. The police are on our side. They’ll give us the key to your cell and they won’t find you until the next morning.’

  Samir was the loudest, although you couldn’t hear him properly because at night the guards kept him handcuffed to the water pipe at the back of his cell so that he wouldn’t escape. ‘You’re ours now. You’re going to die very slowly, cabrón. Eight hours is a long time to bleed.’

  Sanchez didn’t say a thing all night. However, when I saw how tired his face was the following day, I knew he’d been awake and had heard every word. He was smart, though; when it was morning yard time, he refused to come out. Instead, he bribed the guards to bring his soup to his window. Chino rattled his door and laughed at him.

  ‘You have to come out sometime, bastardo. Politicians have to shit too, you know. And your shit stinks worse than ours, so you can’t do it in your cell.’

  In the afternoon, Gabriel Sanchez did come out to take his yard time, but it was after the rest of us had been locked up again. He had the entire exercise yard to himself. And since he wasn’t in La Grulla as punishment, the same restrictions didn’t apply to him. He was given as much yard time as he wanted and got to decide when he should go back to his cell. He sat in the sun, smoking cigarettes, listening to his CD Walkman and reading the newspaper, while the other inmates stood at their doors, going out of their heads in frustration.

  Over the next few days, their anger grew. They threw burning toilet paper and cups of urine through his window, but the politician simply stayed at the back of his cell. Samir tried to pick the new padlocks. Sanchez was smarter than Samir, though; he had made a phone call to the governor and had the door reinforced and extra locks installed on the inside. They tried everything to get to him, but no one could even get close.

  During this entire time, I didn’t say anything to Sanchez. I didn’t attempt to stop the others from taunting him – that would have been suicide – but I didn’t join in, either. After a while, the politician noticed this. Sometimes, when we were filing past his cell on our way to the lista, he would be standing at his window and he would try to catch my eye. I smiled at him once or twice when the others weren’t looking.

  Sanchez had a lot of visitors – his lawyers, rich friends and some family members. They brought him the daily newspaper and books, and home-cooked meals. Sometimes, he would call the guards and send me his leftovers. I always shared these with the other inmates. Then, on top of my normal yard time, Sanchez started to invite me to join him when he had his.

  The others called me a traitor, but when I got Sanchez to persuade the guards to give them extra yard time also, they began to see that having a politician as your friend could be more beneficial than trying to kill him.

  Gabriel Sanchez’s brother was in prison also. He lived in Posta and the family was given permission to get together for Christmas. Owing to the dangers involved in entering the main prison population, the politician applied to have his ‘bodyguard’ accompany him. That bodyguard was me, and it was the best Christmas I ever had in San Pedro.

  In Posta, the rules were already relaxed because the inmates were rich, but at Christmastime, you wouldn’t have even known it was a prison. There were streamers and party hats and people drinking and tables set up outside in the sun. They treated me like one of the family. They even wrapped me up a present – a bottle of Black Label scotch whisky.

  To be honest, I wasn’t much of a bodyguard. After a few glasses of whisky, I couldn’t have protected anyone. To keep me alert, the politician’s brother gave me a few puntitos. It was the purest coke I’d ever had in San Pedro. It seems that the people in Posta had very good connections. Officially, we were permitted to stay only until 6 pm on Christmas Day, but Gabriel rang the governor at his home and had our leave extended to the next day. Everyone kept drinking and dancing, while I sat in the corner bullshitting and doing cocaine with Gabriel’s brother. The seasons may have been reversed in the southern hemisphere, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t have a traditional white Christmas in Bolivia.

  After the Christmas celebrations came the New Year’s Eve party. And on the following day, another special prisoner was transferred into La Grulla from the main prison. They moved Chapako into Chino’s cell to make space for him. No one saw who the new prisoner was or knew why he was there. We were all too hungover to pay any attention. He was gone the following day. Later we found out why: he had been transferred to Chonchocoro for his own safety.

  While the whole prison population had been partying, one of the women hadn’t noticed that her six-year-old daughter was missing. When she sobered up the following morning and raised the alarm, everyone in the section went looking for the missing niña. They called and called. They looked in all the likely hiding places: under the stairwells, in the bathrooms, in the laundry, under clothes. They asked the other children. No one had seen her. The mother began to panic. They checked to make sure the niña hadn’t fallen into the empty swimming pool. And although it was unlikely, they climbed up on the roofs to look for her there.

  As word spread to the other sections, the whole prison population stopped what it was doing. Hundreds of worried people joined in the search. San Pedro was filled with the hysterical screams of the little girl’s mother and the sounds of people calling her name as if she were a lost puppy. Still, they couldn’t find her. The guards came into the prison and demanded that each prisoner open his door. They searched every single room, one by one, with a growing crowd following them.

  When they finally found the girl, it was too late. Her tiny body was discovered in one of the inmate’s cells. She had been raped, then strangled and left naked on the bed. The body was cold. The prison doctor sedated the mother and I finally understood properly about la piscina. The inmates began filling it with water and a mob went lo
oking for the culprit, but he had already made it to the main gate and bribed the guards to be sent to La Grulla. That wasn’t the only bad thing that happened. A couple of weeks afterwards, I got more bad news.

  44

  TERRIBLE NEWS

  I guess it had all got too much for Abregon in Chonchocoro and he just snapped. At least, that’s what I would prefer to think happened, but from the details I learned later, it seemed that he had the whole thing planned. And his girlfriend, Raquel, was stupid to have visited him, after what she had done. What did she think – that he would be happy to see her and want to give her more money?

  It was Julián who broke the news to me and he did it in a very strange way. After Samir’s escape attempt, all visitors were banned from La Grulla except those visiting the politician. However, Julián could get past the guards because he was delegate. He came into the cell block and knocked on my door very early one morning, even before the guards had let us out. I was barely awake, but I knew by the expression on his face that it was something serious.

  ‘How much money do you owe Abregon?’ he asked, after shaking my hand through the hatch.

  ‘Nothing. I don’t owe him a cent.’ I stopped rubbing my eyes and looked at Julián. ‘In fact, he owes me money. You know that.’ I had never mentioned the Chilean stolen car deal to Julián because he didn’t like to know about anything illegal that went on in his section. But he knew that Abregon and I were business partners and that Abregon owed me for something.

  ‘Are you sure? People are saying that he left you all his money when he went to Chonchocoro,’ he said, looking at me like I was a complete stranger. My mind started racing.

  ‘He did. But I gave it all to his wife. Why are you asking me all this? You were there. You were my witness,’ my voice squeaked. A wave of panic came over me. There was no way that Julián could have forgotten that amount of money, so why was he pretending not to remember? And why was he looking at me as if he didn’t believe me?

  ‘But you definitely haven’t got any more of his money?’ he asked me in an even tone.

  ‘Julián, you were there,’ I repeated, and that empty feeling in my stomach began to grow. ‘You counted the money yourself. Don’t … I mean … What, are you accusing me of cheating him?’ Then a thought occurred to me and I felt my legs go weak: What if Julián was the one trying to set me up? He had been the witness for the loan contract with the Velascos. He had been the witness for when I gave Abregon’s wife the money. He had been my witness at the police setup. He had sat on my case at the discipline committee meeting. He was the one I relied on to send messages to Abregon. What if he had been against me the whole time? Who would ever believe my word against his?

  ‘No, Thomas. I’m not accusing you of anything.’ Julián’s face relaxed. ‘I’m sorry that I had to ask you that. I just wanted to make sure.’

  ‘Make sure about what? Why? What’s happened? What did he say?’ I was in such a state of confusion that it took a while for his answer to sink in.

  ‘Abregon’s dead.’ Julián paused. ‘He died in Chonchocoro yesterday afternoon. I’m sorry, Thomas.’

  ‘How?’ I eventually managed to ask.

  ‘Suicide. He hanged himself.’

  I was still stuck on the idea that Julián was the one betraying me, so my first thought was that he had had Abregon killed and was trying to make it look like a suicide. But I was wrong. Julián had nothing to do with any of it.

  Even though Chonchocoro was a maximum-security prison, it seems that prisoners were still allowed television sets. Abregon had cut the electrical cable at the back and had it ready when his wife visited him in his cell. He turned his stereo up loud and strangled her. No one heard a thing. Afterwards, he hanged himself. Julián had just been doing his duty to Abregon’s family by asking me those questions about whether he had any money left over.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Yes. Get my television back for me.’ Julián looked at me strangely, thinking I might have been planning to do the same thing as Abregon. I wasn’t. ‘I want to watch the news.’

  The guards couldn’t find my TV, but Julián persuaded them to lend me theirs, which was smaller and black and white. They were probably using mine. The news reports said that Abregon had been depressed by the prospect of his sixteen-year sentence and had selfishly decided to take his young girlfriend with him when she visited him.

  ‘Are you OK? Is there anything else I can do for you?’ asked Julián when he visited the next day to check on how I was doing.

  ‘Yeah. Call the governor. Get me out of here.’

  I had been in La Grulla for sixty-six days when the governor finally signed my release form. The Velascos were released on the same day. They couldn’t look me in the eye after what had happened with Abregon, but as far as I was concerned, the fight between us was over. The money didn’t matter anymore, they could keep it. What I didn’t realise was that our fight had barely started.

  45

  NEW CHARGES

  When I was released from solitary confinement, the prison community was still recovering from the rape and murder of the six-year-old girl. Everyone was shocked and disgusted by what had happened and the whole prison was in shut-down mode. No one laughed or smiled for weeks. Inmates nodded sadly when they passed each other in the corridor. There were no parties. Children no longer played noisy games of soccer or hopscotch in the afternoons. Their mothers kept them locked safely inside the whole time. When they needed to go to the bathroom or to school, an adult always accompanied them.

  For several days, photographers and television crews had been camped outside San Pedro. Journalists banged on the gates demanding access to the prison in order to film the children’s living conditions and interview the families. The governor wouldn’t allow them in. Instead, the journalists had to content themselves with filming the women and children leaving the prison each morning on their way to school.

  Nevertheless, newspapers continued to run articles about how disgraceful it was that young children, who had committed no crime whatsoever, were being brought up in an adults’ prison. The children were paying the price for their fathers’ sins, they argued. A campaign called ‘Don’t Imprison My Childhood’ was launched, with the aim of removing all children from San Pedro immediately. The campaign failed. Everyone agreed that it was dangerous for children to be in the prison; however, no one could agree on what to do with them instead. There were no government funds to look after them. Without parents supporting them, where would the children live? How would they survive on the outside?

  Ultimately it was the parents, especially the mothers, who spoke out against the campaign. They knew that bringing their children up in a jail was far from ideal, but it was better than having them made into state wards or placed in orphanages. If the children were forced to leave San Pedro, their families would have no chance of sticking together. It was decided: the children were to stay.

  For a long time, mothers continued to keep their children locked inside but the children wanted to be outside in order to play. Gradually, they were allowed out again, although they were supervised very closely. Everyone paid them extra attention and treated them even more like angels than before. The rule that inmates had to stand aside in the corridors to give right of way to children was strictly enforced. Babysitting rosters were set up for minding groups of younger children. Anyone caught fighting in front of a child was sent to punishment immediately, without right of appeal. No one would ever forget what had happened, but life inside the prison slowly went back to how it had been before.

  Because of all the media attention focused on San Pedro, the guards became a lot stricter about every aspect of prison life. They carried out a series of requisas, mainly looking for weapons. During one raid, they confiscated all our knives, even my blunt butter knives, so that I had to use a fork and spoon to eat. The governor also placed restrictions on visiting hours. Only women and children with official permiss
ion slips could spend the night inside the jail. There was a complete ban on tourists entering. Officially, the tours didn’t exist anyway, but the governor certainly didn’t want photos of Westerners exiting San Pedro high on cocaine appearing as front-page news after what had just happened.

  No longer being able to conduct the tours meant that my main source of income disappeared completely at a time when I needed it most. My financial situation was in ruins. I hadn’t worked for over two months and I owed people who had loaned me money when I was in La Grulla. I decided to sell off the stock I had stored up in my shop. The only way to do this quickly was to sell everything to another shopkeeper at a huge loss.

  I did manage to keep my restaurant afloat, but the tour business was never the same. Even when the media attention finally died off and tourists were allowed back in, I still wasn’t able to run the San Pedro prison tours. During my two-month absence, the gangs had taken them over.

  One of the reasons I didn’t fight hard to re-establish myself as the main tour guide was Fantasma. In that year, he had his final court appearances before sentencing and he knew that he was going to be in prison for a long time. He told everyone that the devil had appeared to him and granted him a single wish. Rather than asking to be let out of prison, he said that he wanted to get his girlfriend pregnant. In the meantime, he became more and more violent. Rather than a suit and tie, Fantasma wore his designer sportswear and expensive sneakers to court. When reporters outside the court asked him whether he was sorry for what he had done, he replied, ‘If I could, I’d do it again, motherfuckers.’ On his way out of the court, he kicked at the journalists or knocked them out of the way and threatened to have them killed. Everything he did and said was reported in the media and read by the inmates of San Pedro. His girlfriend became pregnant and his reputation inside the prison grew.