El Infierno

by Pieter Tritton

  The grin vanished from his face instantly and I saw the look of a sicario appear in its place. ‘Aw, no hard feelings my friend. I know it wasn’t you who had me transferred, it was some other son of a bitch.’ He offered me his hand so I took it and we were once again friends.

  Tigre, it transpired, had been transferred all over the place as he just couldn’t stay away from trouble.

  ‘I am the boss’s bodyguard now.’ As he said this he raised his t-shirt to reveal the pistol grip butts of two handguns protruding from his jeans, much like a gun slinger in the wild west. ‘Fuck me, Tigre. You want to watch you don’t blow your own balls off with all the fire power you have there,’ I joked.

  Tigre laughed and all was good between us once more.

  ‘You get any trouble, and I mean any, you call me straight away. No one can touch you here or they have Tigre to deal with.’

  ‘Thanks my friend, that’s really appreciated.’ It was good to know I had backup if it was needed, and particularly from someone high up in the gang as well.

  There was a great deal of debate about the effects of the law reforms within the country, with opinion divided. It certainly alleviated the overcrowding problem for a while. The president continued with his reforms, clearing the courts of a lot of the corrupt judges and officials, and training large numbers of new ones to replace them. His programme of prison-building won approval and the construction of an entire new prison estate began that was to replace all the old ones. The regional prisons were born. They were similar in design to prisons in America and extremely modern with a great deal of security. There were separate security zones from supermax secure through high, medium and low. The security was going to be handled by the police with the guards becoming mere custodians. Correa certainly stuck to his word and saw through the projects he had promised and reforms he had proposed. Ecuador slowly but surely began to improve as a country under his leadership; everyone was affected by the changes in one way or another. The rate at which people were leaving the prison began to balance out and the prisons slowly began to fill again; many new faces and a few of the old came back again. It wasn’t long before overcrowding began to be an issue once more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE LAST SUPPER

  SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT in the wing. I had now spent enough time living in Ecuadorian prisons that I had begun to get a sense of when a problem might erupt. The normally buzzing wing was virtually deserted. Doors that would usually be open were shut fast. The only people I could see standing around were members of the Los Cubanos gang. Pairs of them could be seen talking in lowered voices and pointing at various doors. Some were gathered around the entrance gate. They were planning something.

  I went to the shop to buy ingredients for the spaghetti I was cooking. When I returned to my cell a couple of the gang were standing by the concrete bench in front of my room chatting. I jokingly asked them what the deal was: ‘Que pasa?’ In response I received a cold stare and silence. This was unusual as they were normally quite talkative. Now I knew for sure there was a problem.

  My cell was midway down the wing on the right coming from the central passageway that separated the 26 wings down the middle, 13 each side. There were about 125 inmates on the wing at this time. Even though it was run by Los Cubanos the power structure was complicated by the presence of some 30 members of another gang called Los Choneros.

  This infamous gang originated from a small town called Chone, near the port of Manta in the Manabí province, hence the name. They ruthlessly controlled the area and had done for many years. The gang had come into existence after blood feuds between families spiralled out of control, leading to hundreds of murders and disappearances. They were also renowned contract killers. In particular, they worked as ‘cleaners’ for the police, contracted to kill criminals, or for opposing gangs and drug cartels to carry out assassinations. For years, their area of control had been expanding and had rubbed up against other gangs in neighbouring cities impinging on their turf, leading to battles for control of the drug trade, prostitution, arms dealing, robbery, extortion and basically any form of crime.

  The city of Guayaquil in which the penitentiary sits is the largest city in Ecuador, with a bigger population than Quito. It is the country’s principal port and thus also the main exit route for the tons and tons of cocaine heading all over the world by boat and container. These shipments are destined for Central America and countries such as Spain, Holland, Russia and Britain. The drugs are often concealed in shipments of bananas or other tropical fruit, which Ecuador produces in vast quantities. The battle for control of this trade and the exit route is fierce and ruthlessly enforced.

  The city is controlled by several street gangs from different areas and this was also reflected in the prison, with the power roughly split in half. One half was controlled by Los Cubanos and the other by Los Rusos, along with a couple of smaller gangs. Los Cubanos were headed by three brothers, one of whom, the head of the gang, was nicknamed Cubano. The other two brothers were Caiman and Matria. They originated from an area in the south of the city called Guasmo. This is a notorious and extremely dangerous gang-controlled area over which they held sway even from behind the walls of the prison.

  The Rusos (none of them are even vaguely Russian) were headed by two brothers. They also controlled a swathe of the city, an area in the north called Duran. These two gangs were deadly enemies who often clashed over control of turf for the sale of drugs. These clashes would frequently result in deaths, and the daily papers would usually dedicate their first eight or nine pages to the carnage and aftermath.

  Into this volatile mix in the Atenuado Abajo wing landed the 30 Choneros, following their arrests on murder charges. I arrived shortly after them.

  Los Choneros were almost looked upon as guests by Los Cubanos into whose territory they had involuntarily strayed. Los Choneros were not interested in becoming involved in the politics of the prison or the business deals of the two gangs – a sensible decision.

  However, as usual with money or power, trouble was in the post. The tension had been slowly building up between Los Cubanos and Los Choneros over a period of months, caused mainly by the inter-gang killings that had taken place in the streets. Certain members of the different gangs were seeking revenge.

  At this point one of the bosses of Los Cubanos, the man I knew from Quito, whose name was Coyote, was due to be released. Coyote had a great deal of influence in the prison as he was a large-scale international drug trafficker and also came from Guasmo, the same area as the three brothers who headed up Los Cubanos. The brothers ran their half of the penitentiary in conjunction with Coyote’s help, as he was their main supply of cocaine for the prison and most likely a good deal of the other drugs coming in as well. He had decided that it would be a good idea if the power was split between Los Choneros and Los Cubanos.

  Of the three brothers only Caiman remained in the prison in Guayaquil, as Cubano had been transferred to Quito in a bid by the authorities to weaken the gang’s control. Divide and rule. Matria had managed to escape from the penitentiary some years before in a daring plan that saw 16 people flee. They did so using speedboats to travel down the river that passes the prison and then out to sea and away into the night.

  The job of securing the gang’s interests in the penitentiary thus fell to Caiman. He did not like the idea of his fiefdom being split and of perhaps ultimately losing control of the entire place. He set about secretly planning the murders of the heads of Los Choneros in order to eliminate the threat once and for all. Caiman’s principal target was the leader of the gang, whose name was Jorge Luis Zambrano, or JL as everybody called him. He then intended to murder JL’s brother Carlos and a couple of the others who were key members.

  I was very friendly with JL’s brother Carlos, who lived in the cell directly in front of mine. We spent quite a bit of time together talking about all manner of things, from politics to football, just having a laugh in general. He loved to cook so
we would prepare meals between us, him showing me Ecuadorian recipes and me showing him European ones. At the weekends, we would quite often have a few drinks and a party, which was always a welcome break from the stress of being confined in a ticking time bomb. His brother JL was also a great guy (at least with me), though more aloof and somewhat cold and emotionless. When he was arrested at the age of 26 it was reckoned that JL had killed more than 85 people.

  One day I was sitting in my cell talking on the phone to a good friend of mine in England when in walked one of Los Choneros, whose nickname was Tiny. He was of course the size of a silverback gorilla. I explained to my friend that Tiny had just walked in and that he was a member of a gang of contract killers. My friend, who had spent time in prison in England, asked me a couple of questions about the crimes the gang were alleged to have committed. Tiny was all too happy to elaborate on what they had done and confirmed that JL had indeed killed 85 people, an astronomical number, with his own hands. He had also given orders for the killing of many more.

  It was noticeable that Los Choneros were well-educated individuals, generally from good backgrounds. In comparison, Los Cubanos were still basically a street gang and tended to come from poorer backgrounds. They were more thugs and thieves who didn’t have a lot of style. The clash between the two brought new meaning to the phrase ‘class war’.

  For a couple of weeks in the lead-up to 9 October, a group of guys had been gradually moved on to our wing from another wing called C Alto. This was where practically all the drugs coming into the prison would be processed, packaged and distributed. All of these new guys were fiercely loyal members of Los Cubanos, virtually all of them serving sentences of 16 to 25 years with no chance of parole. Most of them had been sentenced for multiple murders, manslaughter and armed robbery. Nearly all of them smoked crack or sniffed cocaine daily, which made them very wired and aggressive. This was seen as a move to re-establish control and influence over the wing – which was now effectively being run by Los Choneros.

  I had been warned that there was quite possibly going to be an attempt to kill JL and several other gang members in one go. I was told to be very careful and remain alert to anything strange, especially as I was living smack bang in the middle of the wing and directly in front of JL’s brother Carlos. Los Choneros had put me in charge of selling all the cocaine on our wing and the wing upstairs. I had the sole licence to deal coke, and worked in conjunction with Los Cubanos, who supplied the cocaine already packaged. This meant I had the backup of Los Choneros but also to some extent Los Cubanos. My friendship with both groups put me in a unique position. On the one hand, I was a foreigner and not viewed as a threat to anyone. I was also generating money that was going into their pockets. So, as I was an income stream, to some extent this meant they would protect me. However, it also placed me in the middle of the conflict. I was aware that I walked a tightrope over the raging rapids of gang warfare.

  We had been having quite a good time of it doing what we wanted and in a fairly relaxed atmosphere under the influence of Los Choneros. They had stopped the extortion, which used to happen a lot while Los Cubanos were in charge. The wing had become generally more ordered and calmer, which made it a lot more bearable. All this was about to change drastically.

  My German friend Dieter and I were drinking a few glasses of home-made wine while we cooked spaghetti Bolognese in my room. I commented to Dieter that it was so quiet, with so many cell doors closed, that it felt strange, but he seemed not to have noticed and shrugged it off.

  By around 9pm he and I were feeling fairly cheery, the Bolognese was simmering away smelling lovely and all seemed well. I popped down to one of my Los Choneros friends Gato’s cell to get a plate as I’d promised him some food. As I approached the room, seven or eight of Los Choneros were clustered by the main entrance, sitting on the benches in front of the shop. There was a new boss on the wing who Caiman had placed in charge, following the release of Olea, supposedly to assist JL. He was a tall, well-built black guy whose nickname was Polilla, which in Spanish means moth. I had also become friendly with him since his arrival on the wing with the other new men. As I approached them and the shop, Polilla, who was sitting in the middle of them all, raised his arm and called out hello, along with a few of the others. All very friendly, but everyone here wore masks.

  I knocked on the door of Gato’s room and he answered as normal, cheery as ever; he was a friendly type, always smiling and joking around. He was just passing the evening with a couple of friends watching TV. He invited me in and went to get a plate from the kitchen. When he came back he showed me a picture of The Last Supper by da Vinci, which he had just had framed and now took pride of place on the wall of the cell. The frame was made of teak carved with a floral design and then waxed and polished to a high shine. I asked if he could introduce me to the person who made it as I wanted to commission one for Margarita. Even though she was evangelical and they weren’t supposed to have images of Christ I knew she would still like it as a gift.

  Ten minutes later I was walking back to Gato with his plate of spaghetti. As I approached I could see Polilla and his group were still sitting by the gate. I knocked on Gato’s door with my back to the gang. Gato opened the door and thanked me for the food and I turned to head back to my cell. As I turned there was an explosion from my right and Gato’s head snapped back. The plate of spaghetti flew into the air, covering the walls, along with Gato’s blood and brain matter as he collapsed backwards into his cell. In a split second my legs were propelling me towards my cell as further shots rang out and the adrenalin surged through me. I hurled myself through the doorway and into the room.

  Dieter was on his feet with a look of shock on his face. He was a veteran of several gun battles and assassinations and went to stick his head out the door to see what was happening. Unbelievable I know, but gunshots were so commonplace that you almost became used to them. I grabbed him back from the doorway and had to reach out in order to pull the door shut, as they all opened outwards, thus exposing myself to gunfire. By now all hell had broken loose. I didn’t even look, I just grabbed the handle of the wooden door and slammed it shut, bolting and locking it from the inside. It was a reasonably thick, solid door and I judged that it would withstand most bullets. Many of the doors on the wing had a space directly above them, which was there so you could install air con. However, I had made sure mine was bricked up and concreted over in order to stop anyone getting into the cell this way, as I had seen it done before. I had witnessed hand grenades and petrol bombs being thrown into cells through the gap as well. You can imagine the effect a hand grenade has on anyone in such a small and confined space. The intention of a petrol bomb was to force you out of the cell so you could be attacked.

  Now that we were locked in the cell I grabbed the largest kitchen knife I had, my Tramontina 12-inch blade, and put my back to the wall to the left-hand side of the door facing into the cell. I figured if anyone broke through the door I would swing the knife back at exactly chest height as they entered and hopefully score a direct hit on the heart. I told Dieter to get behind the low dividing wall that separated the seating area from the kitchen/shower area in case any bullets came through the door and told him to keep an eye on the window, which was very large, so horribly vulnerable to attack. In quite a few cells people had built wooden shutters that they would drop down at night or even in the day in case of attack. Mine were raised at this point because of the heat from the cooking and I didn’t feel like risking moving in order to shut them.

  By now there were dozens of gunshots ringing out, from all different calibres of handgun. We could make out the repercussions of several 9mms, a couple of .38s and one or two .45s that sounded like cannons going off in such a confined space. We could hear the footsteps and cries of people running for their lives up and down the wing. Obviously, no one would open a door in the middle of all this. I pitied the people trapped out in the middle of the gunfire with nowhere to run. There was the occasional cr
ash of the fridges and freezers dotted about the wing hitting the ground as they were turned over to use as barriers. It was terrifying listening to this cacophony of destruction taking place just the other side of two inches of hardwood. Even more terrifying was the fact that we had no firearms in the room at the time with which to defend ourselves.

  After 45 minutes of almost continual gunfire there were signs that the pandemonium was beginning to calm. Then we heard JL shouting from the chapel/kitchen end of the wing.

  ‘You motherfuckers, we’ve got your motherfucking black boss now and we are going to blow his fucking brains out. You’re nothing without your black cunt of a drug-addicted boss.’

  There were two gunshots and we could hear Polilla crying out in pain, begging for his life, saying he had a family and two young kids – both of whom I had met on visits. This went on for a good half an hour with more shouting and screaming between the two factions as they insulted each other and their families.

  I then heard JL’s voice cut through the din: ‘That’s it, this motherfucker is a dead man. You’re nothing without this piece of shit.’ Polilla was crying and begging JL not to kill him, that he was sorry. Two more shots rang out and then silence for a moment. Polilla’s suffering was over. The moth had flown too close to the flame and was burnt.

  ‘Now you see you cocksuckers, your boss is dead. We got your black cunt of a boss and now he’s fucking dead just like the rest of you are going to be. We’re going to kill all your families outside in the street and then you last so you see your families die while you’re locked in here with us,’ JL shouted.

  The gunshots carried on, interspersed by the detonation of the odd hand grenade, which in an enclosed space is indescribably loud and truly terrifying because they are so indiscriminate in the damage they cause. My door started receiving impacts that sounded like bullets hitting it, or possibly the debris that was flying around – or someone trying to get into the room. The walls in the corridor were lined up to halfway with ceramic tiles, many of which I could hear falling off and smashing on the floor as they were hit by bullets.