There were fairly large trees in most of the exercise yards that not only provided shade but also fruit, which you could eat if you were quick enough to get it before someone else. In our yard we had a large avocado tree some 10–12 metres high with lovely dark green leaves that provided a respite from the intense sun. It bore fruit twice a year and people awaited these seasons eagerly. We also had in other exercise yards orange, lemon and lime trees, and even a mango tree and a banana palm. There were various other tropical fruit trees too, which I was not familiar with, but they made the place somewhat more bearable than if it was just barren acres of concrete.
There was a large area of no man’s land between the inner wall that enclosed all the wings in an elongated rectangle and the outer perimeter wall, of perhaps 300–400 metres in width. I thought this would be an ideal space in which to set up gardening plots where the inmates could cultivate vegetables, fruit and even keep a few animals. The growing conditions in Ecuador are amazing, almost perfect, with sun virtually all year round, rain, and fertile volcanic and fluvial soils, particularly in the sierras running down to the coast where I was now imprisoned.
The British ambassador, who lived in Guayaquil, owned a very successful agricultural company supplying the whole country. I knew the company would all too happily provide us with seeds, fertilisers, tools and pesticides to get the project going. It would have provided good work for the inmates, many of whom had agricultural backgrounds and were extremely knowledgeable. Furthermore, it would have meant we were producing a large percentage of the food needed by the prison, thus saving the government money and providing us with a much better diet. I spoke to Isabel, the honorary vice consul from the embassy, and she said they would certainly back me if I could get permission from the governor of the prison. I wrote up a project plan and summary and submitted it along with the signatures of well over 200 inmates in favour of the project, with a covering letter from Isabel voicing her support. That was the last I heard of it. I tried to follow up the proposal but just kept receiving the same answer: ‘Wait, we are busy and will answer you soon.’ This country ran on the motto ‘relax, don’t rush, we’ll do it tomorrow’. Mañana, mañana, mañana. I used to find it so frustrating being told ‘tomorrow’ all the time. It appeared to us that the prison service was not really interested in the rehabilitation of inmates. We all found it very demoralising and somewhat depressing.
The fact that there weren’t any courses, education or work exacerbated the problems within the prison tenfold as it meant the inmates had nothing to do other than occupy themselves doing what they knew best: crime and drug-taking. Due to having no other distractions, a lot of people easily fell in with the gangs as it provided them with work, excitement, an income, protection, the possibility to provide for their families and a host of other benefits. What would you do to survive? The prison system was in a mess and failing horrendously.
Now that Santiago had been transferred and the Three Blind Mice were in charge, I knew my days on the wing were numbered. I had to get out before they concocted some way of causing me trouble. I explained to my English friend Simon, who lived upstairs on Atenuado Alto wing, what was going on and asked him to speak to the boss of his wing about the possibility of my moving up and buying a cell there. I knew I would have to forfeit my cell down in Abajo wing but I was past caring. The final straw had come when they tried to extort money out of me.
I was sitting in my cell on a visit day with the door open when an attractive girl whom I vaguely knew came to the door and started talking to me. I was instantly suspicious as the gang regularly used girls as entrapment. She asked to come in and talk to me. We chatted for a while, various friends of mine called by and she left.
Shortly after all the visitors had gone, a group from the gang came to my cell and started trying to say I had kissed and touched the girl and even suggested I had slept with her. I instantly knew they were trying to extort me. Luckily I had seen it coming and had kept the door open and made sure that numerous people had seen we were not doing anything – we didn’t even sit next to each other. The gang were insistent and it started to get heated, at which point I said I would involve the boss of the gang – Caiman at the time – whom I knew. This sent them into a panic and they wouldn’t let me go near the gate to send a message. They started to back off a bit, knowing I could create serious problems for them. In the end, however, I had to call my family to send over some money just to put a stop to the situation, which was causing me a lot of stress. Thank goodness I was already set to transfer up to Atenuado Alto. The Three Blind Mice were powerless to do anything to stop the move as I had spoken to and paid the right people.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHANGING PLACES
MID SEPTEMBER 2009. I bought the new cell upstairs in Atenuado Alto with the utmost caution as I didn’t want the Three Blind Mice creating more problems for me.
I had spoken directly to the boss of the wing, who was nicknamed Media Vaca or ‘Half Cow’ because of his size and large head. He was quite friendly and all too happy to sell me a cell for $2,000. The cells on this wing were the best in the prison, like small penthouse suites with an en suite shower room with toilet, a kitchen and a cloakroom where you could hang your clothes and keep your bags, shoes and other belongings. Over a period of a week I had been slowly passing my smaller belongings upstairs to Simon for safe keeping. The larger things, such as the TV, air-conditioning unit and the mattress, I had to leave until last. I also didn’t want the gang noticing that the room was emptying.
When the day of the move arrived, Media Vaca organised a couple of guys, as well as himself and Simon, to come down and help me move, but also to give a little support in case there was any trouble. I had to pay the jefe de guia to switch me over on the list and also to be present on the day. For this ‘favour’ I paid him $250. They all arrived outside my cell along with a few of my friends from downstairs. They had brought a trolley. I had arranged my belongings by the door ready to go, so we loaded them on quickly and I disappeared, much to the chagrin of the Worm, who arrived just as I was leaving, looking most upset indeed!
As we set off, the jefe de guia asked me who I was, and where exactly I had come from and when. It transpired that I was not listed on a single roll call of any wing or anywhere in the prison at all. The jefe de guia said he had no record of me in the prison – not photos, fingerprints, prison history, absolutely nada. With a sick feeling I realised that, had I known, I could in theory have just walked out of the place on a visit day. If I’d been challenged I could have said, ‘Well show me my prison record, sentence and offence,’ which of course they wouldn’t have been able to do. It would have been worth a go. But it was too late. The jefe de guia said that at a future date he would have me brought over to the offices in order to be photographed and to sort out my file. I had been in this prison for two years they hadn’t even known I was there. The place was so far out of control and in such disarray it was incredible.
I was warmly welcomed on to the new wing by several of the other foreigners with whom I was already acquainted. I immediately felt much more at home and far more relaxed. It was really great having Simon just a couple of doors down from me and various other English-speaking foreigners, with whom I was already friendly, nearby in other cells.
I would cook most evenings with groceries that Margarita brought in for me. Several of my friends would do the same so we often swapped food with each other, giving us plenty of variety. I would wander around visiting various people, having a chat for a bit, then moving on. I felt so much more at home on this wing and that omnipresent threat of the gang was far less up here.
However, good times never last long. The gang would sometimes come up in the day, ten or 20 of them, to check things were running smoothly or to mete out punishment to someone who had done something to upset them. The tension started to build after a while. There was a little group who had moved over from an area of the prison known as ‘the Kitchen’ afte
r the three people were killed there. They wanted to take over the wing, or certainly the sale of drugs and alcohol.
One of the key players from the Kitchen was a guy nicknamed Power. He was kind of Indian-looking with long dark hair, and quite unfriendly. He sold cocaine, Polvo and weed at lower prices and better quality than the gangs so naturally a lot of people began buying from him. Los Cubanos did not like this. They couldn’t let this guy just do as he pleased on their turf. Power was defiant and took no heed of the stern warnings from the gang downstairs. There was talk of a gun battle coming, or even an assassination. People started to become wary of strangers on the wing or rooftop. There were open spaces near the ceiling that let in air and light, but could also be used by the gang to mount an attack on the wing by either firing guns through there or dropping hand grenades. The tension on the wing was tangible now as everyone knew an attack was imminent. No one would go near Power for fear of being caught in the crossfire.
The day the attack happened I was outside in the exercise yard, getting a bit of sun and fresh air, doing circuits of the yard. Power was also out there doing much the same. I was behind him and as he reached the steps that led up to the wing entrance I saw some movement on the roof. By now Power was roughly halfway up the stairs to the wing and I had carried on around the yard. Shots rang out at close proximity and I saw Power running with his hands over his head up the rest of the steps and another man who was behind him collapse on the steps. I felt something hit me in the back as I ducked. The shooter on the roof was lying stomach down, with his arm extended out over the steps, holding the gun and firing blindly without even looking where he was shooting.
I felt something warm on my back and thought, surely not, I can’t have been shot as well. I gingerly ran my hand up under my T-shirt and felt blood. I followed up to around my shoulder blade, where I found the injury. It wasn’t a bullet, but something had definitely hit me. Fuck! I waited until I was sure there was no more shooting, then went to the steps leading up to the wing. Here I encountered the man who had been behind Power. He was slumped on the ground with a pool of blood around him and, as far as I could see, gunshot wounds to the chest and arm. He was still breathing but had lost consciousness. I went on up the steps and found Power lying just inside the wing, with gunshot wounds to the arms, one in the stomach and another by his ribcage. He was still breathing but he too was unconscious. People were cautiously emerging from their cells now, to see the aftermath of the shooting, and some came to help. Someone had summoned the guards and police.
I said I thought I had been hit too and stripped my T-shirt off. A couple of people had a look at my back and confirmed it looked as if I might have been hit by a bullet fragment where one had ricocheted off the wall. A friend cleaned away the blood and pressed into the wound, which hurt a bit but not too much. He said there was something in there we would have to get out. I didn’t want to go to hospital so had decided to get Carlos, a friend with some medical training, to remove the fragment for me. I told someone to get a pair of tweezers and some alcohol, not only for the wound but to drink, and three or four bags of cocaine to numb myself up a bit. After I’d drunk a good amount of whisky and sniffed several bags of coke my friend sterilised the wound with medical alcohol, which hurt more than the actual impact. I braced myself and he began fishing around in the wound trying to locate the bullet fragment. It didn’t take long before I felt him slowly pull the fragment out and sterilise the wound once again.
Power was taken to hospital and then transferred to another wing. The second guy to be shot behind him had a miraculous escape. One of the bullet wounds to his chest had missed his heart by a matter of millimetres and passed out of his back without damaging any organs. The second bullet had lodged in his forearm. He was back on the wing the same evening, bandaged up. I couldn’t believe it. His family took the prison authorities to court and in exchange for their silence he was quietly released a few months later, so it proved to be a blessing in disguise, even if a rather painful one!
After this event, virtually all the dealing stopped on the wing other than that authorised by Los Cubanos. I was in charge of selling the home-made alcohol distilled in the prison using sugar cane, yeast and rice. They called this chambar or huanchaca. I would buy ten or 20 gallons, which I would then decant into half-litre water bottles and conceal in the large hiding place I had in the closet. The previous owner of the cell had fitted a false ceiling in there and to access the space you swivelled the light fitting. You could fit some eighty bottles of whisky into this space, which was so large you could also hide drugs, phones and chargers, guns and other weapons. It was incredibly useful and had survived various thorough cell searches by the police.
It was really good being able to have my own phone once again and I kept it switched on 24 hours a day. The only place I could locate a signal in the cell was within the closet against the wall, where there must have been a reinforcing rod running through it that acted as an antenna. One morning at about 6.30, I was standing on a stool in the closet talking to my sister in Scotland when I heard a rumbling sound similar to that made by a plane flying low overhead or an approaching train. I knew what was coming and I asked my sister if she could hear the noise as the first shock waves passed through the building, nearly knocking me off my stool. It was a huge earthquake, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale.
Earthquakes are a frequent occurrence in Ecuador, as it has numerous fault lines running through the country where tectonic plates are colliding and being forced upwards, creating its mountain ranges. There would normally be a couple of small tremors every month, measuring around 4.0 on the Richter scale. If these didn’t occur, you knew that pressure was building up somewhere below your feet and would be released suddenly when the plates finally slipped with a huge jolt.
The strongest one I experienced was at 9.30 one evening when we were all locked in our wings with no way of getting out of the building. The guards were all outside the prison in their office, where they tended to pass the nights. As the first shock waves hit, travelling across the cell from right to left, my chair was rising and falling by a considerable amount. It felt like a fairground ride! All the lights went out and people came pouring out of their cells in a panic and shouting at the gate for the guards to get us out of here. Of course no one came. The guards weren’t about to risk their lives for us. The power remained off for about two hours. We liked to imagine that there’d be a strong enough earthquake one day to split the prison in two, destroying the watchtowers and exterior walls, enabling everyone to escape into the night. I had heard of one instance in Peru where a town was destroyed by a strong earthquake. The prison literally split wide open and some 900 inmates managed to escape. Many, however, were also killed when the prison collapsed, and the majority of the escapees were soon recaptured.
Over a period of six months to a year quite a few corrupt police officers, military, politicians and one regional governor were allocated to our wing as it was viewed as a lot safer for them up here. I didn’t like the fact that I was now on a wing with a whole bunch of ex-police and military. In British prisons, ex-police officers, corrupt or not, had to be placed on the protection wing as they weren’t tolerated on ordinary wings. Their mentality and way of thinking is inherently different to that of most inmates. They tend to be of the general opinion that they have not committed any sort of criminal offence and still view the inmates around them as criminals to be looked down upon. It is of course complete hypocrisy for one criminal to look down on another because his brain is hard-wired to think like a policeman.
The ex-police and military combined on our wing numbered over 40. They started grouping together, dividing the wing, trying to take over and make our wing independent from the rest of the prison. The first steps they took were to inform on anyone they disliked, even fabricating lies in order to get them transferred either to other wings or out of the prison altogether. Anyone they suspected of having strong links to the gang they really targeted. Th
e next step was trying to ban anyone from selling drugs that originated from the gang downstairs. I thought this was suicide considering what had happened to Power. They even went so far as trying to enforce an exercise regime and make everyone, including the foreigners, stand in the exercise yard while they raised the Ecuadorian flag, and sing the national anthem. This was a step too far. I point blank refused to sing the national anthem of Ecuador and also to salute their flag. This was becoming more of a dictatorship than a democracy. It was as if we were demonstrating the politics of Ecuador in a microcosm. A lot of people started to take umbrage at the behaviour of this merry band of men.
My patience completely snapped when a particular ex-policeman arrived on the wing from a horrendous case known as ‘el caso Fybeca’ only to be greeted by his fellow ex-policemen as a hero. The man in question was a captain of police who had been linked to the murders of eight innocent bystanders in the case of a robbery at a pharmacy and the disappearance of three others. The police had opened fire indiscriminately, killing several members of the public. He was also found guilty of carrying out contract killings and robberies. The part that really got me was the repeated rape of his 12-year-old daughter and a couple of other girls of similar age. He immediately started trying to lay down the law about how the wing should be run and to cause all manner of problems. At the count one morning, I overheard him talking to some of the other ex-police, bragging about the things he had done, and I lost my temper. I squared up to him and quietly told him, while staring him straight in the eye, that if he didn’t shut the fuck up and stop causing problems I would kill him. A few of the others with him started to get involved and I said they would all get dealt with if they wanted a piece of me. I was livid.
El Infierno Page 18