El Infierno

by Pieter Tritton

  The police had begun by transferring the wings further inside the prison. Our wing would have been the last, but they had run out of time and manpower so decided to put us all back in the wing until they had the resources to make the change. This was expected to take place in the early hours of the next morning. We were to have one final evening in Atenuado Alto and then it was to be a fresh beginning. Along with virtually all the rest of the inmates from the Peni, some 5,000 people, we would be the first inmates, all guinea pigs, to be initiated into Rafael Correa’s new penal system as part of his socialist experiment.

  There was now very little food on the wing as most of it had already been either consumed, stolen or destroyed in the chaos. Marco managed to get hold of some platefuls of food, which the authorities had brought in at 7pm, so we tidied the place up a little, enough at least to be able to sit down and eat. While I ate my friends filled me in. The guards, it seemed, were having a field day and taking full advantage of the situation to grab as much as possible. The hardest-hit financially were the shopkeepers. Having had no warning that this was about to occur, they had been unable to take countermeasures. The shopkeepers had nearly all just restocked their stores with thousands of dollars’ worth of provisions. This had only been possible after much negotiation with the new director and substantial bribes being handed over. The authorities had really clamped down on anything coming into the prison in the run-up to the transfer, and many of the shops and restaurants had been forced to close because they were unable to acquire the necessary stock. To us it seemed like more than a coincidence that all these goods had been allowed in by the director himself, just a day or two before the planned transfer. He had profited hugely from the bribes and now had all the goods as well.

  The guards had come up with a scheme to make money. They offered to deliver goods or money to people with families on the outside, for a hefty fee. A couple of the main store owners had been seen handing over large rolls of dollar bills to certain guards who promised to take money to their families. One even handed over some twelve thousand dollars. I was very sceptical that the money would ever reach its destination. A few of the dealers had sent money, drugs and phones out with guards. These were more likely to reach the right people as the dealers were gang members and the guards knew all too well the consequences for them if things should go missing for no matter what reason. They were certainly being paid well, that’s for sure. A few of the guards had made multiple trips in and out of the prison that day, transporting goods. It really was a gold rush for them. For some of the guards this was to be their last chance at making quick money; they had not been contracted to work at the new prison, because they were known to be corrupt and not to be trusted.

  As I sat at the table, I was keeping a watchful eye on things happening outside my door on the wing. Order had completely broken down. I saw a few people pass my door carrying knives and machetes quite openly. I had heard that people were settling scores while they still had the chance and trying to collect debts. This had resulted in a few people being quite badly beaten but as yet no one had been killed, at least on our wing. A few people had been robbed and it was getting dangerous even to go outside the cell. I told one of my friends to close and lock the door and not open it unless we were absolutely sure who it was and what they wanted, as I would definitely be a target for an attempted robbery. We all made sure we had weapons within reach: knives, bats, bars, whatever was available.

  First of all though, we decided to go out and have a look around and see what was happening, so four of us left together, with our weapons. One friend stayed behind to keep the cell locked from inside until we returned. We opened the door on to a scene of chaos, mayhem and debauchery. It was like something out of Dante’s ‘Inferno’. People were consuming anything and everything that was left over. One of the main cocaine dealers was sitting outside his cell, giving coke away by the handful from a bag that had contained two kilos. People were cutting up lines of coke and smoking crack all over the place. The sweet smell of potent skunk hung thickly in the air. Bottles that had held alcohol littered the floor. It was madness. I felt as though I was watching what might happen if all society’s controls and normalities were suddenly removed.

  A few people asked if I had anything left I wanted to sell or give away. I had been producing home-made wine from the local fruit, which sold quite well once it had been left to stand for a good month. My good Russian friend would distil some of it into a really vicious spirit, but I had the best part of a 25-litre canister left, so I decided to give it away as my contribution to the end-of-the-world party.

  Diego particularly liked to have a drink and immediately got stuck into Chateau Tritton. It wasn’t long before he was well gone and started becoming aggressive. He was dead set on tracking down some guys who had roughed him up and stabbing them. He was brandishing a three-inch pocket knife, reeling around the room saying how he was going to cut their throats. We couldn’t help but laugh, considering most of the guys he wanted to attack were currently wandering round the wing with two-foot-long machetes and 12-inch kitchen knives, and possibly guns. We calmed Diego down and gave him some more home brew on the condition that he relax and not leave the cell.

  At around four o’clock in the morning the police arrived to discover virtually everyone either drunk or high and in a jubilant mood. We were again called out one at a time, searched and each assigned a police officer who was to escort us all the way to the new prison. I was taken to the very front of the queue because I was ill and was on the first bus out of the prison, leaving behind all my belongings. I was not allowed to take the letters and photos my mother had sent me over the years. As well as these I lost all the other photos I had in the prison, case papers and letters. I will never be able to replace those letters from my mother who I never saw alive again. That broke my heart and still hurts to this day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A NEW BEGINNING

  THE BUSES DIDN’T even go outside the perimeter wall of the old prison. The new regional one had been constructed right next door, so we weren’t going far. They had punched a hole through the perimeter wall and built a temporary road so that the buses didn’t have to leave the prison compound. Each bus was escorted front and back by patrol vehicles with armed police inside. There was also a helicopter circling overhead just in case someone should try to mount an escape attempt; there had been many recently in the old prison – even one in the early hours of that very morning.

  After a four-minute ride we were taken off the buses and led into what was to be the visitors’ waiting room with its banks of chairs. The director, formerly of the old prison and now the director of the new regional prison, was there, overseeing the transfer and making sure things went smoothly. The police officer I was handcuffed to approached him and explained my situation: that I was sick with TB and possibly shouldn’t have been transferred there at all but rather to the clinic in the old prison, where they had nearly all the cases of TB in one area together.

  I was hoping and praying that the director would agree and that I would narrowly escape this transfer. At first he said ‘No, no, this man can’t come in here,’ but then he reviewed my clinical history and decided that as I was no longer considered contagious I could come in but would be held on a super-high-security isolation wing. Que genial! Just what I needed. I had served over eight years now, but I felt as though I was working backwards through the system, with the level of security in which I was being held gradually increasing, from the relatively relaxed Garcia Moreno prison in Quito, to the extremely dangerous and to some extent more secure Penitentiary Litoral de Guayaquil, and now this. A supermax high-security wing in a high-security prison was like being a double A category prisoner in England.

  I tried to reason with the director, who remembered me from previous meetings with the British embassy, which had been held in his office. He was a former detective who had been in the police force in New York and spoke perfect English. He was a strai
ght down the line kind of guy. Reasonable, but wouldn’t take any shit, as opposed to the last director there, who was completely the opposite.

  Various civilian workers were issuing the ‘uniforms’ we had to wear from now on. Gone were the days of gang members wandering around the prison in designer clothes, sportswear and expensive trainers. The uniform consisted of one T-shirt in the colour of your security status – yellow for low, orange for medium, brown and red for high security, and white for supermax high security – a pair of black shorts, one pair of boxer shorts and a pair of flip-flops. We were also given a bed pack, which contained two sheets and one pillowcase, along with a wash kit with shampoo, soap, toothpaste and toothbrush, flannel, towel and deodorant, but no razors. We were told to place all our clothes and shoes in a black bin liner that was to be marked with our name and wing. I looked around the room and saw a great pile of these bin liners from inmates who had already passed through here and I just knew we would never see these items again.

  I had brought with me a leather wash bag, which contained a load of my medication for TB, including dexamethasone and syringes with which to administer it in an emergency. The woman who was dealing with me explained that I couldn’t take anything into the prison, medication included. I was petrified by this, because when I suffered an attack and couldn’t breathe, the dexamethasone was the only thing that kept me alive and now I wouldn’t have it. The woman said she would pass my medication to the healthcare centre so they could decide if I could keep it or not.

  I proceeded to get changed into the new uniform but kept my own boxers on and also my own Adidas flip-flops. My legs and feet were still swollen so I claimed that the ones they had issued didn’t fit and would mean I was unable to walk. Once I was dressed in my new outfit, the policeman escorted me uncuffed past the long queue of inmates waiting to go through the security procedures. These included strip-searches, a metal detector, scanner and a hot seat to make sure we didn’t have anything hidden away internally. All of the security was under the control of the police as the guards were no longer trusted and were only in charge of the wings and locking people up. Everyone entering the prison, including the guards, visitors and embassy staff, would have to undergo these strict security checks before being allowed entry.

  I passed through the checks without problem. The police officers in charge of the strip-searches looked thoroughly fed up with the job. From here we proceeded into the prison itself. It almost felt like I had been transported to another country, the difference was so great between here and the squalor of the Peni. The director had instructed my police guard to take me to the supermax high-security wing. To gain entry to the wing we had to pass through yet another security control, again manned by the police. This time it was a metal detector and pat-down. We also had to fill out a movements log with my name and that of the escorting officer.

  There were cameras everywhere – one at each end of the landing, one on the main gate and a central one above the exercise yard. The wing was L-shaped, with four floors including the ground level. The cells on this wing were designed for two or three people but were all occupied by just one person at the moment.

  The policeman left me with one of the guards and explained that I was sick with TB, at which I could see the guard baulked a little. I was instructed to take a mattress and pillow from the pile that was sitting in the middle of the exercise yard, covered in dust. I did and he showed me to the last cell on the ground floor, in one of the corners. The gates on the entrances to the cells were barred with just an iron mesh over the top, but were otherwise open, unlike the solid doors we had in the Peni.

  The guard slid the gate back to let me enter and then shut and locked it behind me. That was an unfamiliar experience as I hadn’t been actually locked in a cell by a guard since Quito, nearly six years previously. The cell was thick with cement dust from the building work, which was probably the worst place for me to be with a breathing complaint. There were two concrete bunks on the left of the cell and to the rear a metal toilet and sink, and also a shower, which was welcome. There were two thin, vertical slit windows, like archers’ slots in a castle, overlooking a central area between wings that was destined to become grassy football pitches and volleyball courts.

  Dawn was approaching now and it quickly became light. I started to hear a little bit of movement from other cells and wondered who else was going to be on the wing. Seeing as it was supermax they were going to be fairly serious players, whoever they were. At around 8am I saw the servery staff from the kitchens wheeling in the breakfast on a large trolley. Shortly afterwards they went from cell to cell handing it out: some bread, a hot drink of some description and a banana. They gave me a bag with extra bread in it for later in the day.

  The cell remained locked and I wondered what the regime would be like here. How many hours would we get outside the cell each day? I guessed that as the prison was new and in a state of chaos, and with movement from all the transfers, we would probably be staying locked up most of the time. This didn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm for my new home.

  After a short while I heard some guys in the next cell – they were talking in English with an American accent. I called out to them and we had a quick chat. They had been placed in here as they’d been involved with the gang in the old prison and had been in control of a couple of wings. I recognised their names and even knew one of them vaguely. They were very friendly with some American friends of mine and Carlos, my friend from the Dominican Republic. They in turn had heard of me, so we were off to a great start. I felt instantly better. It is always a little unsettling coming on to a new wing as you don’t know what the politics are and the general status quo. It can be a delicate matter where gangs are involved as you may end up in hostile territory unknowingly.

  At around ten o’clock a guard started walking around opening cell doors to allow people into the small exercise yard. When he reached my door, however, he left it shut and walked off. This puzzled me so I called after him, but he didn’t return. There were about 15 people on the wing at the time and most were either walking around the yard or washing clothes and utensils in basins.

  One of the first to come and greet me was the ex-captain of police who I knew from Atenuado Alto and had fallen out with. He was a serious player who had been caught trying to load nearly a ton of cocaine on to a light aircraft belonging to the infamous Sinaloa cartel, the head of which at the time was Chapo Guzman. I couldn’t believe it. One of the guys with whom I had had the most problems of late and here he was.

  Shortly afterward, to my amazement, across the exercise yard strolled none other than the very head of Los Cubanos, Cubano himself. What the fuck! This guy was always kept in the most secure of locations. My head was reeling. Why the hell had I ended up in here?

  The next person to greet me was Pedro, who had been one of the gang members of the Three Blind Mice. It was because of him that I had ended up moving wings to Atenuado Alto.

  Not long after my run-in with the gang, Pedro had ended up in trouble with them and had turned informant in exchange for protection, by way of a transfer to the prison in his home region further up the coast. Then one night the police raided the prison and conducted a search of virtually all the wings. They brought someone in who was disguised with a balaclava over his face. We were watching from upstairs through the open area in the middle of the wing and instantly recognised his voice when he started pointing out all the cells in which the gang had drugs and weapons hidden in secret stashes. We couldn’t believe it and started shouting insults at him until the police downstairs threatened to come up and beat us all.

  Here this same man was, standing at my door, greeting me, being nice as pie, though looking rather nervous, I thought. I had to hold back my rage. I couldn’t believe that I was now locked on a wing with the three people who over the years directly or indirectly had caused me the most problems. It was a cosmic joke. If I hadn’t known that some of the others who had also given me grief were
definitely dead, I would have expected them to appear as well and we could all have had a jolly get-together. I was almost glad my cell door was still locked, as it would give me a moment to collect my thoughts and work out how I was going to deal with this situation.

  The guard eventually opened my cell door so that I could come out for a while and get some air. I spent the next hour or so talking to George and Wilson, the two Americans. I was keen to find out if anyone had a mobile phone in the prison yet. The answer was yes, but the guards were asking around $2,000 to bring in a BlackBerry, which was astronomical compared to what it had cost in the previous prison. There you could pay a guard $20–$30 and have whatever phone you wanted brought in. Obviously, you had to buy the phone as well. George told me quietly that he was actually waiting for a phone to be delivered any day now. He had already organised the money to be sent to a guard outside from one of his family in the States. The guard was then going to smuggle the phone in somehow; not the easiest of things to do, as he would be subject to searches by the police, including metal detectors.

  However, to charge the phones we would have to give them to the guards as there were no power points in our cells. There also was only one light, which was positioned above the windows at the rear of the cell, and would come on automatically at 6pm and turn off at 10pm. There were no TVs, DVDs, nothing. We weren’t allowed pens or paper in our cells and no newspapers or magazines were allowed into the prison. No letters or notes could be received or sent. There were no telephones to use to call our families. We weren’t allowed razors or scissors so there was no way to shave or cut hair. Not even books were permitted. Basically we weren’t allowed anything at all in our cells. There was no exception to this. I have never been in a prison with such tight security. We were being held in effect incommunicado, which no doubt broke all sorts of human rights laws.