by Rusty Young
I was travelling so fast that I almost fell over in my efforts to avoid the blade. I lost my footing and slipped. Slowly, they advanced on me. I scrambled to my feet. There were seven of them now and I didn’t know which way to turn. One of them smiled and said, ‘Gringo.’
‘Ricardo! Ricardo!’ I yelled. But Ricardo was miles off and wouldn’t have heard me. Even if he had, what could he have done against seven men? I was completely on my own. I had to make a decision. Up or down? There was no way I could fight them all at once.
I decided to go upwards. However, it was impossible. I was fighting uphill in a narrow stairwell against four men. As soon as I got close enough, one of them kicked me hard in the mouth. I felt my tooth go loose and the taste of blood in my mouth. They came down another step. I turned to the three below me but there was that knife again. The man held it in front of him as he advanced one more step. I turned back to the group above me and charged at them again, this time covering my face.
I didn’t get very far. I managed to ram the first man out of the way but the others leapt on me immediately and pushed me to the ground. Ignoring their blows, I did all I could, using my hands as well as my feet to scramble up the steps. However, it was no use. Within a few seconds, they had me pinned. The man who had kicked me grabbed me by the throat. Two of them struck me repeatedly in the face. The one with the knife was still coming up the stairs. I struggled but I could feel myself passing out. Then a strange thing happened.
Someone hissed, ‘Niña’ and suddenly the two men hitting me stopped.
‘¡Niña!’ hissed another man, louder than the first. The others loosened their grips and I struggled free. I got to my feet and turned to the group below me. The man with the knife held it in front of my face, blocking my way, but the others hissed at him angrily, ‘Niña.’ Grudgingly, he put the knife behind his back. His companions dropped their hands to their sides and I was able to slip past them, down the stairs. They didn’t even attempt to prevent me and fortunately, they hadn’t managed to find the sixty bolivianos that Mr Harris had given me. I didn’t know what had happened, but I couldn’t believe my luck.
When I got to the base of the stairwell, I looked back up. The seven men were standing to one side and a small child, about five or six years old, was trotting down the stairs on her own, completely unaware of what had been occurring moments before.
Niña. Little girl.
I didn’t want to tell Ricardo about what had happened this time in case he thought I was asking him to solve my problems for me or that having me stay in his room might be too dangerous. When he asked about the interview with the embassy, I handed him thirty bolivianos to help pay for the food I’d eaten, and told him I would definitely receive more money soon to pay him for the accommodation. I used twenty-five to pay el Ingreso and kept the remaining five for myself. Ricardo agreed to let me stay with him a little longer, but I could tell that he wanted me out of his living space as soon as possible because he started encouraging me to look around for a room.
However, he also warned me it could take some time to find the right one. ‘You can’t go out and buy a room just like that. You’ve got to do your homework first. Research the market, my friend. Buyer beware.’
The next day, he gave me a rundown on all the sections and afterwards insisted on taking me around the prison so that I could see them for myself. I didn’t want to go. I already knew where I wanted to stay: as close to Ricardo as possible. And although I couldn’t tell him the reason, I was very scared of going out into the main prison, especially down to the inside sections where the gang was from.
‘You should come, Thomas,’ Ricardo said. ‘You need to meet the people. Don’t worry. Guillermo and Pedro will be with us. It’s daytime. You’ll be safe. Just remember you are inglés.’
‘No soy americano.’ I parroted the expression he had taught me. He laughed.
‘That’s the spirit. We’ll have to work on your pronunciation, though.’
‘Soy de Inglaterra,’ I put on my jacket and a brave face, ready to go out.
‘Exactly! Come on! It’ll be fun.’
When I thought of those four men I had seen on my first day smoking pipes in the abandoned building, laughing and screaming at me crazily, and the gang that had attacked me, ‘fun’ wasn’t the word that came to mind.
Each of the eight sections in San Pedro had a star rating, like hotels do. The best and most expensive section in the whole prison was the five-and-a-half-star section of Posta. This was where all the politicians and wealthier drug dealers stayed. Ricardo didn’t take me there that day because it had a separate entrance gate and you had to get permission to leave the main prison, go outside into the street and around the corner to get in. He said I couldn’t afford it, anyway.
‘Beyond your budget, I’m afraid.’
The cells in Posta weren’t cells at all – they were more like small hotel rooms. They had carpet, furniture, television, hi-fi equipment, proper glass windows and private bathrooms. And because the inmates there had money, they could afford to decorate and make improvements to their rooms, which increased their value even more. Ricardo had heard of one room there changing hands for fifteen thousand dollars.
‘The politicians in there live better than most people in the country on the outside,’ he told me. I thought he was exaggerating until months later when I saw the place myself.
The Posta inmates weren’t only physically separated from the main prison population, they had a completely separate lifestyle. Most of them used their cellular phones openly and brought alcohol through the gates without any questions being asked. Many of them could pay to leave the prison during the day under police escort, and others were released before completing their sentences. Everything was run by money, and everyone involved kept very quiet. The guards in charge of Posta certainly wouldn’t have said anything – they were receiving good monthly bribes in return for allowing the inmates to do virtually anything they liked. And since the section had a separate entrance and was located right next to the administration block, it was easier for the inmates to continue receiving their privileges without anyone complaining, or even knowing what went on in there.
The other sections in the main prison weren’t quite as luxurious as Posta. Standing at the main gate looking across the courtyard, you could see the three passages that I had seen on my first night. On the wall to the right, just below the Coca-Cola sign, was the doorway to Pinos. On the far side, to the right of the church, was the entrance to Alamos; and to the left of the church was the dirty passageway that led to the inside sections.
The best section in the main prison was the five-star section Los Pinos – ‘The Pines’ – where Ricardo lived. It had a spacious courtyard and the rooms were on two levels, with a set of stairs leading up to the second-storey wooden balcony. There were also a few rooms, like Ricardo’s, which sat on top of the second storey and were accessed by ladders or stairs. Parts of the construction were getting old and falling apart, but because there was money available in the administration fund, they painted over the cracks and made everything look nice.
Although the rooms weren’t in the same league as those in Posta, they were still quite comfortable. Everyone had their own television and cooking facilities, although only a few rooms had private toilets. The majority of the members shared the common bathroom, which was kept clean throughout the day, although it smelled horrible.
For me, the most attractive part of the section was the garden in the centre of the courtyard. The big old pine tree gave the place a naturally peaceful atmosphere. Around the edge of the courtyard were various stands and restaurants that opened at lunchtime. Eating a nice meal outside on a clear, sunny day, you could be forgiven for forgetting you were actually in prison. Everything was tranquilo, as the Bolivians would say.
Alamos, with a four-star rating, was the next-best section. It had three storeys and was also quite safe, with a quiet, family atmosphere similar to that of the neighbouri
ng Pinos. It wasn’t quite as nice as Pinos – it didn’t have a garden, only a concrete courtyard, and was badly in need of a paint job – but it was close. Nothing much happened in there either, everything was tranquilo most of the time, except when the children came back from school and started running around playing games. The section owned benches and chairs that were put out during the day, and you could usually find inmates playing chess and games of cards or just leaning against the wall, smoking cigarettes. The common areas, such as the bathrooms and dishwashing area, were hosed down and scrubbed each morning and sometimes also in the evening.
Generally speaking, the inmates in Alamos and Pinos weren’t rich, but they had enough money to get by. Most could afford a reasonable lifestyle, and although everyone complained a lot, no one was dying of hunger. Many of the inmates were private people who spent a lot of time indoors. They were simply waiting for their lawyers to hurry up and get them out; in the meantime they wanted to stay out of trouble and make their stay as easy as possible. These were mainly prisoners from the Bolivian middle class; many of them had been educated and, on the whole, they were a lot more civilised than in the other sections. There was less violence and no one smoked base. Not openly, anyway. The members could kick you out for that. They did sniff cocaine, of course, although everyone was secretive about it, especially in Pinos, where no one talked about it, except with very close friends. The section had to maintain its respectability.
Both these sections were safe at night because they locked the gates after 9 pm, preventing inmates from other sections from entering. During the day, the inmates were extremely friendly. You had to say something by way of greeting whenever you passed someone, no matter how many times you had already seen them that day. At first I found this pointless and annoying, but I soon saw that it made a difference to the way people treated each other. There was more respect between the inmates in these sections, and a sense of community – of living and sharing together.
The inside sections were where I had slept on my first night. Eventually, I was brave enough to go back there on my own, but at first I was too scared, plagued by memories of that horrible abandoned building and the haunting laughter of those four men. I didn’t want to go down there at all, even though Guillermo and Pedro, Ricardo’s tough-looking friends who had been with him in the courtyard on my first day, would be accompanying us. However, Ricardo made me go. I was lucky to have my companions, because everyone stared and hissed and several of them yelled out ‘¡Gringo!’. Guillermo was from those sections, so he was very relaxed, but I felt as if I was about to be attacked at any moment.
The difference in quality between the inside sections and Posta, Pinos and Alamos was incredible. You noticed the lack of money as soon as you entered the passageway that led down from the courtyard; it was dark and narrow and the white paint was discoloured and peeling. Further inside, everything was dirty and grimy. In fact, the whole place was falling apart and looked like no one there cared how they lived.
The cheapest of the five inside sections – Guanay, San Martín, Cancha, Prefectura and Palmar – had no star rating. Although each was officially separate, they were joined by a maze of tunnels, stairwells and damp passageways, making it difficult to tell where one section ended and the next began. It was easy to get lost because all the corridors were dark, with smashed bulbs that were never replaced.
We came out of one of these narrow passageways into the bright sunlight of a wide, open area where the air was fresh and people were sitting around relaxing. It looked like some kind of exercise yard and although I didn’t feel completely safe, it was more bearable than being stuck in one of those corridors, especially with all the people around. Ricardo explained that this was the section called Cancha, which means ‘playing field’ in Spanish.
‘This is where we have the annual football tournament. Can you play? Our section is going to win this year,’ he declared proudly. ‘But we really need players.’
‘Yeah, a little bit,’ I replied unenthusiastically. The idea of playing a game of soccer on concrete didn’t much appeal to me.
Since the football field wasn’t being used at the time, children were jumping along a hopscotch grid they had chalked up and were happily chasing each other everywhere. Around the perimeter, you could see inmates working on repairing and constructing furniture or making handicrafts to sell to visitors. Some prisoners lay on the ground in the sun; others simply stood watching. There were also women washing garments at the concrete basins, and others sitting around mending clothes and keeping an eye on the children. These were almost the same scenes that had greeted me on my first morning when I had woken up and didn’t know where I was. Once more, I was reminded of a small village. I had only been in San Pedro three-and-a-half weeks, but so much had changed for me in that time.
In the next section, Ricardo pointed out a big, round hole in the ground with concrete steps leading down into it.
‘They call that la piscina,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means “the swimming pool”.’
It was about two metres deep, but for a swimming pool, it was extremely small. I also wondered if La Paz ever got warm enough to go swimming.
‘But when do they use it?’ I asked.
‘Um. Occasionally they fill it up, but the water gets dirty very quickly, so most of the year it stays empty.’
‘But what do they use it for? It’s too narrow for swimming.’
‘Mainly they use it for baptisms and celebrations. You know, when a new inmate gets given his sentence or when someone has a birthday, they get thrown in the water,’ he explained hurriedly before changing the subject quickly. ‘Do you wanna see where they make the leather jackets?’
There was something Ricardo wasn’t telling me about la piscina. I later learned that it had a more sinister name – ‘el pozo’, which means ‘the well’.
We went up some stairs and into another dark passageway. This was the section of San Martín and it was more like what I had imagined a third-world prison would be like. In some parts, there were long rows of tiny, identical concrete cells, with the same grey metal doors. Often, they had no windows and so, in some parts, there was a horrible smell that must have been there forever. These were the dirtiest areas of the prison, where the poorer prisoners and the base smokers lived, sometimes four or five crammed into a minuscule room.
‘Life is cheap here,’ explained Ricardo. ‘People do whatever they can to survive.’
He pointed out that, unlike Pinos and Alamos, there were no gates between the various inside sections, so at night the inmates were free to wander from one section to another, making it more like a big neighbourhood in a city slum.
‘And this is where all the stabbings occur,’ he warned me as we came into one of the darker passages. When he saw my worried look, he reassured me. ‘It’s perfectly safe during the day. At night is when you have to look out.’
This didn’t make me feel any better. Although it was the middle of the day, the part we were in was so dimly lit that it could just as easily have been midnight.
We came to a corner and went down some stairs and outside again. This was where Ricardo came to buy his marijuana once a week. He didn’t want to talk about it at that moment – even in English – in case someone overheard us, but he quickly mentioned that this was also where the cocaine laboratories were located. We were right near the source. ‘Even the dealers in the other sections get their stuff from down here,’ he whispered.
‘Where?’ I wanted to know. But he wouldn’t answer.
I looked around, thinking that I might be able to guess behind which door they were making the cocaine. I was trying to picture small Bolivian scientists running around in white lab coats with thermometers stuck behind their ears, surrounded by bubbling beakers and smoking test tubes. However, it was the middle of the day, so it was hard to imagine that any of it was possible, especially with all the women and children nearby.
We stopped to look at the menu of the day, which was written on a chalkboard. I didn’t understand any of the names, but the prices were very low, even for Bolivia.
‘So, if you want to save money, this is where to come, Thomas. Everything’s cheaper down here. Whatever you need.’
The main difference between these inside sections and the four- and five-star ones, however, wasn’t the quality of the rooms or restaurant prices, it was the people. Immediately, I noticed that they were much poorer; their skin was dirtier and their clothes were cheaper. But that didn’t worry me so much as the way some of them looked at you. I didn’t feel welcome at all. One old man spat on the ground next to me and I think I heard the word ‘gringo’ again. I noticed they were even a bit suspicious of Ricardo, because he obviously wasn’t from around there. In fact, they seemed to be suspicious of everyone, including each other.
But the worst thing was the number of base addicts. You could usually tell them by their faces, which were sort of caved in. They were also unnaturally skinny. As soon as one of them looked at you, you could tell what he was going to say, even before he opened his mouth. In Pinos and Alamos, all of the inmates spoke to you when they walked past. They also spoke to you in these inside sections, but it wasn’t to say hello. They wanted money.
At first, I felt obliged at least to acknowledge that someone was speaking to me. The first few times someone held out his hand, I said, ‘Sorry. I haven’t got any money. No hay.’ But Ricardo told me just to ignore them.