by Rusty Young
‘Once they get your attention, they won’t leave you alone until you give them something. So it’s best not even to look at them. Don’t establish eye contact. OK?’
I thought he was being a bit heartless and didn’t answer him. If someone is right there in front of me, I find it impossible to turn my head and pretend that he doesn’t exist at all. But I suppose Ricardo had been there longer than me and knew better. He must have sensed what I was thinking.
‘Look, Thomas. I know it’s sad,’ he said, sounding like I had just accused him of something very serious. ‘Give them some money, if you want. But they’ll just buy base with it. If you want to do someone a favour here, you’re better off buying them a meal or giving them something they can’t sell.’
When I still didn’t respond, Ricardo decided to prove his point in a different way. He led me up a staircase and along another dark corridor. We stopped at the very end, where I could just make out a thin ladder that looked similar to the one that led up to Ricardo’s room.
‘Alonso!’ he called out, banging on the trapdoor above him.
No one answered, so he called again. Eventually there was a shuffling of feet and the trapdoor opened.
The first thing that struck my senses as we climbed into Alonso’s room was the overpowering smell. It was one of those horrible chemical smells that gets inside your skin and stays with you for a long time afterwards.
‘That smell is base,’ Ricardo whispered in English before introducing me to Alonso, a short, skinny Bolivian dressed in filthy clothes. Alonso was balding slightly and, judging by his wrinkly skin and tired face, I guessed he was about fifty years old. Ricardo later told me he was only thirty-five.
‘¿Cómo está?’ Alonso asked politely, nodding to me, although his eyes were so glazed that it seemed he was only just aware of my presence. I looked around his room.
The cell was tiny and had no windows, trapping the smell of base smoke inside. Posters of half-naked women lined the walls and where there were no posters, the paint was peeling off. The only furniture was a bed and a small bedside table, but even so, there was hardly enough space for three of us.
After a brief conversation, Ricardo handed Alonso a one-boliviano coin.
‘Gracias,’ he mumbled in response, with a faraway look still on his face. He opened the trapdoor and disappeared slowly down the ladder.
‘Where’s he going?’ I asked.
‘He’s gone to buy another packet of base,’ Ricardo explained, and at that moment I noticed a ginger cat curled up on the bed. I leaned forward to pat it, but Ricardo grabbed my wrist.
‘Don’t touch the cat!’ he warned. ‘It’ll scratch your eyes out.’ When he saw that I was slightly taken aback by his reaction, he explained: ‘The cat doesn’t let anyone touch him when he’s in a bad mood. Wait until Alonso comes back, then you can pat him.’
‘What’s its name?’ I asked, wondering how Ricardo knew that the cat was in a bad mood.
‘I don’t know his proper name, but I call him Crack Cat,’ Ricardo said, chuckling to himself. ‘You’ll see why in a minute.’
When Alonso returned, he immediately lay down beside the cat. He then reached into his sock and produced a tiny, folded piece of paper containing the base. Next, he felt under his bed for a pipe, which he cleared by tapping against the wall. When the cat heard the tapping sound, it pricked up its ears and climbed onto its master’s stomach.
Alonso packed the pipe with tobacco, sprinkled some of the off-white base crystals on top and then lit the mixture using a match. The base bubbled, liquefied and then disappeared completely. Alonso held the smoke in his lungs and his eyes glazed over even more. The cat stalked forward slightly, advancing onto Alonso’s chest, looking poised to strike. I was convinced that the cat was going to scratch his face, but as Alonso exhaled a strange thing occurred: the cat craned its neck, lifting its head upwards to get closer to Alonso’s mouth. Alonso blew some smoke at its face.
The cat shook its head from side to side, and then sneezed before collapsing back into a comfortable position on Alonso’s stomach. It took a deep breath, as if it were sighing, and its eyelids drooped over in contentment. Alonso stroked the cat’s back and I heard it purring.
‘You see!’ said Ricardo, laughing and scratching the cat behind the ears. ‘That’s why I call him Crack Cat. He’s happy now so you can pat him, if you like. Crack Cat only needs a little bit, so Alonso has to be careful. That base is very strong and maybe, if the cat has a big night smoking, he might overdose.’
A cocaine-addicted cat wasn’t the only surprise Ricardo had in store for me during our tour that afternoon. We had one more stop: Julio’s.
‘This guy is also a base addict,’ Ricardo said to me under his breath as Julio opened the door. ‘Only far worse.’
Julio was pale and skinny and he wouldn’t meet my eye when we were introduced. He motioned for us to come in, all the while looking nervously at the floor. His room was even more horrible than Alonso’s. It was lit by a single bulb dangling from the ceiling by a thin cable. The concrete walls were unpainted and, apart from a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, it seemed Julio owned nothing in the world.
Ricardo held out two coins and Julio almost snatched them out of his hands.
‘Why did you give him two bolivianos instead of one?’ I asked once Julio had left to buy the base.
‘You’ll see in a minute.’
When Julio returned, he had two packets of cocaine base, known locally as basé. He sat down on the bed, placed an entire packet in the pipe and lit it. As he sucked furiously, the veins on his forehead popped and his whole face turned ghostly white. He held the smoke in for so long that I thought he’d stopped breathing. For those few moments, he didn’t seem human.
After he’d finally blown out the smoke, Julio stood up suddenly, reached into his pocket and produced a knife. I jumped back instinctively, thinking he was going to attack me, but instead he lifted up his shirt and slashed the knife across his stomach, drawing a perfectly straight line of blood. Just as quickly, he put the bloodied knife back in his pocket and sat down.
Ricardo said something and I watched, still completely horrified, as Julio stood up again and took his shirt off. Blood was trickling down his stomach and I noticed his entire torso and both arms were covered in thin, white scars from similar cuts. I felt sick in the stomach. I was also completely disgusted with Ricardo. The extra boliviano had obviously been to pay for Julio’s show.
‘He cuts himself to stop the paranoia,’ Ricardo explained softly as Julio put his shirt back on and began unfolding the second packet of base. ‘The sudden pain jolts him out of it.’
I looked at Ricardo and didn’t say a word.
Afterwards, I realised he had shown me these things in order to scare me off taking base. The first time you try it, a packet costing one boliviano – twenty US cents – lasts you a whole day. Eventually, you need that same amount every fifteen minutes. Ricardo’s plan worked. In all my time at San Pedro, I never touched the stuff. But I saw many people who did. One of my neighbours, who had been sent to San Pedro for a relatively minor crime, became completely addicted to base. He arrived with money and everything necessary to make his stay comfortable – a big-screen television, stereo, kettle, cooker and refrigerator. His family and friends visited him at least three times a week. But within six months he had quite literally sold everything he owned in order to buy base – including his clothes and even the blankets from his bed. His wife left him. His children stopped visiting. Eventually, someone he owed money repossessed his cell and he had to leave the section and move to a cheaper one.
I didn’t see anything more of the inside sections because I cut the tour short, claiming to be hungry.
‘But you haven’t seen where they manufacture the leather jackets yet,’ protested Ricardo.
‘Another day, maybe. I’m really hungry, man.’ I didn’t want to see anything more. I’d made up my mind: I didn’t care if I had to pay
a million dollars to sleep on Ricardo’s floor. I wasn’t going to live down there in one of the inside sections. And even if he wouldn’t let me stay, I still wouldn’t sleep inside. No way. I would rather sleep outside, under that pine tree.
That’s not to say that everyone in those sections was a drug addict or a murderer. There were many decent people, often with loving families, who lived there simply because they were poor, but at night these people locked their doors and didn’t come out for any reason. Eventually, I made a lot of friends down there, especially in San Martín, and I visited them regularly. But my first impression always stayed with me. Sometimes I couldn’t help shivering as I went down the corridor that led from the courtyard to the very inside of the prison.
8
BUYING A CELL OF MY OWN
The British Embassy never did believe me about the room system. No one ever accused me directly of lying, but it was obvious what happened. They must have rung or visited the prison administration and asked whether any of what I had said was true. It was my word against that of the Bolivian police force. I was an international drug trafficker and the embassy probably already had a file on me a mile long, so who do you think they were going to believe?
Ricardo told me not to kick up a fuss; if the embassy asked too many questions, there could be consequences for me in the prison. Besides, I would never convince them. I would only succeed in looking like a worse liar and reduce the chances of the embassy ever helping me in the future. Luckily, Prisoners Abroad, the charity organisation Mr Harris had contacted on my behalf, was far more understanding. The driver from the British Embassy delivered to me in the interview room a big package from Prisoners Abroad. It contained a knife, fork, spoon, plate, bowl, cooker, another blanket – all the things I needed to start a new life in prison – and five hundred dollars in cash to help me buy my first prison cell in San Pedro. I got the driver to ask the guards to escort me back to Ricardo’s room. Two days later, he came again, this time with money from the contacts that owed me in London.
As soon as I received my money, I tried to pay Ricardo back, but he would only accept half of what I owed. I wanted to buy a room straight away; however, even though I now had money and knew how the titles system worked and where I wanted to live, I still needed Ricardo’s help in conducting the actual negotiations. I didn’t know the correct price to pay, and I thought the sellers might try to trick me because I was a foreigner. Ricardo got very excited when I asked for his help. He boasted that he had studied economics at university. He sat me down at his table and gave me a full lecture about the best buying strategy.
‘It’s just basic supply and demand, Thomas. Buy low, sell high. Simple capitalism,’ he declared, leaning back in his chair and lighting up a joint. The way he held that joint between his index finger and his thumb and the way he blew out the smoke, I could have sworn he thought he was some famous economist puffing away on a Cuban cigar. ‘Anyone with half a brain can understand it.’
I understood most of his explanation, but Ricardo made it hard by blowing marijuana smoke in my face and using technical words whenever he could. It was all common sense, really, but he made it sound far more complicated.
‘Timing is everything in these matters, my friend. You’ve just got to be smarter than the rest to beat the market.’
I nodded my head, but when he could see that I wanted him to explain further, he took a deep breath and went through the whole thing, step by step.
The room prices went up and down as in any property market, so the important thing was to make the right decision about when to buy in order to get the best deal. Rooms were usually put up for sale when a prisoner knew for sure that he was leaving, although sometimes trades were made as prisoners upgraded or downgraded before their sentences had expired, according to their financial situation. The prisoners called this ‘moving house’. For the seller to get the highest price, it was best for him to sell the room a long time before his actual release date because as that date got closer, buyers would know that he was desperate and would sell cheaper. The best thing to do as a buyer was the exact opposite: delay purchase until someone who hadn’t managed to sell was about to leave.
‘So, to get the best price, I should wait and find someone who is leaving very soon?’ I asked.
‘If the market permits, yes,’ Ricardo agreed, offering me the joint.
I looked at him questioningly and held up my hand to refuse. I needed all my concentration for this one.
‘You see, sometimes that option isn’t available,’ he explained, ‘because the prison is totally full. It all comes back to your basic supply and demand.’
He started to explain supply and demand, which I already knew about from the drug market. Ricardo became so enthusiastic at this point that he decided to draw me some graphs. There was no time to waste in finding a pen and paper, so he picked up his kitchen knife and started carving lines into his wooden table. We started with the supply side, being the available accommodation. The prison was in a situation of what Ricardo called ‘limited’ or ‘capped’ supply. This was because there was no space left to build any more rooms. Apparently, the prison had been originally built for two hundred and fifty inmates, but at times the population could reach up to fifteen hundred prisoners, plus their families, all crammed into one city block. If they had wanted to, the government probably could have built more rooms on top of the existing ones, but there were no funds available to do so. Besides, who really cared about the conditions of a bunch of prisoners, when most of the country was living in poverty? The politicians kept the money for themselves.
Then Ricardo explained the demand side of things. The demand was determined by people who needed to buy cells and it was rising because the prison population was expanding every day, mainly with people accused of drug-trafficking offences under a law called la Ley Mil Ocho – Law 1008 – which was the law I was being charged under. According to Ricardo, the reason for all this overcrowding and for Law 1008 was the US government’s ‘war on drugs’.
Ricardo was proud of having lived in the United States and of speaking English, because it made him feel superior to the Bolivians. However, at other times, he really hated the Americans. This was one of those times. Bolivia is one of the poorest Latin American countries and the US regularly made kind offers of humanitarian aid to help out the poor, the starving and the homeless. However, this was on the condition that Bolivia agreed to fumigate its coca plantations and go after the people who controlled the drug trade. Of course, the Bolivian politicians were always glad to accept all donations, most of which never made it to their intended destination. They jumped up and down, promising to destroy the crops and hunt down the evil people responsible for drug trafficking, but in reality their efforts were only minimal; coca was the most valuable industry Bolivia had and it was making a lot of people in power very rich.
‘They never actually go after the big fish,’ said Ricardo. ‘They’re untouchable. They just lock up the small fry like us to make it look like they’re cleaning up the country. There are people in prison for two grams, and others who weren’t even caught with anything. Just on suspicion.’ He banged his fist on the table to emphasise his point and the wood shavings from his supply and demand graphs jumped out of their grooves. ‘So, you see, that’s why we Bolivians hate the Americans,’ he concluded in his New York accent.
I could see that Ricardo was capable of talking about American politics for hours, but I wanted to get back to the subject of buying my room, so I cut in before he could continue.
‘I get it. So, if the prices are always going up, that means I should buy as soon as possible before it gets more expensive. Right?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Ricardo the politician went back to being Ricardo the wise economist. He stroked his chin and drew back on his ‘cigar’ as though he had just been asked a very controversial question by a clever journalist and needed time to formulate his response. Of course, I could tell that he had already thought ab
out these things a lot and was simply enjoying the opportunity to show off his knowledge. In fact, he was loving every minute of it and stringing it out for as long as possible. Or maybe he was just getting his revenge because I had interrupted him just as he was getting to an important point about the Americans. He repeated very slowly, ‘Not necessarily, my friend.’
Occasionally, room prices did actually go down, he explained. There were two things that could cause this; the first was when more people were leaving prison than were entering. This occurred when a lot of prisoners were pardoned or given early release, which meant there were more vacancies and so the cell market went down. This happened by pure necessity when the prison was full and the administration used any excuse to reduce the number of prisoners. That was easy enough to understand. In fact, I later experienced the biggest example of this first hand when a new law called Extra Muro – ‘Extra Wall’ – was passed, which halved the sentences of most prisoners in the country. This law led to hundreds of prisoners becoming eligible for immediate or early release.
The second reason was what Ricardo called ‘market scare’. Frequently, the Bolivian government announced plans to pull down San Pedro prison and transfer all the inmates to a new jail it wanted to build in El Alto. And since it was officially denied that prisoners actually paid for their own cells, no one would be refunded any of their purchase money. The first few times this was announced, the prisoners believed the politicians and panicked. Prices dropped overnight because of what Ricardo called a ‘fire sale’ – hundreds of inmates put ‘En Venta’ signs on their doors, trying to get anything they could for their rooms.
‘If I’d had money, I could have bought up everything and retired a rich man,’ Ricardo sighed. ‘I did get a cheap television out of it, though,’ he pointed proudly to the cardboard box at the end of his bed where his purchase was sitting. ‘Supposedly, no privileges were going to be allowed in the new prison. It’s amazing what market hysteria will do to people,’ he said, shaking his head at the irrationality of humans.