by Eldon Asp
A few weeks later he came back and told me the local judge had entered a sentence of four years, six months. That was a long time, obviously, but a lot better than it could have been. At least the hope of bail was still there. The next step was for the sentence to go up the chain to the federal court in Hermosillo, where it would be reviewed by another judge who had the authority either to rubber-stamp it or throw it out and enter his own sentence. Of course, the federal judge would expect a few dollars for his trouble. I made my calls, raised the money, and the sentence was approved.
The way fianza worked, it was essentially a cross between bail and parole. You were still subject to the sentence, meaning they could revoke your bail whenever they wanted and throw you back in prison to serve out your time, but in the meantime you were free to leave while you waited and worked on your appeal. You just had to check in with an officer every Saturday. (That way they made sure that if you did run, you never had more than a week-long head start, I guess; I’m not really sure about the logic of that.)
Anyway, Rudolfo Lopez sent word that my fianza had been approved—all I had to do was come up with the bail amount and his fee, a total of $6400. More than almost anything else in this whole ordeal, that dollar figure felt like a punch in the gut. How in the hell was I supposed to come up with $6400?! Well, with no other option but to try, I got back on the phone; I took up a collection around the prison; I reached out to everyone I’d ever met—again—and most of all, I put the screws to Roger. I had just spent almost a year of my life in the worst prison in Mexico for a crime he’d committed as well, so I’d be goddamned if I was gonna let him get away without paying his fair share (which, as far as I was concerned, was all of it). It took some time and some convincing, but Roger came through in the end. I will always be grateful to him for that.
It seemed like everyone else in La Mesa knew I’d made bail before I did; I remember Johnny Bigotes came down to wherever I was—the hot dog stand, probably—with all of my stuff in a box. He’d packed up my whole carraca, everything I could possibly want, and he handed it to me. He said, “You’re going home, Steve. You’re getting out.”
I thought he was messing with me; I didn’t believe it. I think I had spent so much time and energy getting my mind to a place where I could deal with being locked up that I just couldn’t make the transition to seeing myself as a free man. I was in shock. But he pressed this box into my hands and walked me to the front gate and pushed me towards it. I remember there were other guys there, too, The Brothers and Ramón and a bunch of the transvestites and other inmates, and they were all waving at me and saying goodbye. It didn’t feel real. I just floated on that feeling all the way out through the gate until they locked it behind me, and then I just broke down. I didn’t want them to see me crying, but it was just so confusing and such a relief and scary at the same time. It was just too much.
The plan all along was to do what everybody did in those days: make bail and skip bail. For Americans locked up in Mexico, fianza was almost as good as a full pardon. Once you walked out through those gates, you could stroll right across the border and be home in the States. You just couldn’t go back to Mexico, not if you wanted to be safe. I pushed my luck for a few weeks, checking in on Saturdays like I was supposed to while I came back to visit and bring food, money and girls to my buddies still inside. I was also working to help Johnny Bigotes get released, which we were eventually able to do when Davy came up with the money. It didn’t take long, though, before I became simply too freaked out to go back. I knew they could change their minds at any time and hold me for the rest of my sentence. That weighed on my mind, so when I couldn’t take it any more, I went north across the border for the last time and never looked back.
It’s more than 35 years later now and I’m still standing, which is more than I can say for El Pueblito. Before dawn on August 20th, 2002, guards stormed through the prison in a last-ditch effort to get La Mesa under control. They rounded up more than a thousand inmates, driving them out of their carracas and the little businesses they ran and lived in, and took them away to other prisons and other parts of La Mesa. Then the bulldozers came in. For a whole day they rolled through, destroying everything the prisoners had created, erasing all traces of what had made La Mesa special. They even kicked out the kids and the wives and the parents. It was the end of an era.
As the years went by, the entire country of Mexico came to resemble more and more what La Mesa had been at its peak: a wild, lawless place, enslaved by drugs and ruled by the whims of the narcos at the top of the food chain. As for La Mesa itself, it became just a typical prison with typical prison problems. The last straw came in 2008, when a young prisoner was beaten to death by the guards, setting off two massive riots in the span of three days. Hundreds were injured in the violence that followed, and dozens of inmates lost their lives.
I still think about La Mesa almost every day. I remember the scary times and the good times, the friends I made and the terrible things I saw. It was years before I could sleep through the night without waking up screaming from awful nightmares of the walls closing in on me, crushing me in a little box. But even with all that, I can’t say I look back on that year with regret. Not entirely. It was a challenge, no question, but I got to experience a world that most people can never imagine, and I survived it. In that sense, I feel fortunate; not many people can say that.
And if nothing else, I came away with some pretty cool stories to tell.
The day I got out. Compare this picture to the one they shot when they first brought us in. Roger looks the same; I look about twenty years older. That’s what my time in La Mesa did to me.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Growing up, STEVE PETERSON dreamed of becoming a cowboy, a sailor, a fisherman and a smuggler. All of these dreams came true, and then some.
His greatest joy is being a father of six, with six grandkids and counting…
•••••••
ELDON ASP is a writer of various scripts and stories, mostly involving characters who are very excited about their horrible plans. LOCKED UP IN LA MESA is his first book.
His next one is EASY STREET.
Table of Contents
Foreword
How It Went Down
La Ocho
Okay, Showtime
George Couldn’t Adapt
A Place of My Own
Bull’s-Head Tacos and the Salad Dog
Yosemite Sam and the Laundry Girls
Treasures in the Minefield
Doctór and the Hot Sauce Cure
Shootout at the Corral
Fiesta of the Greased Pole
The Great Radio Heist
Goat For Sale
American Shit Bath
The Babysitter
Goofy the Rock Star
The Cannibal
Three Wise Men
Hank the Fallen Hero
Guards Are Prisoners, Too
Robbie Was A Ladies’ Man
The Flames of Passion
A Star Is Born
Tunnel To Nowhere
Rock and Roll Will Set You Free
Steve the TV Star
Money From Home
Rise of the Vultures
Blind Murder
Careful What You Wish For
The Return of Heladio
Heladio Meets the Devil
The Lady and the Dragon
Going Home