After 3 days in Sucre the journey continued to the capital of Bolivia, La Paz. After a long but comfy bus-ride of 18 hours I arrived with the two English girls in a city I would call Santiago 10 years ago. The city spreads out in a rather small valley and the first sight of this chaotic city comes from above. The bus reaches the planes above, in the morning, just as the sun is about to rise. The first rays hit the western mountains and as we snake down the mountain side, we crawl below the above layer of smog. The feelings of Santiago in Chile return but I can comfort my self with the notion that i am only here for a few days.
We had booked a hostel that we found fast enough but it looked rather dodgy, and maybe to our luck there were no reply when we rang the door bell. We found another, turned in for a few hours of relaxation and went exploring the city. The girls went shopping again and I just wandered, looked and breathed in the wonderful smog of the city.
On the second day we decided to get some action going. I had heard some intriguing things about a certain prison called San Pedro Prison and the girls were up for an experience…. and it certainly turned out to be something none of us would ever forget. We arrived totally unaware of what we would meet and found that we could not bring camera or cellular phones into the prison. Besides that we could basically have brought anything we would which seemed a bit alarming in the beginning. About 10 guards were sitting in front of the courtyard gate and as they let us in they calmly closed the steel braided door behind us. Just us, the prisoner and NO guards!
An English speaking prisoner received us and he told us that he was supposed to show us to the people we could talk to. He led us through the small courtyard plastered by Coca-Cola commercials, and up a small flight of stairs to a closed door. He knocked and after a minute there came a call and the door was opened by an elderly Colombian man who smiled a crooked smile and bid us welcome to his apartment. It did not look like a cell. In fact the prison did not look like a prison. Had it not been for the steel door I would have thought we were in some poor neighbourhood of La Paz.
The name of the old Colombian guy was Alejando. It was obvious he had been in here for some time as he looked worn down but nevertheless happy. He gave us a run down of the appartment´s first floor which included a small kitchen, a living room, a toilet, shower and… a sauna. The room was not luxury in any sense as we free birds would consider it but I could well imagine it must be heaven for a guy like him. A few talkative minutes went by and then he showed us to a winding staircase in the corner and asked us to go up. We arrived at the second floor which did not contain much; a table in the corner with a computer, a few posters on the wall and another staircase in the opposite corner leading up to the third floor. As we waited for Alejandro to climb we only saw his head which begged us to move upward. With some hesitance we climbed the next winding staircase not knowing what to expect.
We found ourselves in what best can be described as a tee kitchen with a round table in the middle. Around it sat three people. The first guy on the left looked like a he had missed sleep for the entire stair here. He was sitting with a towel in his lap and his eyes was burning red. The guy at the end of the tyable was an elderly man in his 70’s, long thin hair and could just as well be any harmless hippie who happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The women to my right was as well in her 60’s or 70’s and was calmly sitting and knitting a blue and green coin bag. The contrast of the white knitted table cloth and these three strange characters almost made the situation seem funny. In fact it made me relax so much that i immediately gave hand to everyone, sat down and smoked cigarette. The guy to my left was Jimmy from Amsterdam, Stuart from South-Africa sat at the end but I never caught the name of the women.
The first impression was really the most nerve wrecking and exciting. After an introduction of the prison we had a small tour of the grounds and returned to speak with Stuart. This is how the prison works:
All visitors pay 250 bolivianos for the visit and there is no deadline for when the visit ends. The whole idea behind this prison is based upon a single idea that money will create freedom when able to roam freely. This is a contradiction in itself but when you narrow space down to what is withing these walls and the amount of people involved down to a couple of thousands then it is possible. The reason for this is that these people have a common set values and rules upon which the system (or society) can grow and above this stands the fear of loosing the system as it provides freedom and security for people that initially did not have any rights.
Stuart tells that the money goes to a foundation that makes sure the society can keep functioning and growing. He puts a lot of effort into explaining that the money goes to the children of the families living inside. This is always a good sales argument but he also tells us that this foundation and “right to freedom” only is possible if they pay off the 19 guards sitting outside. The prison is divided into two parts; the hardcore section where about 1700 prisoners are stationed and the softer section with more freedom where I am now. Even the prisoners we have been talking to do fear going to the other side and for us to go would be suicide. The only possibility for a prisoner to get into the soft section is by way of money. They have to rent every cell (or room/apartment) and they range from 23,000 USD to 400 USD a month which they pay to the foundation. About the family: If the husband is a prisoner the family can come and go as freely as the want. They can bring him whatever he wants and many of the wives are making a life of their own inside the walls. Some are cleaning, others are cooking and others again are part of some kind of trading. They do drugs when they feel like it, drink if they feel the urge and use the escort service. The Dutch guy next to me is even a gigolo himself and gets paid by a women that comes once a week to the prison to have sex with him. So what good comes out of this? Well as they say themselves they have the lowest rate of escape attempts, no suicides and no homosexuality. Basically this is the three most important criteria upon which all prisons in the world are based upon and do say something. Whether or not this systems ensures rehabilitation is another question but the systems works only by following three rules:
- You can not steal!
- You can not attack another prisoner!
- You can not talk to the police!
In 2002 the book “Marching Powder” was written about this prison (http://www.marchingpowder.com/). It surely proves as an amazing story but whether or not everything was true and everyone was 100% honest i can not say. The only thing I can tell you is that do you have the possibility this is an amazing experience. The objective of all the visitors and the reason they should not fear anything is that they want to spread the word around the world about this system… then again every tourist pays 250 bolivianos which in the end makes for a lot of money. Between February 2008 and June 2008 they have had 3000 paying visitors…..
The next day I left La Paz for the jungle.
