"This is Still Jail": Exploring San Pedro Prison

Note: Most of the pictures here are from http://www.marchingpowder.com/, since I wasn´t permitted to take pictures of my own in the prison.

Both Darin and my parents can attest that I´ve been to A LOT of markets on this trip. So Nate and I decided to take in a different kind of cultural experience: visiting the infamous San Pedro Prison. San Pedro Prision is a prison in the center of the city. What makes it unique is that there are no guards on the inside - its a society entirely run by the prisoners. Its like a miniature city - you pay rent and you can buy whatever you need, be it food, drink, a miniature stove, or cocaine. We had heard that the prison was closed to tourists, but two other Chicagoans we ran into told us that that wasn´t the case - you just had to go through a back entrance and ask for a guy named X. (Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.) He spoke English, guaranteed visitors safety, and gave you a guided tour and an insiders view of this society within a society. Nate and I looked at each other and thought - when are we ever going to do anything like this ever again?

So we went. It cost us 250 Bolivianos (about $35) to get in - an enormous sum. But as we learned inside, half of it is used to pay off the prisons 29 guards, a portion goes to the ¨foundation¨, an internal organization that helps pay incoming prisoners´entrance fees if they can´t afford it (currently its costs $300 a person to buy into San Pedro), and a portion goes prison repairs and upgrades (such as tiling the bathrooms and putting in showers). I´m sure that a portion also goes to pay for the various guide´s personal expenses. And finally, a portion goes to other prisoners to ensure our (the visitors) safety inside. As X2 (another prisoner) said as he walked us through the prison, ¨Look, we´re nice guys. But this is still jail."

The prisoners are all men, but often their children live there too, if they don´t have another place to live. Kids, girlfriends, wives, and escorts can all come and go as they please. Only the prisoners have to stay. And stay they do - there have only been 4 escapes in the last 20 years. Overall, about 80% of the prisoners are inside for drug trafficking, and most have not even recieved their sentences yet - they are still awaiting trial. According to X, the prison really only has 3 rules:

1. Don´t rat on other inmates to the cops
2. Don´t steal from other inmates
3. Don´t fight with a weapon (fists are fine.)

Breaking any of these rules can get you expelled.

The prison is divided into 8 sections, and the more you pay to get in, the safer the section you get to stay in. (Unless, of course you are in the maximum security portion . . . you don´t have much choice if your crime merits this placement.) Our tour was only of the 5 star section, pictured, where the big wigs live - you have to pay between $400 and $15,000 more (depending on your room), on top of the $300 entrance fee. Today it has 90 prisoners (27 of whom are foreigners and only 4 of whom are gringos), and 23 kids. There are stores where you can get anything from food to condoms to whiskey, billiard rooms, weight rooms, etc.

The "other side," or the "Population section" is where the bulk of the prisoners (1,000+ prisoners and 200 kids) live, and supposedly, it´s really like a small city. You don´t have to pay for that side (except for the initial entrance fee), and food is provided, though S2 who lived there, says he wouldn´t touch it with a ten foot pole. (Population Section is apparently much rougher than the 5 star section, and we didn´t visit because X couldn´t ensure our safety.)

Though the prisoners sell things to eachother, the main form of income comes from A) corporate sponsorship (Coca-Cola has its name on everything, including the walls, chairs and tables - ironic, given the prisons other major source of income) and b) selling cocaine sold to visitors. Cocaine is processed in the population section, not the 5 star section, though the big wigs who need it can just put money in a hole in the wall, and find a bag of coke waiting in another hole. As X put it, its faster than DHL. (T, who took over our tour, is hoping to finally get out next month and didn´t want to be involved in selling tourists coke . . . if we wanted it, he said, we could go through X2.)

Afterwards, Nate and I tried to debrief without much success. We had never been in any prison before. We had never heard anyone talk so openly or bluntly about the drug trafficking trade. We heard stories from people who were thrown in prison for months because their passports expired, people who wanted desperately to get out and claimed that they were reformed, and from people for whom San Pedro was just an annoying stopover and who couldn´t wait to get back to the lucrative drug trade as soon as they got out. I´m sure that somewhere in here, there are lessons about American Prison system, human nature, etc, but we couldn´t just boil it down to a nice tidy moral. Nate and I didn´t know what to make of it all . . . but we know that we´ll probably never see anything like it again.

Any insight, particularly from those of you who have done a lot of work in prisons (Darin? Eli B?)?

Update: Apparently, Brad Pitt has bought the film rights to the book Marching Powder, about life in the prison, and Bernie Mac is set to play the main character. The prisoners are jazzed about the two actors coming to visit, but X claims the book is 80% crap. Anyway, keep an eye out for it . . .