A great read…
The labyrinthine penitentiary shines light on the politics of the coke trade
A few years ago, I got an email from Niko Vorobyov, a Russian-Brit who had been jailed for selling drugs at university. “When I was banged-up in HMP Isis (South London)…I read your book and Howard Marks,” Niko wrote. “El Narco gave me the bigger picture which is what really got me thinking about the war on drugs in general and why I was here. It was the first time I’d heard of a lot of this shit like the involvement of the CIA. Friends said my letters outside were funny and that’s what led me to writing when I got out.”
Niko indeed found he was a talented scribe and went on to author the book “Dopeworld” as well as publishing in Vice, The Spectator, The Guardian and many others. I’m delighted to run a story by him from Bolivia, the land-locked South American nation known as coca-leaf heaven; I told him to let rip with his flowery pen.
By Niko Vorobyov
It was a Sunday afternoon and after queuing up to show my passport, I stepped through the gate. If I didn’t know any better, I may have thought this was just the courtyard to an apartment block somewhere in La Paz. And in a way, it was. San Pedro is unlike any correctional facility I’ve seen, a small town all on its own. Above and around me were little barber saloons, kiosks, workshops.
A lifetime ago, this place even hosted tours: you’d bribe the warders to be allowed to explore this gated community, which had a cocaine factory onsite. The guards only made sure the prisoners didn’t escape, but once you walked past the gates, you were on your own. For an extra five bucks, braver backpackers could stay overnight – cheaper than a hostel! But those days are long gone.
“Here is an open regime – you can work, study, do whatever you want, you just can’t leave,” said a middle-aged man who identified himself as Ricardo Mendoza Salas, a convicted cocaine trafficker who says he’s been here since 2018.
It was visitation day, so everyone was in the main square with their families eating, chatting, or playing cards, sat on top of red plastic chairs, all of them stamped with the Coca-Cola logo. Was this prison sponsored by Coca-Cola? If so, that’s extremely niche advertising. Weaving between the tables were waiters and hawkers, all inmates, carrying trays offering snacks and trinkets. I bought a chocolate bar off a white Cuban man, guiding around his little daughter by the hand.
One aspect that makes San Pedro unique is that inmates must pay for their own cells, creating a Monopoly-style property market with eight suburbs which vary by level of opulence, from five-star accommodation (with carpets, en-suite bathrooms and views of the city), to one-star “coffins” cramming five men together in a hole in the wall. Finding shelter is important: at 3,600 meters above sea level, La Paz is the highest-altitude capital in the world and temperatures can drop so sharply that the ‘homeless’ can freeze to death.
Read on
https://www.crashoutmedia.com/p/inside-bolivias-infamous-cocaine
