38

PRISON ELECTIONS

At the time, it was very difficult to give Jerome back his wallet with all that money in it. A few years earlier, I wouldn’t have thought twice about keeping a wallet I found in the street. In prison, it was even harder. Not only because of the other inmates pressuring me, but because I had very little money myself to survive on. But afterwards, I felt really proud of myself.

I can’t claim to have been an honest person my whole life. I had done many things that were against the law. I was a drug trafficker. I did it for the money and because I was addicted to the excitement. If I said now that I was sorry and that I realised it was wrong, I’d be lying. But being friends with the tourists showed me that there were more important things than being rich and having adventures. I realised that the most important thing anyone has is their freedom, but it wasn’t going to jail that taught me that lesson. It was the people I met in there. They made me want to be honest. I didn’t even care anymore about getting my revenge on Colonel Lanza. I just wanted to finish my prison term and lead a normal life once I got out. It was going to be hard, but I was determined to try.

The money I returned to Jerome came back to me in other ways. He told everyone he met outside about what had happened. Many people couldn’t believe that San Pedro prison was a safe place to visit and that some of the prisoners were honest – they wanted to see it for themselves. After that, more and more tourists came in to see me and with each person that paid to come through the gates, more money was injected into the prison economy, and my influence with the police and other inmates increased. In those days I could get away with anything. I was still friends with the governor. I had regular dealings with the guards at the gate. I bought merchandise from all the drug dealers. And because I moved about the prison so often with the tourists, every inmate knew who I was.

In the quiet times when no tourists were around, prison life was quite boring, so I made an effort to be friendly with everyone. Sometimes that was hard, because you can’t force yourself always to be in a good mood. However, I at least said hello to everyone I passed on my way around the various sections.

One thing I learned from coming into contact with so many people each day was how to make people smile just by always being happy myself, or ready with a quick comment. Despite their poverty, the Bolivians are basically a very happy people, and they like it when you make them laugh. I’d say to the inmates, ‘When are you going to introduce me to your sister? You promised.’ Once they laughed, it was hard for anyone to get angry with me.

The other thing was to make each person feel important. Many of the inmates were curious about foreigners, and some secretly looked up to them, so they loved it when I introduced them as someone special, especially to the girls.

‘This is Chapako,’ I’d say. ‘He’s the champion striker in the Pre-fectura football team, aren’t you?’ Chapako would laugh, and then I would take it a step further by making the others around him laugh: ‘He used to play for the Bolivian national team, but then he got too fat. That’s why they put him in prison.’ Once you made people laugh, you could get away with anything.

My influence extended all the way around the prison, but it was especially strong in Alamos, where I lived. One day, Julián and Uruguayo, two of the inmates from the section who were respected by everyone, approached me.

‘We need your help,’ they said.

They had a proposition: they wanted me to help them get voted in during the next prison elections.

‘You know the people, Thomas. We need you to get them on our side.’

Annual election time in the prison was fun, especially when a candidate was trying to get re-elected. This meant there were several campaigning celebrations in the lead-up to the actual voting, paid for out of the section funds. Unfortunately, these re-election campaigns only happened every second period, since there was a rule that people could stay in power for a maximum of two political terms.

The two most important positions to be voted for were the delegate and treasurer of each section. The delegate was the prisoners’ representative to the authorities and he also had power over everyone in the section, including the ability to send inmates to the isolation cells. The treasurer controlled the section’s finances and made the spending decisions. Anyone who had been a resident in the section for more than six months could run for election. The only requirements were that you had no outstanding debts and that you owned an unmortgaged cell; otherwise, you had to put down a bond of four hundred US dollars, as insurance against embezzling the funds.

Candidates campaigned in pairs for these two major postings, but they also had a political team behind them that helped get them into office, which is where I fitted in. Julián wanted me to talk to the people and convince them that he would be the best delegate ever. Once in power, the delegate decided on the minor positions and together they formed the section directiva. Other positions included the discipline secretary, who was in charge of maintaining order and good conduct, the secretary of culture and education, who looked after the library books, and the sports secretary, who ran our football team and tried to get corporate sponsorship for the annual inter-section football cup. The easiest job by far was the health secretary, who was supposed to be in charge of medical supplies. There never were any, so he did nothing.

During election week, all the voting inmates from the section, known as the General Assembly, would gather in the courtyard and listen to speeches by the various candidates on how they planned to improve our living conditions. Sometimes, they paid people in the crowd to cheer or boo during the speeches. Meanwhile, supporters handed out flyers and cups of chicha and beer, and tried to persuade you to vote for their team. If you were like me, and never made up your mind until the last moment, you could get a lot of free stuff.

The actual vote was done by secret ballot in the section courtyard. You wrote the names of the delegate you wanted on a piece of paper, folded it over and inserted it into a box. Next to the box stood the three members of the electoral committee, who were appointed by the voters to ensure that the elections were conducted fairly. On the day, they made sure that the ballot box was empty to start with and that no one voted twice or tried to slip in two pieces of paper. The votes were then read out, one by one, and tallied on a chalk board. I usually tried to disguise my handwriting on my voting slip. That way, no one ever knew which candidates I’d actually voted for and I could get more free stuff at the next election.

As each vote was read out, a cheer or boo went up from the crowd, depending on which candidate the vote was for.

‘¡Viva Juan Ricardo!’ or ‘¡Arriba Jorge Mendez!’ they would shout, then everyone would touch plastic cups and take a sip of their drinks. The losing side would stamp their feet in disappointment: ‘Down with corruption.’

By the end, everyone was completely drunk, except for the electoral committee, who banned themselves from drinking. They weren’t allowed to cheer, either, in case it made them look biased. Afterwards, there was always music and dancing, and more celebrating and commiserating.

The first time I witnessed one of these elections, I couldn’t believe it. When Ricardo saw the look on my face, he put his arm around my shoulder and said, ‘This is nothing, my friend. Voting when you are drunk is a tradition in South America. You know, in some countries, they have to make alcohol illegal for a week before elections in order to stop politicians from bribing voters.’

The annual elections for section delegate and treasurer weren’t the only political campaigns conducted in San Pedro. Bolivian inmates were also entitled to vote in national elections, so many politicians came into the prison to win votes before the presidential elections. Most of them told us that we weren’t bad people; the real criminals were walking free on the outside. Others said that they would repeal the gringo drug laws under which most of us had been charged.

‘Bolivia doesn’t have a drug problem. The United States does. They’re the ones demanding cocaine. Why should you people be suffering in prison for something that is their problem?’

All the politicians promised to improve our living conditions if we voted for them, but nothing ever changed. For this reason, we took the internal prison elections far more seriously than the national elections. It wasn’t compulsory to vote, but everyone did. The delegate had a lot of power, both in representing our interests to the prison authorities, and in keeping peace and order in the section. If we chose a bad team, our lives could be miserable for a whole year. And if we chose a dishonest team, the section might go broke.

At the end of their term in office, the delegate and treasurer had to present the members with the financial accounting records, including a balance sheet and profit-and-loss statement. There were also supposed to be audits of the accounts conducted every two months, but they never happened. In the meantime, the delegate and secretary had complete control over all the section’s money. They could do whatever they liked with it, and some of them did, which is why I agreed to support Julián.

‘OK. I’ll help, then,’ I said. Normally, I didn’t like to get too involved in prison politics, but I did it because Julián was my friend and I was sure he would never steal from anyone. He got elected easily. There was a big party that I don’t remember much of. I just recall waking up with a lot of confetti in my bed.

I was happy for Julián and knew that he would do a good job as delegate. I didn’t want a position in his directiva, but I knew that he might be of help sometime down the track. If I ever got in trouble, he would back me up. That time came a lot sooner than I expected.

If the good times had continued, I would have been happy to serve out the remainder of my sentence in San Pedro without complaint. The inmates were my friends. The police were my friends. The tourists kept me company. I was high all the time. I had influence within the prison, and I was making enough money to survive. I thought that nothing could touch me and that things would stay like that until I was released.

Then, in the space of two weeks, my whole world was turned completely upside down. Everything went wrong. I watched helplessly as all the things that were important in my life came tumbling down around me: the friendships I had made in prison, my tour business, and even my hopes of obtaining my freedom soon. What happened during that period was the beginning of a passage of events that would see me betrayed by people I had trusted, witness the deaths of two of my best friends, and put me through the worst hell I had ever known. And at the end of it all, I would be facing an extra ten to fifteen years in prison.