The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare (10 page)

The prisoners were all dressed casually: jeans, T-shirts, vests, runners and flip-flops. They were talking excitedly among themselves, probably about the newbies. I hadn’t a clue what they were saying. One of them pointed to an area to the left at the front of the hall. ‘
Por allá, por allá,
’ (‘In there, in there’) he said. We walked down a short passageway. It was dark. No daylight – just a couple of bulbs giving out weak light. We stepped into a cell, which was bare but for a couple of beds and a toilet at the back. I could see it was just a hole in the floor, and there was a pipe sticking out of the wall for a shower.

A ‘reception party’ awaited us: a big black guy and another couple of prisoners in shorts and vests. One was a tall black man, bald. He was dressed in a nice shirt, Levi’s jeans and Nike runners. He stood in the background and didn’t speak, but he had an air of authority. The giggles and chatter among the prisoners stopped. The mood was sombre and heavy. I had been pretty cool, but now I was getting worried.

The boss started reading out the rules. Their rules, not the prison’s. The tall black guy held an automatic weapon in his hand. Another had what looked like a .38 revolver, waving it around and pointing it at us. Staring at us, he was a slimy little fucker, grinning ear to ear. He opened the chamber to show us it had a full round of bullets, then pushed it back in and started pointing the barrel at us again. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. How could prisoners have guns? Fulvio never warned me about this.

After the boss finished his spiel, the Colombian and Tubby walked off. The gun-toting prisoners gestured for me to stay. Then into the cell stepped another black guy.

‘I’m Mike, now listen up, dude,’ he said in perfect English with a New Yawk accent. ‘These guys are the bosses. They tell you what you can do and can’t do in here.’

I nodded.

‘If there’s a curtain pulled over the toilet you can’t enter,’ started Mike. ‘You have to pay an entrance fee of 1,000,000 bolos [about 200 euro] to stay here and after that 20,000 [about 4 euro] a month. That’s for the causa, the cause, the money we use to protect you from other prisoners who’ll want to kill you, and keep the wing going in good shape, painting and cleaning.’

Kill me? Jesus. After that, Mike’s words were all going over my head. My eyes just darted back and forth to the revolver waving at me, the slimy fuck still spinning the chamber and pointing the silver barrel at me. What the fuck was going on here? What were they doing with guns? It didn’t make sense.

‘You do roll call twice a day,’ continued Mike, explaining that the guards would enter the wing twice a day to do a headcount, ‘and you have to call out your number . . . Cook your own food if you have any; if not, there’s a shop. You don’t go out into other wings alone without protection from us or you’ll be killed by the prisoners there. And don’t ever look at a woman who comes in for a visit.’ If I wasn’t sure what would happen if I broke the rules, Mike put me straight. ‘You’ll learn fast in this place or you’re dead.’

* * *

I walked out into the yard. Some of the inmates lazed about, sitting on ‘buckets’: empty Castrol oil cans and paint tins. Others paced back and forth taking exercise in the yard. It was basically an oblong area about 20 ft by 80 ft, which they called the patio. It was surrounded by high walls, beyond which neighbouring wings were housed. Half the open roof area was covered with a grey tarpaulin held up by a mish-mash of wires drilled into the wall. There was an area sectioned off with corrugated iron to the right, which was a makeshift kitchen with a two-ring stove where a guy was cooking; another man was standing nude, showering with water from a pipe sticking out of the wall.

A guy walked over to me. He was pale, dark-haired and slim and a bit smaller than me. ‘Hey, where are you from?’ he said, making conversation, since I stood wearing my green Irish rugby shirt with shamrocks.

‘Ireland,’ I said. ‘I’m a new arrival.’

‘I’m Edward, or Eddy they call me,’ he said, ‘from Manchester. What you in for?’

‘Carrying cocaine. Caught at the airport.’

‘Just like me,’ smiled Eddy. ‘I didn’t even make it to the check-in desk.’ I looked at him: his head was a bit like a pincushion, with piercings on his nose, ears and lower lip. He also had tattoos: two dragons breathing flames on the back of his hands and his name tattooed letter by letter on the knuckles on each hand. I imagined him walking through customs carrying his suitcase, sending off warning signals to the cops.

A few of the Venezuelan inmates came up to me, knowing straight away what the gringo was banged up for. I understood them from the few words I’d learned. ‘
Maleta . . . cuántos kilos?
’ (‘Suitcase . . . how many kilos?’) asked one.

‘Six,’ I said, holding up that number of fingers.

‘Don’t mind those Veno lags. Morons,’ said Eddy. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘here’s how it works here. You get money, and you get money quick. To pay your rent so the bosses will protect you. That’s how you’ll survive.’ He said I’d have to get someone from back home to wire the 200-euro payment to the bosses through Western Union. It was a bargain compared to the 2,000 euro the crooked cops wanted from me in Macuto. ‘And get yourself a bucket – it’s where you store your valuables, clothes and toiletries – everything. Nobody will steal your stuff or they get a beating from the bosses. You’ll also need it to sit down on.’

‘The bosses?’

‘The guys you just met in the cell. Fidel, the jefe, he’s a cunt. Then there’s Carlos, the tall baldy guy, and the
luceros
.’ He nodded to the prisoners walking around with knives. ‘Those scum,’ he said. ‘They’re the eyes of the bosses when the jefes are inside in the cells bagging coke or beating up some poor bastard. They’ll try to wind you up, run away with food or take your cigarettes. Don’t react. They’re not allowed to touch you, but they’ll squeal you out to the bosses and they’ll give you a beating.’

An explosion suddenly boomed inside the jail. God, what was that? The sound was muffled, absorbed by the walls in the prison by the time it hit the yard where we stood. Inmates huddled together. Worried faces. The prisoner bosses ran about, their guns drawn: revolvers, automatic weapons and shotguns. They closed the main door to the yard. Mobile phones started ringing. Bosses shouted into them. I stood there, shocked. The explosion didn’t sound like there was construction work going on or something; it was more like a bomb. But it couldn’t be, surely?

‘Could be a grenade,’ said Eddy, who didn’t seem bothered by the commotion. ‘The bosses here, they’ve more weapons than the army outside. Enough for a small war.’ Calm started to settle over the yard. Eddy interpreted the flurry of Spanish between the prisoners in the yard. ‘Looks like some guy blew himself up with a grenade,’ he laughed, ‘by accident.’ This place was getting worse.

Minutes later, shouts of ‘Wendy, Wendy’ volleyed back and forth.

‘That means it’s dinner time,’ said Eddy.

‘Why?’

‘Wendy’s, the fast-food chain. They think the word means food in English.’

There was a mad clatter of cups, bowls, plates and cutlery. It was early evening now. ‘It’s time to chow down,’ said Eddy. He said twice a day we’d eat in the
rancho grande
, or the big canteen. ‘You’ll have to eat out of the trays they give you. You’ve only got five minutes in there. Get yourself something to eat out of for the next time so you can bring the food back to the yard.’

I followed the others out into the passageway. There was a concrete stairwell on the left, bits of rubble scattered about. I saw a pool of dark blood on the floor and red splashes on the wall. I walked past a room on the right that looked like an infirmary, with a plinth inside. There was no sign of a body covered with a sheet. Whatever had happened to the guy who blew himself up, he wasn’t getting medical attention. He was probably in a bucket now. I didn’t care; I was starving and wanted to eat. So did the other inmates. One by one we stepped over pieces of bone, sinew and spongy stuff that was probably brain matter – all the leftovers of a rushed clean-up job.

The rancho grande was a massive hall with long stone benches and stone seats. Nothing that could be picked up. Bits of rice and other food were scattered around the floor in the canteen. I stood in the queue. In front of me I met a guy called Ricardo, from Holland. He was a giant of a guy, about 6 ft 4 in. and muscular, with tight, curly hair. He said his mother was Colombian and his father Dutch. He filled me in about Wendy. ‘Get yourself a plate and cutlery so you can take food back to the wing and eat in peace – otherwise you have to eat here and they’ll rush you out quickly.’

At the top of the line I was given a steel tray, with the shapes of a bowl and plate carved into it. Two dollops of food: rice and sardines. A kitchen worker handed the tray back to me across a counter. I walked over and stood beside one of the benches, put my feet on one of the stone seats and ate. I picked the food up with my fingers, shovelling it into me. It didn’t taste like much, but I was starving. I watched others eat with their improvised tools: plastic Coke bottles cut in half to scoop up the food.

Minutes later the luceros walked into the rancho, yelling. It was time to go. Everyone moved swiftly. No one dared argue with them.

In the wing, all the talk among the lags out in the yard was about the explosion. ‘He blew himself up with the grenade, it’s definite they say,’ said Eddy, speaking excitedly. He seemed to be enjoying the explosive antics in the jail.

Another guy came over and stood next to Eddy. He was Silvio, an Italian. He had sallow skin and brown eyes and looked to be in his early 30s. ‘One of the prisoners,’ he said in good English, ‘he was on his way up to the roof. Put it in his pocket and the pin popped out by accident.’ Silvio was a nervous-looking character, and gave me a warning. ‘My friend, Paul, be aware and be on your guard all the time. This is a crazy place.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Paul, you can get coke here,’ he said. ‘It’ll help you through your time.’

‘I don’t do coke.’

‘What do you mean you don’t do coke? What were you getting on the plane for if you don’t do coke?’ he said, laughing and looking at Eddy.

‘For the money.’

‘OK,’ he shrugged, ‘whatever you want.’

All of a sudden a lanky fellow started walking around barking orders, shouting, ‘Colchoneta, colchoneta.’ I didn’t understand but had enough cop-on to know it was something to do with bedding. We were standing there in the yard under a dark sky.

The wing burst into a hive of activity. I was standing in the yard looking inside. I hadn’t had a detailed tour of Maxima yet but could make out that it was made up of three cells. From the yard I could see down into cell two, where inmates were climbing up on a storage area, which was a ledge sticking out from the wall. They were pulling cushions and firing them onto the floor and at whoever walked by.

The tall fellow, who was about 6 ft 3 in. and thin as a rake, was shouting ‘colchoneta’. He walked towards me. I was standing next to the Colombian guy who had been on the bus with me. The tall guy babbled in Spanish. It was all double-Dutch to me. I stood there shrugging my shoulders and holding my arms out, smiling. I didn’t know what else to do. I looked around, but there was no sign of Eddy or Silvio to help me interpret. Everyone was toing and froing with the cushions and knew exactly what to do – except for me and this Colombian. At least he spoke the lingo. The tall guy gave up on me when he realised he might as well be talking to a chair and turned and spoke to the Colombian, but he glanced at me too when he spoke. At least I think he did: his head and right eyeball were animated and moving as he spoke, but his left eye was rigid, the pupil staring straight ahead towards the wall. It was obviously a glass eye; it looked like a marble had been shoved into his eye socket and held in with glue.

‘That’s Canario, he’ll sort you out,’ Eddy shouted over, a cushion under his arm. The tall fellow in front of me was named after his homeland, like many of the others. He was from the Canary Islands.

The Spaniard shoved a ‘mattress’ at the Colombian and nodded at me. It was a long, thin, dirty-orange cushion, about an inch thick and just wide enough for one. I followed the Colombian through the hallway leading into the wing. As I walked by the cells I snatched glances inside. The beds were a mixture of bunks and singles. There must not have been enough: fellows were putting their colchonetas on the floor.

In the hallway, the Colombian put the colchoneta on the ground next to the wall on which a giant flatscreen TV was blaring. A few others did too, bedding down next to us. Colombiano then got down on the floor, stretched out on the colchoneta and pulled a large scarf or sheet around him, which he used like a shawl. The ‘mattress’ was only big enough for one. How was this going to work? I thought. He turned on his side and pointed to the other half of the cushion. That was my bed. I slipped out off my dress shoes and lay down next to him on the giant sponge, pulling a small towel I’d taken from Macuto around me. The ‘mattress’ smelled like cat’s piss. Four or five others were squeezed onto a colchoneta next to us. There’d be no rolling over onto the other side. If I ever found the moggie that was pissing on the cushions I wouldn’t get to swing it very far.

I was exhausted. I’d been on the go from about five in the morning, bussed halfway across the coast of Venezuela and then dumped here in the ‘big prison’, Los Teques. I hadn’t even been here a full day, but I’d had a revolver waved at me and walked through flesh and bone in the corridor after a lag blew himself up with a grenade. I didn’t know what to think of the place. But I certainly had time to do so.

Sleep was far away. The TV was on over my head, and there were noises from a few prisoners sitting on a bench behind us, snorting and laughing. My thoughts were going through the usual cycle about the botched drug run. Forty-five years of age – what was I thinking? And for ten grand? What would Katie do when she found out her da was locked up for drug smuggling in South America? And my parents, in their 70s, would I see them again? Right then, I decided I would do everything I could to get out of this place. I was looking at eight years. I’d be 53 or 54 if I did my full time. But I remembered the lawyer in the court saying it was possible to get parole after a couple of years. I vowed I would. I couldn’t spend eight years of my life here. I’d rather die.