📸 Photo

MARCHING POWDER

of time indoors. They were simply waiting for their lawyers to hurry up and get them out; in the meantime they wanted to stay out of trouble and make their stay as easy as possible. These were mainly prisoners from the Bolivian middle class; many of them had been educated and, on the whole, they were a lot more civilised than in the other sections. There was less violence and no one smoked base. Not openly, anyway. The members could kick you out for that. They did sniff cocaine, of course, although everyone was secretive about it, especially in Pinos, where no one talked about it, except with very close friends. The section had to maintain its respectability.

Both these sections were safe at night because they locked the gates after 9 pm, preventing inmates from other sections from entering. During the day, the inmates were extremely friendly. You had to say something by way of greeting whenever you passed someone, no matter how many times you had already seen them that day. At first I found this pointless and annoying, but I soon saw that it made a difference to the way people treated each other. There was more respect between the inmates in these sections, and a sense of community - of living and sharing together.

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The inside sections were where I had slept on my first night. Eventually, I was brave enough to go back there on my own, but at first I was too scared, plagued by memories of that horrible abandoned building and the haunting laughter of those four men. I didn’t want to go down there at all, even though Guillermo and Pedro, Ricardo’s tough-looking friends who had been with him in the courtyard on my first day, would be accompanying us. However, Ricardo made me go. I was lucky to have my companions, because everyone stared and hissed and several of them yelled out ‘Gringo!’. Guillermo was from those sections, so he was very relaxed, but I felt as if I was about to be attacked at any moment.

The difference in quality between the inside sections and Posta, Pinos and Alamos was incredible. You noticed the lack of money as soon as you entered the passageway that led down from the courtyard; it was dark and narrow and the white paint was discoloured and peeling. Further inside, everything was dirty and grimy. In fact, the