Soy Extranjero. #11

I am a foreigner. To surrender homefield advantage and to be far from home is to assume a considerable burden on oneself. In fact, I titled my emails Soy Extranjero (“I am a foreigner”) because it was the most profound aspect of travel I could think of. In Spanish, “foreigner” and “stranger” are the same word and “to miss [someone or something]” is very closely related. I think there’s some music to that…

Anyone who lived through gradeschool will tell you there are few advantages to sticking out and being different. I`m reminded of scientific experiments on schooling fish where they observed how painting a red dot on one individual makes predators single it out. But what`s more to produce good targets: travelers are in the *wilderness* with cultural and language differences and having to continually look at a map or ask rather than just knowing where things are and how things work…

I wanted to explore this concept a little more. So I found a fat kid and punched him muaaahahahahaha. Just kidding. I contemplated travel and travel ordeals… Since medical disaster was covered in a previous email, I decided to go with the other biggie: “third world prison cell”. So here it is. I had a ton of fun with this one, so I hope you enjoy. :-)

—- prison cell begins —————————————————-
In central Lima I started interviewing taxi drivers. It can be a process. Too twitchy, wants too much money, whoa; potential serial killer… You gotta be choosy. Taxi drivers occasionally rob tourists and I face enough sketchyness today without taking chances on the cabbie. The suburb of Callao is close to some of the worst spots in Lima. On about the 5th interview I found a driver with honest eyes and we headed out. I was starting to get butterflies in my stomach.

From the parking lot of the Sarita Colonia Penitentiary in Callao you can see the control tower of Lima International Airport. Raffish to the core, the streets are filled with wild-eyed and presumably wildly-poor people. My cab dropped me off at the door and I showed my passport to get a stamp on my arm. I stood in line with everyone else going to visit, but my journey was different. I don’t actually know anyone on the inside. Today I’m bringing a bag of gifts to some poor traveler who got tossed in a Peruvian hole and probably doesn’t have any family here.

At the gate, they took my passport and handed me a metal badge with a number. They searched my bag of gifts and showed me to private room just big enough for me and the guard. He asked who I was visiting and I said “friend of a friend, a foreigner”. He again asked for a name and I said “you know him, gringo like me”. He asked for $1.20 bribe to enter the prison without a name. I paid up and asked him for a name. He said “Maximum Observacion, no problemo”. I went inside.

The first thing you see when you enter the courtyard is a crappy fast food chicken place with inflated prices. A few cracked-out prisoners were staggering around and I thought about how I stick out. Everything is cold concrete and steel painted a dilapidated aqua blue. I tried to act like I owned the place as I asked directions to Maximum Observacion. At the entrance I found a gang of hoodlems very intent on toying with me. They made me wrestle for it (In Spanish). “This is Maximum Observacion?” Yeah. “Do you have any gringos?” What? “Anyone here from the United States?” Who are you looking for? “I’m looking for a gringo.” What, are you crazy, who are you looking for? “I don’t have a name, I just want to talk to someone from the United States.” There´s nobody here from the United States, but I’d be happy to take whatever is in the bag. “Is there a foreigner here I can talk to?” Foreigners? “Yeah, I want to talk with a foreigner.” (from behind me in English with a thick Irish accent) Faukin’ell boy; we’re all foreigners! I had arrived.

James Shiels had been in the pen over a year and was looking at 2 more. He’s about 50 years old and looks superficially like my Uncle Larry (for those of you who that aids to visualize). Except he´s quite Irish: like Irish Spring Soap-commercial, Irish. I thought I’d be looking for a foreigner like a needle in a haystack, but instead they’re all piled together in one big room. This wing was designed for 58 and currently holds 250 foreigners. The waiting list to get a cell is about 2 years; everyone else sleeps on the floor. To get a bed you have to buy it from a vacating resident. The going rate for a bed was about $6-700 (but you can resell when you leave). James was hoping to get a bed soon, he showed me where he sleeps; on top of a blanket in the hallway on cold concrete. He said 100% of the prisoners here were in for drug trafficking. He wasn’t aware of anyone in this wing who was in for anything else.

We entered the wing´s courtyard, about 50 foot square and brimming with prisoners playing cards. It has the ambiance of a backyard barbque except for the overcrowding and stanky armpit funk. The warm sunlight and barb-wired exterior wall were reminders of the outside world. There was a parilla-grill and kitchenette for dishing out meals. On one wall there were 2 kiosk stands selling bottled water, coffee snacks, ect… I hadn´t expected all this enterprise, so I asked James how it works. He said the prison system is all about holding foreigners here and extracting dollars from them to pad pockets and subsidise the rest of the prison. The establishment gets a hefty cut of all the commerce and prisoners have to constantly pay off bribes. Most embassies give their nationals a little money to keep them alive and most of these prisoners have money or get it from their families. For $5 a day you can eek by and for $15 you can live pretty well. If you have $0 you can clean clothes and toilets for a couple bucks a day. If you don’t have money and you don’t work you are going to die: one cannot survive on only the food provided.

The other wings of the prison only house Peruvians and function much more like a conventional prison. There isn’t so much commerce and maybe the handouts are better. But since there are actually violent offenders: fights and stabbings are common.

James introduced me to an English bloke in his early 30s. Simon was supposedly one of maybe three prisoners here who was actually innocent. The Peruvians thought he was in on something he wasn’t, and he’d been rotting there for 6 months awaiting trial. Trials can take up to 2 years, and most people only serve 2.5-3 years of the usual 6 year sentence. If you get caught with over 10kg you get a minimum 10 years, and I met several of those.

I walked around and talked to a dozen more people. European accents are everywhere, but I also talked to Colombians and a Mexican. Of course I wanted to hear everyone´s story of how they got arrested. It´s tough to ask, and even harder to hear the same story repeatedly. Here’s how the system works:

Foreigner comes to Peru trying to make a years salary in a weekend’s work. The Peruvians sell him the cocaine and then rat him out to the cops. The mule gets busted (almost always at the airport) and the cops return the drugs to the informant. The dealers can then resell the coke repeatedly as long as they pay off the cops. The foreigner rots in Peruvian jail where they milk him for dollars. The cops get to look like they are cracking down on drugs.

I gave James the bag of gifts I bought and told him to be generous. It consisted of 2 big bags of oranges, a current USA Today, and the international currency of incarceration: cigarettes. He about shed a tear when he saw the oranges. He said fresh fruits and veggies were about the best thing visitors could bring, as all the provided food was profoundly vitamin deficient. We said our goodbyes and I again braved the corridor to escape the prison.

Callao didn’t look as bad as it did before I went in. I reflected on seeing people locked up and exploited far from home. A young-looking male foreigner walking the streets of Lima gets offered drugs 2-3 times a day; so I’m pretty certain there`s no drug-crackdown going on. But from gradeschool to “gringo prices” to getting tossed in a Peruvian pen; I guess some people are always going to exploit the outsider.

*** Thanks for reading everyone. I will officially and thoroughly return to San Francisco July 30, and I’m bringing 10 kilos of blow!!! Kidding. But what does blow is the guinea pig vote incredibly ended in a tie: 31-31… So we’re gonna have another vote on what happens in a tie!!! Kidding. I’m off to find a place with warm rodent in the kitchen (and hopefully on the menu.). :) ***

–Lucas