Prison Tourism in La Paz

Readers:

A researcher in La Paz recently approached me wanting to write an article about the infamous San Pedro prison in La Paz. The jail is home to some of Bolivia's most famous inmates (including former Pando governor Leopold Fernandez) and also to a new niche in the Bolivian economy, prison tourism.

For reasons that will be apparent in the article below, the researcher asked to publish this piece without the public use of her name. Normally we wouldn't do this, but in this case, because of the circumstances, we are making an exception.

Jim Shultz

Prison Tourism in La Paz

The 'world-famous' San Pedro prison has been in the Bolivian news again in recent weeks. In the usual manner, a media outlet, this time La Rázon, printed articles referring to the widely acknowledged presence of tourism, drug fabrication and sales in the prison. Prison officials denied it through news media the following day, and the story soon died off.

Ironically, the same week heavy rains were cited as the cause of the collapse of a wall in the 114 year old prison. According to the network ATB, as many as four prisoners were injured severely as the wall fell on their cells. The prison governor claimed the only damage was material, “Gracias a Dios”, and that although around 10 cells were affected, the prisoners who live there will not be moved. “They’re just going to have to make do where they are, make themselves comfortable or rather uncomfortable a little more than they are right now.”


The official story from prison officials is that inmates at San Pedro prison are well fed and well cared-for, do not produce cocaine, and tourism is not widespread because it is not allowed. To see a recent interview with the prison governor click here .

But if one digs a little deeper one finds that the “unofficial” account of this prison appears to be the more credible one, backed up by endless first-hand accounts and photography.

In addition to the reporting done by the Bolivian newspaper La Rázon, Wikipedia.org hosts pages in a surprising number of languages concerning the “peculiar” prison, the English page directing you to articles written by international journalists working with the BBC, ABC, and others. The popular guidebook, Lonely Planet (2007 edition and others), has a special, three-quarters of a page block devoted to explaining the prison’s absurd, workings and history of tourism. Finally, for those who read English, this website functions as a trailer to the 2003 non-fiction book, Marching Powder, with pictures taken by author Rusty Young while he lived inside San Pedro for four months researching the book.

These reports present a Cárcel San Pedro that is a place with its own set of rules, hierarchy, and ethics. Hundreds of women and children live inside the prison with their incarcerated spouses and fathers. Elections are held yearly to choose prison representatives that hold great power.

Prisoners must pay for everything they require. They must buy or rent cells in one of the five sections of the prison, which have different hotel-like star ratings. Notoriously, some wealthy prisoners live in luxury hotel-like suites that include cable TV, wireless Internet, private bathrooms, fully stocked kitchens and more, while poor prisoners find themselves sharing a small, unfurnished cell with 10 other men if they are lucky. Food, clothing, bedding and basic hygiene supplies are not provided for prisoners.

While there is usually a trained doctor available (in the form of a prisoner doing time) and a pharmacy inside, these are all basic rights that prisoners at San Pedro must pay for or, if they cannot, simply do without. Also, prison guards do not enter the prison except for once every morning to take roll call, which means that violent fights, often with knives, are frequent and often fatal. Perhaps these latter two realities – the lack of basic amenities for poor prisoners and the absence of police security – explain the current monthly death rate for prisoners: 4 out of a population of 1500.

Some of those deaths can probably also be attributed to the widespread use of highly addictive drugs, including cocaine, cocaine base and crystal meth. It’s not hard to envision how a prisoner might get hooked on one of these addictive drugs, getting to the point where all his money goes towards getting high until he starves to death. According to some of those who have investigated conditions at San Pedro, these drugs and others are not only available inside the prison but manufactured there and thus sold at literally wholesale prices.

In Marching Powder: a True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail, former prisoner Thomas McFadden describes the extent to which corruption is embedded in the criminal justice system. Bribes are a part of everyday life for those who live or are connected to San Pedro (in the case of many judges and prosecutors as well).

In fact, there is a great deal of maneuvering on the part of police officers throughout the country working to get transferred to this specific prison in order to reap the benefits of collecting bribes big and small on a daily basis. With a big enough colaboración (Bolivian for bribe) prisoners can leave the prison with a police escort for a day, walking about town, dining in fine restaurants, even going to clubs till four in the morning.

The corruption, writes McFadden, reached the highest levels. The book portrays a bizarre night when the prison governor at the time came to McFadden’s cell with two young women, a bottle of expensive whisky and 100 pesos that McFadden was supposed to use to go buy five grams of cocaine for the party to share. When the startled prisoner tried to resist, Governor Montesinos insisted, “The coke in the prison is better than anywhere else in the whole of Bolivia. And if the governor of the prison can’t get some coke, then who can?” (Page 128).

Tours of the prison started about ten years ago with McFadden as the first tour guide. Today, the reported price for a tour is 250 Bolivian pesos, about $36. In order for tourism as a business in the prison to function smoothly, guards and higher officials need to be paid off. According to a prisoner interviewed by La Rázon, “70% of the [250 peso] fee goes to the police and the people who organize the foreigners for the tours,” the rest being split up among prisoners.

Though prison officials deny the tourism, one only needs to pass by the prison during the day to see tens of foreigners gathering in the plaza for their guided visit. Some, like the prisoner cited above, insist that tourism is good for the prisoners because it creates much-needed cash-flow as tourists buy not only drugs but handicrafts, eat in prison restaurants, and give a few coins to the most desperate, begging prisoners.

However, in my view this type of tourism contributes to a blatant abuse of prisoners’ rights and human rights in general. A handful of pesos from tourists is not a substitute for the government providing the inmates with basic food, shelter and medical care (and as many as 75% of prisoners in San Pedro are simply awaiting trial and have not been convicted of any crime). Thousands of pesos a day being poured into the prison via tourism serves mainly to maintain and sustain the system of corruption that governs the prison and turns its inmates into the rough equivalent of animals in a zoo.

This is something tempted tourists might keep in mind before they pay their money and pass through the door.

For information regarding prison activism see these organizations:

International Cure
ACLU Prisons Project