"SEWING SHUT THEIR MOUTHS IN ORDER TO BE HEARD"
Dear Readers:
At the end of April the jails here in Cochabamba became the scene of a dramatic hunger strike, by men and women who often spend years behind bars without ever having their day in court. Over the past few weeks I spoke with prisoners and their lawyers to put together this article, a version of which will run in the next issue of the US national publication, "In These Times". I think it is a story worth sharing.
On another note, I invite readers to have a fresh look at The Democracy Center's recently revamped Web site located at: (http://www.democracyctr.org), which now reflects The Center's dual work in the U.S. and in Latin America. And for my regular correspondents, I will be in Mexico on a work project until the middle of the month, out of e-mail contact but back in touch on my return.
Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center
"SEWING SHUT THEIR MOUTHS IN ORDER TO BE HEARD"
Cochabamba, Bolivia
The San Sebastian women's jail is a decaying brick and adobe building that sits across the street from a palm tree-lined plaza filled with the sound of passing traffic. Behind its entrance of two broken wood doors ready to fall off their hinges live 270 women. Late last April four of them picked up heavy sewing needles and thread and stitched their upper and lower lips together until their mouths were sewn completely shut. Ten others crucified themselves with their hands and feet tied to the iron bars of a second floor balcony. Unanimously, the women of San Sebastian joined in an angry hunger strike that had also swept through Cochabamba's three men's jails.
"GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT"
Of the 1,380 men and women imprisoned here, more than a 1,000 have no official sentence, have never had their day in court, and have no idea when they might be released. More than eight of ten have been jailed on some sort of charge related to the political and police war against Bolivia's coca leaf crop. A typical offense is to be found transporting kerosene (an ingredient in the process that turns the coca leaf into cocaine) and accused of being a narcotrafficer. "But the police are so corrupt here," says Hugo Montero Lara, a lawyer with the Cochabamba Assembly on Human Rights, "that you might just as easily be carrying gasoline for your car." All accusations related to drugs here are prosecuted under a draconian law ("Ley 1008") in which the accused are presumed guilty and jailed automatically until trial, a rare event which at best takes years. The law stands in direct violation of both the Bolivian Constitution and the UN Charter on Human Rights. It is also widely assumed here that the statute came right out of the US Embassy and its "War on Drugs" pressure on the Bolivian government. Says Montero Lara, "It is a law that was written in English."
Many of the thousand plus prisoners who incarcerated without sentence often do not go to jail by themselves. In the women's jail alone more than 200 children live as inmates with their parents, the product of having no where else to go and the dedication by inmates to keep their families together. These families live under conditions that most people in the US would find unimaginable. Actual jail cells are a luxury, going only to those who can afford to pay for them. The purchase price for a wooden cell barely the size of a bed is $300, about a third of an annual salary for many families here. Most prisoners sleep on mats in small winter-chilled concrete courtyards. The government provides less than $11 per month per inmate for food, health care and other basics, far less than what it costs to survive. "If you are poor, a campesino, without someone on the outside moving things for you," says an ex-prisoner named Antonio, "you are forgotten."
THE WAIT FOR PROMISES TO BE KEPT
Hunger striking prisoners presented judicial officials with a list of ten specific demands, with two basic themes - swift action from the courts to release those who were imprisoned without sentence and improvements in the inhumane conditions under which prisoners are forced to live. Prisoners swore to carry out their hunger strike, "hasta las ultimas consequencias", to their deaths if need be. Startled officials begged for time and prisoners agreed to a month. On the deadline date for action at the end of May (Mothers Day here) prisoners were presented with a draft agreement negotiated by officials, human rights groups and the Catholic Church. The agreement promised some of the legal reforms demanded but as lawyer Montero Lara notes, "The Government never does what it says it will do." At a meeting on May 29, prisoners agreed to give officials one more month to act on their promises. If they don't, "we'll start our hunger strike again, immediately" one prisoner at the San Sebastian men's jail told me, "we're not going to any more meetings."
Just up a long hill from the jail where the women wait
for those promises to be kept stands one of the city's most
famous monuments, the statue of "Las Heroinas" (the Heroines).
The monument commemorates a battle in 1812 in which Cochabamba's
women and children waged a heroic last stand against invading
Spaniards. On June 29 the women and children of San Sebastian
may well be forced to take up their own battle once more,
over such radical demands as the presumption of innocence,
the right to a day in court and a safe, decent place to
sleep while they wait for that justice to move forward.
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