Bittersweet Infamy - #48 - A World Behind A Wall

Episode Date: July 10, 2022

Taylor tells Josie about Bolivia's infamous San Pedro prison. Plus: the deadly tragedy of Cameroon's Lake Nyos.

Welcome to Bittersweet Infamy. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in infamy. The shocking, the unbelievable and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, but the stories are always sweet. Welcome to episode 48 of Bittersweet Infamy. What do you think you'll be doing when you're 48 years old, Taylor? I already hate this game. Sorry. I was once told that if you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you're pissing on the present. That's good. I like that. I try to abide by that. Then I'm going to start us off with a little minfamous, a little thing I like to call a minfamous. You did coin it. I did. I think you'd be like, I don't know. And then you're like, it's

okay. That's exactly how it went. That's a pretty spot on recap. Yeah. I have trouble spelling it sometimes because I'm like, min, wait, infamy, min, min, okay. Do you want to know a trick? Sure. It's infamous with an M on the front? Oh, yeah. I know that trick. Okay, cool. Agile trick. You know what? We support regional variants of the word minfamous. Take it. It's open source, baby. It's yours. Do what you want with it. Creative commons. Let's go. Yeah, I got those royalty checks coming in. I can buy a chopper. I'm collecting royalties on your idea, by the way. My apologies. But you're not going to rectify it. You're just going to keep collecting. No, you know what? My lawyers will be in touch with yours. So it's all good.

In the northwest corner of Cameroon, country just south of Nigeria in the little curve of the African continent, there is a highland clear blue water lake called Lake Nios. It's not a very big lake. It's pretty small. 1.9 kilometers by 1.2 kilometers. So, you know, a sizable feature in the landscape, but not terribly large. I don't like this lake. You what? I don't like this lake. You don't? Well, I mean, no, you shouldn't. Okay. All sides are pointing to don't, because it's part of the Memphis. Yes. It's relatively deep. It's 208 meters deep at certain points, the deepest point. And it is known as a MAR, M-A-A-R, which is the geological term for a lake created by volcanic activity. So it's in this highland area, and there's volcanic

remnants all around this area. Local folklore tells a tale of a cursed lake, where a long, long time ago, a local group attempted to cross Lake Nios, and their leader pushed back the waters, creating a path at the bottom of the lake, not unlike Moses. Okay. And as this super naturally powerful leader held back the waters for his people to walk through, a mosquito, according to legend, is said to have bit his testicle. Oh no. I know, right? Fuck. That's such bad timing. He looked really cool. So he became distracted, of course, tried to swat it away, and he dropped his concentration, and his people were immediately drowned by the cascading waters that came to fill in the bottom of the lake. And as a result, there is a village of the dead at the lake's floor.

Oh. Yeah. Pretty gnarly. That's ominous. Some of the first peoples who came to inhabit the lake area through kind of these legends of this cursed lake, and there's a few other ones, but the mosquito testicles, by far, my favorite. I can see why. Thank you. I'm not late as though. These first peoples decided to inhabit an area that is above the lake, so in kind of what's called Upper Nios now, and it's not, certainly not along its shores. Over time, more and more people came, and the legends weren't as important in their customs, and so they created what is now known as Lower Nios, which is a small village just down from the lake, hence Lower Nios. Yes. And in the 1980s, Lower Nios had a sizeable population. A few thousand people lived there,

which was unfortunate because August 21st, 1986, overnight, 1,788 people died, along with around 8,000 heads of livestock, just completely flat on the ground, not breathing dead. I know this one. You do? I know this one. That's fine. Like this lake, I knew that lake was bad news. You knew it was bad news? I suspected it was bad news. I didn't know until you just said it that this was, in fact, the lake that I was thinking of. Yeah, this is the bad boy. That evening of August 21st, 1986, there were reports of a rumbling that could be heard by the lake, and also a strange mist that was emanating from it. When the few survivors awoke the next morning, there was an absolutely deafening silence. No birds were chirping, not even insects trilling,

just flat dead silence. I can't even imagine. That sounds horrible. It'd be so terrifying, not to mention all the dead bodies of your neighbors and their livestock. What a horrifying thought, my goodness, those poor people. There was absolutely no way that you would know what was happening, of course, too. No, no idea. There were initial concerns that there was some type of disease that was being spread really quickly through the area, and anybody who encountered a survivor, they couldn't really, of course, get the story straight from them because, one, they had no way of understanding what had happened. There was really no explanation, but all of them had severe trouble breathing,

and so therefore speaking. A lot of them reported that their lungs had a burning sensation still, and they had rashes across their bodies. Initially, like in the days after, there were concerns that a hydrogen bomb explosion or a neutron bomb explosion had gone off, like some freak accident, or some carefully planned testing or something. Everybody just looking for some sort of explanation for something that seems so unexplainable. However, the residents of Upper Nios, the small town that's just up from the lake, and up in elevation from the lake, were largely unharmed. There was not the massive devastation. You must know what happened at Lake Nios. I do. Would you like me to say it, or would you like to say it? I want to hear you. I want to hear what you remember.

An eruption of gas from the lake in my head. It's carbon dioxide. It might be carbon monoxide. Carbon dioxide. Yeah, boom. That's like a viscerally horrifying thought to me that I've always, as long as I've known about this story, I've found it very frightening. It's extremely frightening. The good news is, though, I suppose. Oh, good. Please. This type of lake, this kind of very deep water lake in a warm climate that is close to volcanic activity, those conditions don't happen everywhere, for one. And then the other good thing is that they've learned a way to off-gas the lake, to relieve some of the pressure. So what happened at Lake Nios is exactly what you said. There was an explosion of carbon dioxide, but the conditions of this lake created this in such a way that it

would have what's called a limbnic explosion. And limbnic just means like a lake, like a freshwater lake or swamp. Good vocab word. Thank you. I know, right. A good scrabble word, really. And because the lake was so deep at certain points, and the volcanic activity would release CO2, it would only stick at the very, very bottom of the lake, because it was so pressurized. And of course, when things are pressurized, you can pack more and more gas into them. You can dissolve more and more gas into them, just like a soda can. When it's pressurized like that, all the bubbles are within the liquid, and then when you release it, all the bubbles come out. But it's also true, it's not only pressure that can create more carbon dioxide in the water, but also the

temperature of the water. If it's really cold, you can dissolve more and more CO2. So the combination of like this really deep water, so the really high pressure, but really cold. And because it's a warm atmosphere in this part of Cameroon, in most of Cameroon, but in this part especially, there was never any transfer of heat in the lake. So like in a lake that freezes over, all the heat would dissolve from lake, and then that CO2 could dissolve up to the top and then out in safe amounts. But because there was year-round this like warm cap of water, the CO2 gathered and gathered at this bottom of the lake, gathered into this high pressure cold area, and it had no way of escaping. So it build and builds and builds and builds and builds until

they're actually not sure what caused Lake Nios to burst in this way. There could have been a nearby landslide or some type of volcanic activity at the bottom of the lake that caused the bubbles to rush up. But it's not just like bubbles in your coke can that go to the top and overflow, it's like an insane amount of CO2 that bursts out of this lake. CO2 is heavier than air too, is it not? Exactly. And that is why it was lower Nios that was so negatively affected while upper Nios was more or less fine, is because that really dense CO2 that was moving at 45 miles per hour in what we would call maybe like a wave that was 500 meters high. Just kind of how you would imagine water spilling down into lower Nios,

the CO2 did the very same thing. My goodness. There were a few survivors. All they can surmise is that they were in a less ventilated space, so they weren't exposed to as much CO2, or they just happened to be maybe in a higher elevation than somebody else in the house or somebody else, you know, in terms of their topography. Or a miracle, like who knows. Yeah, yeah. A lucky miracle. Since they've discovered that it was the CO2 concentration at the bottom of the lake, they have been able to, the Cameroon government and the United Nations have been able to install these pressure valves. So it's essentially a pipe that's at the very bottom of the lake, and it expels the CO2 gas in small amounts at the top. So there's almost like there's a little

artificial fountain that's coming out of Lake Nios, and there's a few of them. They needed a few, not just one. But now the lake is largely safe to live by. They have installed CO2 monitors that will sound and alarm any residents if the CO2 levels get higher than a certain amount. And what of lower Nios an entire population that just died overnight? Did they rebuild? Is it abandoned? What happened? Many people had to be relocated just because so much of the livestock had been knocked out, and that was their livelihood. So while there wasn't necessarily like long-term devastation to the site, their homes, their livelihood were not feasible anymore. So of about the 4,000 survivors, 3,000 needed to be relocated. Which is quite a lot.

My sympathies to everyone affected in this story, my goodness. Can we bring it back to the mosquito testicle? Let's bring it back to the good times. Remember when that mosquito bit that dude's ball? Yeah, that was fun. Hogtown, The Six, or Toronto. Whatever you call it, you can fly non-stop to Toronto on Porter Airlines. When you fly Porter, you'll enjoy free fast Wi-Fi and beer, wine, and premium snacks included with every fare. You'll also love that our planes have no middle seats. Discover why Porter has been Eastern Canada's favorite airline for the last 16 years. Visit flyporter.com. Porter actually enjoy economy.

In August, we will be celebrating our 50th episode. So we have decided to host The Mel Tees. 50% behind the scenes look at who we are and how we make the podcast. 50% bullshit fake awards ceremony. We'll be asking you to submit nominations, favorite moments, etc via our Instagram stories. So look out for that. Or as always, you can email us, which no one ever does, at bittersweetinfamyatgmail.com. What a beautiful 50th episode little gift to send an email. Yes, thank you, please. Someone send us one email, not a death threat. You don't even have to capitalize things. You don't have to put your names in there. You don't have to put your name. The bar is so low.

Just say hey. We'll be commemorating our favorite episodes and moments among the categories. Best Minfamous. So it could be that horrible murder lake. Who knows? Anything. We've got the category favorite fictional Josie, which needs unpacking. Because Josie, true or false? You and I have talked amongst us about the definition of a fictional Josie a couple times now. This is true. I think I have a very like existential view on the subject that I feel I need to convince you of. It's a very philosophical category, really. So you know how at the beginning of the episode sometimes we do like a little fake fictional version that is basically just a narrative device to use a second person perspective?

You're on a beach. You hear gulls crying. Yes. A fictional Josie is a version of Josie that is in that story who joins a sex cult who gets killed by a volcano. You know whatever it is. However, fictional Taylor can also win best fictional Josie because fictional Josie is the species. A fictional Taylor is a subcategory of fictional Josie. A fictional Mitchell is a subcategory of fictional Josie. All fictional characters are just variations on a fictional Josie in my mind. I totally get it. Thank you. And I hope the viewers get it as well. So the best one of those is up for grabs. The listeners get it. The real ones. The viewership. This is going to be a terrible award show. And last but certainly not least, we will be awarding the bittersweetest story. The

story that I don't even know what we mean by it yet, but we hope through thoughtful discussion and through taking your opinions on Instagram. If you want to give them, we can come to some sort of shared conclusion. I'm excited for the Melty's. Yay. Yes, me too. And I'm so excited for the Melty's that I am submitting one last swipe for favorite fictional Josie. Ooh. I've prepared a fictional Josie for today's story. Oh my. And I also kind of did that because this story at various points when I was pulling it together, I was like, this feels like a Josie story. Like I can imagine Josie coming in with this story. So I was, I guess it had your vibe. So I put you in it. Okay. Today's story finds you in the Andean city of La Paz, Bolivia, where the air is thin because

you're up high, but you're in a valley. So it's also cold. Oh, shit. And to address the elephant in the room, I'm sure you're like, what, who's this fucking Jabroni saying La Paz? Yeah. I'm very glad you mentioned that. My family is Spanish. It's how it's legit how I was like taught to talk, listening Spanish. You're in an area of La Paz called San Pedro. And originally you only came to La Paz to visit, but you were like, I just got to stay. And so now you teach English in San Pedro where you live in a small apartment alongside many others like it, similar, but none quite the same, adjoining a communal courtyard. This fucking checks out, dude. Fuck. So it had your vibe. Yeah, no, totally, totally. I have taught English in places. In my head specifically, there's this

road in Bolivia called the Death Road. And it's like a very famous bike tourism spot. So in my head, you came there to do that. Oh, cool, cool, right, right. You needed to ride the Death Road. You needed that. You know how you are with a djemel and you're a junkie. I know, living on the edge, deathy edge. Calling your apartment small would be an understatement. It's pretty cramped. And it doesn't have indoor plumbing. You and your neighbors use a communal facility. Okay. But you've really spruced the place up. You've got a beaded curtain, a lava lamp, a flat screen TV with cable. So you don't miss your program or the news from back home. Whoa. This is exciting. Yeah, it's everything's looking up. And the paint is a little dingy, but your

neighbor is a painter named Jose who lives with his wife and they're two very cute niñitas and one on the way. You know from the gossip in the courtyard that the family's been stretched thin financially with the new baby coming. And this is a pretext for you to put some Bolivianos in their pocket. Oh, that's okay. Cool, cool, cool. Look at you, empathy. That's so nice. That's dope. Okay. That's how you know it's fictional. Yeah, thanks, Taylor. Even if it's cramped, your place is pretty decadent compared to how the folks in some of the other enclaves of San Pedro live. Bolivia is among South America's poorest countries and there's a real gap between the poorest and the most privileged. You live in an area of San Pedro

called Pinos, which is one of the nicer areas. Pinos. The real high rollers live in a secure enclave called Posta. And typically they don't even let people from the other neighborhoods in there, but you happen to run into a guy at a local festival. Noche de San Juan, maybe. Name Martín, something or other. Government admin guy who lives in Posta. He even has his own jacuzzi, which is a rarity in Bolivia. Oh, whoa. He's a real high roller and he was drunk when you met and you convinced him to let you come and try it. So you got that to look forward to later. Sounds kind of creepy, but okay, I'll take the positive vibe on it. Yeah. But before you go to jacuzzi it up, you need to go to the medical, the doctor,

because you've been having a blocked nose, a headache. You think maybe you're a bit sick. Oh, I don't want to spread it around in the jacuzzi. You're right. No, that's poor house gas behavior. So you stir out a bed and you put on your favorite shirt. You go to your little sun drenched balcony overlooking the courtyard. There's some hole in the wall restaurants. Some of the local women are setting up fruit stands. There's a little round pool where some kids are splashing. Okay, I like it. You can see a group of tourists coming through way earlier than they usually would, but you wave to them and they're like, whoa, an American. You're like, keep it down. Don't draw any more attention. Thank you. And you chat and exchange stories and send them on their

way. Okay. Finally, you get to the medico who's only a short walk away from your door. He does his little stethoscope thing and he's like, you've just got a sinus infection. Here's some antibiotics and take a couple of puntitos in the meantime and you nod and leave. Okay. And once you're out in the courtyard, you take the puntito, which is a Bolivian slang for a little key bump of cocaine. Oh, and so you take the puntito and sure enough, your sinuses feel very clear. You're very awake, very alert. Your gums are tingling. You want to find those tourists and tell them your life story. You want to get in that jacuzzi now. I'm ready to go. Yeah, take on the motherfucking day. How I love health care. You are gonna want that health care soon because

this guy nearby, he overheard that you were American and he really hates Americans. Okay. So he starts screaming all kinds of abuse as he runs towards you brandishing his belt like a weapon. Oh, shit. It's custom in San Pedro to let the children disperse before you attack anybody, but he doesn't seem to know that because he just blows right by these kids splashing in the pool. And then you remember that you've heard of this guy before from your neighbor, Jose, the painter, and he is new here and his name is Mario and he's a narco terrorist. Fuck Mario. Fuck. And Jose, the neighbor, money is stretched thin because he put the family into debt smoking cocaine base. Your friend with the jacuzzi. Yeah, embezzled millions that doctor you just visited stabbed

his wife 14 times. Oh my god. And Josie, the reason that you just had to stay in La Paz is because you got busted at the airport smuggling two kilos of cocaine disguised as makeup and hair products. Now I get it. Yeah. And so you watch Mario coming at you as he sprints past the cute little pool that one week earlier you watched him mob drown someone in. You would scream for the police, but they never come into San Pedro. You'd be better off screaming for the Easter Bunny and Mario's big belt buckle gleams as it catches the sunlight swinging round and round as everyone else runs inside and slams their doors and you sigh and think to yourself, I'm going to need a lot of buntitos. Fuck, dude. Josie. Holy shit. Welcome. Welcome to El Penal de San Pedro,

aka San Pedro prison, Bolivia's most infamous penitentiary, a place where the inmates govern themselves, prisoners live with their families, tourists come and go and even stay the night. Daily cocaine use is a fact of life and everything has a price even the cell you live in. Holy small. I don't know if I fully understand. It's a prison that's like a city within a city. First thing that I should confirm. Sorry, the first thing I should get out of the way. I took a little bit of poetic license there for the sake of constructing a fictional Josie. Okay, yes, as one does. As one does, this is a men's prison, although as I said, wives and children do live in here. Okay. If you really got busted, smuggling out,

blow in a makeup palette, they would send you probably to a women's prison called Mida Flores. Okay, okay. It's the same like city within a city situation? No, it's different. It's I think it's closer to a conventional jail. I think it also has the most like wonderfully euphemistic name for a jail of Mida Flores. Yeah. Steinbeck. Rough. Before we dive in to San Pedro or San Pedro, when I'm, it's hard, you know, I'll just stick with San Pedro because I've been doing San Pedro, but when I'm talking about it, it'll flip back and forth. I don't, you know, whatever. Yeah, we can cut switch. That's cool. So before we dive into San Pedro, let me give you the world's shortest history of Bolivia. Ooh, okay. Like real, real, real, real short. So please know that I know that

I'm glossing over a lot. Yeah, put your seatbelt on. We're going to go fast. The roots of modern day Bolivia begin 2,500 years ago upon the arrival in the area of the Imara, although there seem to have been other groups there already, and the establishment of the Tiwanaku Empire, then the Inca come into it, and then the Spaniards come in and fuck everything up as they constantly do. On August 6th, 1825, Bolivia declares independence from Spain, during and after which follow a series of revolutions, coups, military dictatorships, juntas, elections marred by fraud, all while members of Bolivia's many indigenous groups, including the largest groups, the Imara and the Quechua, live in immense poverty.

Okay. Naturally, we can't recap the history of any troubled South American nation without introducing the star of this and every international saga, the United States of America, the main characters of the world. So for those who don't know, in the second half of the 20th century, the CIA ring-led Operation Condor, a campaign advancing its own interests in South America, which involved assassinations, torture, abductions, financing right-wing coups against communist governments, thousands of disappearances, terrorism of any kind you can name. If I've got a speed through the history of Bolivia, I definitely can't unpack the entirety of Operation Condor, but suffice it to say, its very immediate impacts are felt all across South America to this day

and may have a bit to do with why Josie's friend Mario was sour on the Americans. Ah, okay, belt buckle Mario. Yeah, BBM. Yeah. If you want to know more, the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales has a great website documenting Operation Condor and I will drop a link in the end credits. Oh, cool. Oh, very cool. Thank you. The website's in Spanish, but it has a taw in the upper right corner. There's an E-S-E-N toggle. Hit E-N and it'll switch to English. Yeah, okay. So how does this manifest in Bolivia? In the late 60s, the U.S. finances and trains the Bolivian military who kill Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara. Right, yep. The U.S. backs a coup against socialist President Juan Jose Torres and his assassination while in exile. Operation Condor

lasts until the early 80s at which point America doesn't stop its toxic meddling but merely switches its tactics. Bolivia's money historically has come from resource extraction including mining and the cultivation of crops like coca leaves. Yeah, coca has a long history as a stable resource and important cultural artifact for the Inca people and it's also where that white shit you sniff at parties comes from. And while the latter half of the 20th century saw a booming cocaine use, it also saw the rise of actor turned president Ronald Reagan and America's war on drugs. Sorry, I think I'm still kind of reeling because I got really pulled into that fictional Josie. I was like enjoying my little apartment. Would you call it the best fictional Josie?

Who knows? We'll see. Things to consider. We'll see. Oh man, now I have a coke problem and I'm in prison. Yeah, that's the fucked up thing is that like if you stay in this prison for any length of time, regardless of whether what you're there for includes drugs, regardless of if you've ever done drugs in your life, you will develop a coke problem. Yeah, it's just like in the air. It's just like contact high kind of thing. Yeah. So all of this means that all of a sudden you've got big bro USA both incentivizing and threatening South American countries that are big on coca production, including Columbia, Peru, and of course, Bolivia. Yeah. In order to undermine the production of this staple resource because of America's own domestic drug policy. This policy

then becomes reflected in Bolivia's own domestic drug policy called le milocho or law 1008, which regulates the use of coca and lays down harsh punishments for cocaine production and trafficking. Okay, so previous to this coca is kind of like a traditional kind of cultural thing, but it's not necessarily an issue. Is that kind of the vibe of things or it's not as much of an issue. So the upswing of this is that the Bolivian police are incentivized to make as many drug buses they can, because that brings in more support from the Americans. However, this has also resulted in rampant corruption at pretty much every level of Bolivian law enforcement, justice and government with folks taking from the Americans with one hand and taking from the

drug traffickers with the other. Just spread in the American dream. That's really what's happening here. Truly. Yeah. Though the country recently underwent a relative stabilizing period under Evo Morales with poverty decreasing, that presidency ended in 2019 with an election crisis and alleged coup and the recent sentencing of the president who came to power during said alleged coup, Janine Agnes to 10 years in prison. Mira Flores, not San Pedro. Whoa. That's something I'm talking about, like the pandemic issues too. Lastly, before we move on, it's important to very briefly discuss how the Bolivian justice system works or more accurately does not. Okay. Once you're arrested, you're sent directly to jail. Do not pass, go do not collect 200 Bolivian as well.

You await your trial. Oh, there's no bail system or there's no, you know, habeas. I don't know the specifics of their bail system, but I know that this is a country rife with poverty. Right. So if there were, it would be pretty useless, probably. Okay. Pretty inaccessible. Yeah. And plus imagine you're innocent and now you have just been sent to San Pedro to do coke all day and develop a problem that will put you back in that jail. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And at trial, the burden of proof rests on the accused to prove themselves innocent, not the prosecution to prove them guilty. Right. Fuck. You as an individual have to prove to the state that you haven't been trafficking or using cocaine in any way, which is what resources do you have against the state?

Very little. Well, you've got your money. You can bribe the judge. If you've got your money. Yep. If you've got your money. And if you don't, you're in hot water and you're probably in San Pedro. Uh-huh. And it's not a jacuzzi, that hot water. No, I mean, someone there has at some point in history had a jacuzzi, so. Okay. All right. Wow. So this is sort of a caveat. For this story, I collected much of my info from a nonfiction book called Marching Powder, written by Rusty Young, based on the experiences of San Pedro prisoner Thomas McFadden. Okay. That sounds like maybe an expat or a foreigner. A Tanzanian born British guy who got busted in 1996 smuggling cocaine out of La Paz in a out of La Paz, gotta stay consistent, in a suitcase with a hollow compartment.

Oh, oopsie. The book tells the story of McFadden's time in San Pedro from 1996 to 2003. And it's kind of what happed the wider world to what was going on in the prison. Okay. Okay. Yeah. In Bolivia, the goings on of the prison are well known. But prior to this, it wasn't something that I could grab and read off a shelf, you know, right? Yeah. So as a result, much of what we know about the prison specifically comes from this era. Since then, they've tightened up on things like tourist visiting, or at least they claim to have. And other methods of the prison's governance will doubtlessly have changed where possible, both with the prison itself and the wider Bolivian context, e.g. the details of the court system that I just explained to you. I've sought out current info,

and I've done my best. But if I get something wrong, let me know. Yeah, one thing's changed quickly too. So even in the span of your research, things could be different. I am many things. I am not an expert on corruption in Bolivia. You know what I mean? Yes. Yes. I too. I'm not versed. Sweet. Well, here comes 90 minutes on it. Let's go. So Josie, you've been found at La Paz International with your conditioner bottle full of blow. If you had contacts within the police, this is where you'd start handing out your bribes. Okay. But you don't. You had one contact on the Bolivian police a long time ago, but you burned that bridge, so. Oh, shit. What did I do? It was a boat unsent text messages or

something. It doesn't. You've done a lot of coke since then, so who knows. Oh, yeah. You were probably on coke and angry. Who knows? Yeah. Oh, no. So you're processed through La Fuerza Especial de lucha contra el narcotráfico, a.k.a. FELC and a.k.a. the drug sniffers. Oh, colloquial. Yes. You'll confess. They'll make sure you do. And then you're taken in a cab at your own expense to a walled off plot of land in the middle of one of the nicer areas of La Paz. Oh, wow. Okay. There are police that patrol the outside. They're there to keep the prisoners in and admit visitors in and out, and not much else. They would generally prefer not to go into the prison. Oh, okay. Okay. Like, these certain types of guards or these are like the only guards that are there. These are more or

less the only guards. There would be other guards. I'm sure the solitary section, which is called la grula. I'm sure that has its own devoted guards. That sounds grueling. It's basically left to the prisoners to run the show in there. Holy shit. Okay. Once you get behind the gates, and again, this is you, you wouldn't be going to this prison IRLZs. You'd be going to meet a Flores, but in for a penny, in for a pound, you know. Yeah, yeah, I'm ready to go. That's fine. Once you get behind the gates, you're sworn by a group of taxistas, and these are basically prisoners who are paid to convey messages to other prisoners. Oh, paid by the prison or paid by just commerce within the prison? The movement of money to prisoner tends to go in the opposite

direction. These are paid by other prisoners. Yeah, okay. As I've said so many times, money talks in this context and being a taxista is a low paying job, often taken on by those without other transferable skills in order to earn some income while at San Pedro. Okay. The cops push you past the taxistas and you're brought in for processing, which involves an ingreso, which is a fee of 25 bolivianos or five US dollars at the time, 363 now. Oh, shit. And the time in context here is from whenever this is something that Thomas McFadden would have reported. So that's about 20 years ago. So it's 363 now. Okay. And that's your admission to San Pedro. The officer will then pull out a big book full of what seem to be apartment listings, and he tells you you need to buy your cell right

now. What if you don't have money money? That might mean a cold and dangerous night out in the courtyard, Josie. Holy fuck. As frightening as that thought might seem, do not buy this apartment from this cop because he is going to be charging you a 50% finders fee. Oh, how am I supposed to know that? This will not have been communicated to you at any point, by the way. It's very like people come in and learn the ropes from other people who know the system, but I can imagine how baffling and confusing this all must be right from the jump. Exactly. And terrifying. Ways to get apartments, you could look at signs posted on the doors of outgoing inmates. You could look at the public listings at inmate businesses, or you could hire another inmate to

do the negotiations for you as your real estate agent. Wow. Okay. The cells range from being cramped, subsistence level accommodations in dark indoor areas of the prison marred by violent crime, to roomier abodes not unlike small apartments in secure areas populated by your government types, your narcotics kingpins, anyone with some actual cash flow. Yeah, anybody can shell it out. When you buy the cell, you also pay an admission fee to the district in which it's located, as well as a title transfer fee. Jesus, there's districts within here? How big is this area? I actually can't find the number, but I can show you a picture of it in relation to the area of La Paz that it's in. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it's like a, perhaps a standard prison size,

really. I was thinking it would be more like a huge, huge neighborhood, but it seems like all the buildings are connected in some way, or if they're not connected, they're very close. Yeah. It's very condensed and it's behind. Supposedly it's a thick wall, some sand, and another thick wall is what separates it from the outside world. Oh, wow. Okay. For to make escaping hard. But it is like right in the middle of shit. Like if you're in that high rise, that's, you know, off to the, off to the right there, like you're looking down into this prison. Oh yeah. That is wild. It's quite a trip. Yeah. The good news, by the way, though, is when you buy the cell, you legit own the cell. The cell is yours. Oh, okay. Okay. So a condo. Is there an

HOA? Like what's happening? Your district is your HOA. Your delegado is your HOA representative. We'll get to it. Oh my God. Okay. Okay. So you can resell it if you want. If you need to upgrade or downsize, maybe that co-cab, it gotta hold you. It happens. It does. You can buy another cell as an investment if you want. Oh, landlord got it. Maybe you're looking down the barrel of a long stay. You need some passive income. It's true. So if you're the wealthiest of the wealthy, you're going to be staying in Posta, which has a star rating of 5.5. Okay. What's star rating? The star ratings are funny because the star ratings are 5.5, 5, 4, and then I think it just drops to zero. I'm not sure. In order to get into Posta, which is this very opulent, you know,

dollar, dollar Scrooge McDuck area of San Pedro, you need a recommendation to get in there as a means of controlling the quality of resident. You need someone to vouch for you. Oh, wow. Whoa. Okay. Okay. You will also, of course, be paying an expensive fee to get in. And all of these fees, by the way, they go to Section Administration, which is this HOA that you're talking about. And Posta is where you find your LED televisions and your Jacuzzi's. Everything is carpeted and furnished. You can use your cell phone. Okay. See, when you actually were first describing in the opening, the dude who has a Jacuzzi, and then when I learned it was all prison, I thought that was outside of the prison. So this is inside the prison. Jacuzzi's in prison. Jacuzzi's in prison,

Jacuzzi prison. Josie, am I not Taylor Jacuzzi? Would I lie to you? That it's true. It's true. You are to inherit a long, long line of Jacuzzi funding. As long as they don't leak, it's coming to me. Damn, baby. Damn. So you can also openly receive booze through the gate. Wow. Cells in Posta are in your thousands of US dollars. Holy shit. I'm imagining like a doordash situation too, where it could be like, I love, I love the food that's, you know, down at Rosie's bakery, like bring me some. Pay the guard. Oh my God. And then pay a taxi instead of bring it in. Yeah, done. Whoa. From there, the next nicest area is Pinos, which gets five stars, and then Alamos, which gets four. Is there really a star rating situation

that happens? Like this comes from Thomas McFadden's book, but he like, he's kind of a raconteur who tells all of these wild yarns that you're kind of like, I don't know if I, is this just an embellishment? Is this the real, you know, love it bad? Yeah. But everything that he wrote that I looked into was corroborated somewhere else. So I'm shit like this where it is. And I'm like, you know what, I bet they put stars. Yeah. Yeah, or some type of, you know, that's the nicest one. This one's okay too. This one's good. If you have family, like, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Whoa. Pinos and Alamos are outdoor areas where cells from big courtyards that are secured from the indoor sections at night. So not unlike our fictional Josie, you know, you at least, you were able to

have someone wire you some money. So you were able to, you know, land on your feet. Yeah. In this situation. Fuck dude. These will cost you in the hundreds of US dollars, but you will get a comfortable bed, cable television, a private cell, though again, probably no bathroom. Right. Yeah, shared bathroom. Yeah. But I'll take it. You'll, you sure will after I tell you about some of these other sections. Uh-oh. Alamos has a charity room that it lets out to people in need, which I think is nice. Yeah. I believe it's also in Alamos that an inmate lived named Barba Choca, who was caught with 4.2 tons of blow on his plane in a drug bus known in local infamy as El Marco Avión, or the drug plane. Whoa. Now, now Barba Choca, he wasn't satisfied with the meager size of his cell

or its poor view. So he simply commissioned an extension and had a second floor built onto his cell with a nice view over the prison wall. Oh my gosh. That is fucking wild. Okay. It's like right here. My finger is pointing at it. It's like a little Romeo and Juliet balcony situation. Yeah. That's Barba Choca's extension that he had built on his cell. It looks lovely in there. There's like little picnic tables in the courtyard, a little Coca-Cola sign, which is ironic in a lot of different ways. Wow. So the non-fancy sections, which is probably the nicest thing you can call them, inside are called San Martín, Prefectura, Palmar, Guanay, and Cancha, some of which have zero stars. I don't know if it's all of them, but at least one. 0.5 maybe, if you know, there's a nice

view, a good breeze. It won't have either of those things, Mila. There will not be windows or windows. Okay. You don't want to be caught walking around in these sections at night. During the day, you're relatively safe, but after hours, you'll be locking yourself in your cell lest you get caught between a dead-end hallway and somebody with a knife. Oh, God. Not that it's so great inside the cell. You might be sleeping five of you in a stooped room that a grown adult can't comfortably stand up in, or you might of course be in there with your entire family. So this family arrangement apparently isn't unique to San Pedro when it comes to Bolivian prisons. Oh. Oh, wow. Okay. Because poverty is rampant, when a parent is incarcerated, it often makes more financial

sense for the entire family to move in with them. According to a 2018 census, some 2,103 children live within the prison. Holy shit. That's a lot of kiddos. Children leave to go to school and return in the evenings, while wives often set up businesses within the prison to bring in more money for the fam. My God. Okay, so the children can leave the walled area. They leave the prison. Yes. They come in and out, and people have been known to use their kids' mules to bring things in and out. Well, of course, yeah. You'd have to. Yeah. If the kid gets caught, you just grease the guard to look the other way. I mean, it's not like the kid doesn't live in prison already, so, you know. Yeah, what are they going to do? Put him in jail? Like, fuck. Kids might also help by doing chores

around the prison or selling handicrafts to tourists and visitors. In general, the rule, as I mentioned, is that we are not to do violence or upsetting prison shit in the presence of the niños. Right. So, like, the kids were playing in the pool when Mario came at me with the bell buckle. That was a big faux pas, and you would have been well within your right to fucking murk him later, and people would have helped you. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm sorry. Did you say murk? Yeah. Okay. Just, just get in the lingo. That's all. However, this obviously does not mean that there are never bad things done around children or two children, which I will address later in the podcast in a section called The Really Terrible Stuff. Oh, okay. This one's got a downer section,

unfortunately. Okay. It's a story about a prison. I don't know what you wanted for me. No, exactly. You gave me, you gave me a prison story, and you gave me jacuzzi. So, I mean, you've done, you've done a lot already. It's a bad scene indeed to be poor in San Pedro, as you'll be purchasing your own food from other prisoner-run businesses, be they convenient stores or restaurants. The prison does technically serve food. It has prisoners who are being punished, serve up a watery soup twice a day that nobody eats, and one prisoner alleges can give you hepatitis. It seems so. So, there's that. There's hepatitis soup here. Okay. Don't, don't eat the soup. Hep soup, yeah. You also won't be scoring an ensuite bathroom anywhere outside of the more

plush accommodations, so you'll be relieving yourself either in a bucket or in the horde squalor of the jail's century plus old bathrooms, which is also probably where you'll be coming or going from the first time you get the shit kicked out of you for no reason. Oh, God almighty. The prison was constructed in the late 1890s, designed 40 years earlier by the winner of an architecture contest, question mark. Oh, good for them. Congrats. Congrats. Congrats, 1840s person. This was built to house 500 prisoners today. It houses over 3,000 and families and, and kids as we discussed. Yeah, everything, yeah. As for when it turned into a narco-capitalist pocket economy, it's hard to say, but yeah, my observation would be that it seems like

everything started to spin on blow and money when the US got involved in South America. Would be my observation. Well, it seems to like, like you were saying with the prison guards, how they don't really like to go in. It's just like there's always economies happening in prisons as it is. Of course. But if there's more guards overseeing things, then that has to be more hidden, more hidden. So if there's just not as many guards, if it's too dangerous for them to go in, if it's understaffed for whatever reason, that economy just doesn't have to be hidden as much. And it gets to the point where like everything can be out in the open. The guards are active participants in the economy. And, and active, yeah. They can receive money happily. Yeah, which I'm sure happens in more,

you know, high security jail and prison situations, of course, but this seems like it's very out in the open. Yes, expected, encouraged. Yeah, yeah. Institutionalized, the cops are collecting a 50% finders fee on the cells. Right. Yeah. No, exactly. Exactly. That's how you make your wages. Holy fuck. So how do you earn your keep speaking, or speaking of making your wages? Yeah. You might, like fictional Josie, you might teach English to your fellow inmates. Oh, oh, shit. Okay, that was not. See, there's an angle for you. Okay, okay. You could do the prison podcast, sweetheart. Behind bars. Nice. There's not a lot of bars here, though, it seems like. No, there's no bars on the windows. Yeah. And you can wear your own clothes. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like a whole another

little city within. It's a very strange place. Oh my gosh, so weird. Okay, okay, continue, continue, continue. You could become a taxista, which are the messengers that we talked about before. This is basically, it's not super safe in San Pedro, like we said, someone catches with that you're an American and that could be lights out for you. Right. So if you want to just stay in your cell and you've got money, you can pay someone else to go do, to be your Uber Eats, basically, right? Yeah, yeah. You could open up a store or sell phone cards or somebody had like a cell phone hacking thing going to like get long distance calls for free. Oh. If you have any kind of transferable skills, they'll probably work here. Accountants can account, cooks can cook,

painters paint, electricians electric, doctors dock and barbers barb. Yeah, yeah, no, totally, just anything that can that can fuel an economy, anything that people want you can you can do. I'm sure there's like laundry service and all of it. Yeah, everything, everything. You can make art for other inmates or to sell to tourists. You can try to become a tour guide yourself. You could become involved in the prison government and become one of the delegados who run each section and oversee the spending, negotiate with the prison governor and other higher ups on behalf of the inmates and appoint the cabinet that distributes things like sports, culture, education and health supplies. Oh my gosh, is there like a community garden? Like what's there's like soccer tournaments,

there's festivals, there's fiestas, I don't I couldn't swear to a garden if there is it's for sure in one of the nicer sections because they're the ones that are outdoors. I don't know that garden would last that long here outside of maybe the 5.5 star location. Right, yeah, yeah, people kind of pilfer from it. And the delegados also have the power to administer punishments like sending prisoners in their section to solitary. So you'd better hope your delegado is one not corrupt and two on your side. Holy, so a prisoner is in charge of punishing me? Yes, although the the guards can can punish and shit to you at their own discretion, obviously. Yeah, but they're like I say they're like, you know what, one more thing we can outsource if if our job can just be

like walking around and collecting Bolivianos to look the other way on shit. That's a that's a good life. Are there elections in here? I mean, I suppose they would be totally corrupt. So could you even call them an election? Delegados run for office, yeah, alongside treasurers together in pairs. Wow. They serve a maximum of two terms, although maybe that's changed since Evo, I don't know. In order to be eligible to run, you need to have been there for six months, and you need to have an un-mortgage sell or else put down 400 US dollars as insurance against embezzlement. Well, that's a lot of money. You run, you hire people to canvass for you, obviously, and then all the votes get read out loud while everyone gets drunk like some sort of horrible survivor finale. Oh my god. Wow.

And it just turns into a party full of like booing and screaming. Okay, very Roman, it seems. Yeah, very, very that, very that, very that. Leave people to their own devices and give them some cocaine and they will recreate the Roman Empire if you give them enough time. Jesus. Interestingly, by the way, prisoners can also vote in Bolivian national elections. So sometimes politicians will like come into San Pedro and like canvas and make hollow promises about justice reform and probably do some blow. Wow. Oh, that's wild. There's pictures of people campaigning in there. Yeah, shaking hands, kissing babies. On that note, maybe if you're in jail, your transferable skill is that you're a criminal. Yeah, no, big time. Well, you're in luck, baby. Welcome to the

source as in the source of the world's purest cocaine. Whether you want to be an enforcer, a dealer, or an apprentice under some of the greatest minds in the history of narcotics production, there's a place for you in San Pedro's drug economy, or as they simply call it, negocios, although they wouldn't pronounce it like that. Right. They would say negocios. Just the business, baby. Just the family biz. Yeah, they got a nose for it. Oh, baby. It goes without saying that since cocaine in prison is pure and dirt cheap, nearly everyone does it. As you would need to simply for sanity's sake, in a situation where everyone you speak to every day is a co-cat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine a nightmare? God. Everyone's on coke constantly, which isn't

great for the paranoia. Everyone's fucking staying up late, chop, chop, snort, snort, snort. So much karaoke. Fuck. Oh, yeah. So much karaoke that turns halfway through it turns. Someone gets really mad. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's oh, and the long, long, very involved stories that you hear. Woof. Yeah. Let's open up a business. No, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's get our noses pierced. Tonight's the night. There is even a story about a prisoner's cat who is known as Crap Cat, and he became addicted to the smoke from the cocaine base. Oh, Crap Cat. So Josie. Taylor. Do you want to hear the recipe for amazing prison cocaine? Are you going to have to kill me after you tell me? It feels like that's a guarded, should be a guarded secret.

It feels like you might accidentally kill yourself if you actually tried to make this. So folks, don't do this at home. Okay. However. Not safe for work or home or any living human beings. Unless you work and live in San Pedro prison, in which case you have like the greatest minds in the history of doing this with a section of garden hose and a cookie sheet that you'll ever find. All right. So first the growers. So these are the these are the farmers who actually make the coca from ground and dirt and seed. God, it's been a long day. They extract a substance called pasta basica from the coca leaves by soaking them in kerosene or alcohol. Right. And it's like a white paste. Okay. Are they growing

the coca leaves within San Pedro? Are those bringing brought in from the highlands or wherever they can find it? They're being brought in from the outside often by wives and children. Okay. Yes. Yes. Sorry. I should be more clear. The leaves are not being brought into the prison. The pasta basica, which is what happens when you soak these leaves in alcohol or kerosene. That's what it gets made into like a little white paste, which is very pasty and bitter sweet infamy, folks. And and it gets smuggled in. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Once inside the prison, the pasta basica is treated with water and sulfuric acid. You then stir it to gradually separate out the cocaine solution. And then you siphon that out with a hose. So it's a lot

of slow stirring. Okay. Okay. A lot of patience. And so that concentrated paste that you just got out of the solution, once that is filtered and dried, you've got base or base. You can sell this highly addictive substance as is on the cheap as in for cents in US dollars in San Pedro. Or you can add more chemicals such as hydrogen chloride, ether, acetone and strain it to draw out pure cocaine crystals. Wow. And that's what they do. That's and that's cocaine, folks. Don't make this at home. And since drugs are a gateway to other serious crime, as we know from Reagan, mm hmm. It's time, unfortunately, to talk about the really terrible stuff.

So I'm sorry. Okay. Lots of things like child sexual abuse and graphic descriptions of mob violence in this section. So if you're very sensitive to those subjects, you may want to skip ahead to one hour 40 seconds. Okay, sounds good. They're going to wonder how I did it. It's a magic trick. Okay, like, can I skip ahead? No, you're here. You're here with me. I'm sorry. Okay, I'm ready. This is Dancer in the Dark. Once again, I've paused the action for you. That was fun. That was good. That was a good time. If that's what this is going to be like, I'm ready. Okay, so at various points, you may have wondered if it's the best idea to have all of these 2000 plus children running around amongst all these violent criminals, sexual predators,

etc. And it turns out the answer is probably not no. Yeah, no, no recipe for disaster for trauma. During Thomas McFadden's day, he describes a small girl being raped and killed in the wake of a festival. This causes a public outcry and results in a movement outside the prison called Don't Imprison My Childhood, seeking to have the kids removed from the jail. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay, that gives me a little a little hope that that was so, I don't know, widely known and responded to. Okay, I think it will have come out via a Bolivian newspaper like La Raton or something like that. Okay, yeah, yeah. This ultimately fails due to outcry from the prisoners and their families who have no other way to stay together. And due to a lack of an

alternate solution on how to house all of these kids while their parent is incarcerated and their other parent can't earn enough to support them. Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. Because that kid would just be on the streets outside of San Pedro, but without any support. So. Similarly, terribly in 2013, a 12 year old girl in San Pedro became pregnant due to what is believed to have been systematic sexual assault over a five year period by her father and uncle. Yeah, which is a really fucking sad story. When this happened, the prison's minister promised to close San Pedro within three months. An idle threat. Here we are almost a decade later. Yeah, the prison still stands and the kids are still in it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Since then, an Italian Catholic church initiative has

created an in prison daycare staffed by volunteers. Okay, whoa, fall upon the inmate who runs a foul of San Pedro's internal code of conduct. Remember that cute little pool those those kids were splashing in? Yeah, I love the little kiddie pool. Yeah, that's also known as El Botho or the hole. And it is a site for mob justice, including drownings, beatings, electrocutions, and the disposal of bodies. How big is this pool? Jesus. I was thinking like a little kiddie pool. It's it's like a circle. It's like a big that's not an answer. That's a shape, Taylor, not a size. It's like it's I'll show you a picture. Yes, so it's an in ground pool. And there's on the side, there's some cement steps that go down.

And it looks like there's one, two, three, four, five, six, six steps that go down. So it's probably yeah, like six feet to eight feet deep. Inside it is painted a, you know, aquatic pool blue. And there's that's that's what that color is for sure. And there's good poll and octopus painted on the steps and a little dolphin angry octopus angry. It is. It truly is. It is in prison. So but that doesn't explain there's like a happy beluga very happy whale at the very bottom of the pool on the floor of the pool. And it looks like there's also a little seahorse. It looks like it would be at least the drawings are like on the side of an elementary school kind of vibe. Yeah, or like a water themed children's ride at an amusement park. Yeah, exactly.

But no, it's in the pool where you drown the rapists. Okay. So that's that duality that we were discussing earlier. Yeah, life and this place. Highs are high. The lows are lows. Oh baby, are they ever and I won't I will spare you the more graphic details. But some bad shit has gone down in the pool at San Pedro. For those of you who skipped ahead, welcome back here. Have some lemonade. That'll be 50 Bolivianos. Okay, we made it out. Yeah, we made it out. So while we're charging for things, let's talk about these tours. Yes, the tourist tours, right? Mm hmm. Coincidentally enough, the tours seem to have started with Thomas McFadden, who had bribed his connects at the

prison to give him a night out on the town for dinner and clubbing. So just like, you know, when an inmate wants to go out for a bit, for some dinner and clubbing. Yeah, no, super natural, super, you know, whatever. Put on a nice jacket for it with a pretty girl. You know how it is. Oh my God. Oh my God. He gets sent out with this single, low level, very drunk guard to keep him company. So he could have conceivably bolted at any point, but he had no way to get out of Bolivia, I guess, without, you know, because he's a fucking prism, like, yeah, he doesn't have his passport. During this night out, he meets a girl, a traveler from Israel, and he's able to bribe her into the jail where she

stays overnight. She kind of becomes his on and off girlfriend who like half lives in the jail for a while. So she's down to into the prison. She's not being bribed. The guards are being bribed to let her in and out. The guards are being bribed to let her in, like, and he lies and says, oh, that's my wife. She's, you know, visiting from Israel. She's only in town for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then of course, as new, this girl starts bringing back more and more of her traveling companions, like, yo, you need to see this place, you need to see this place, bribe their way in, pay a little bit to Thomas, blah, blah, blah. And of course, every time he's got a lie and be like, this is my cousin. This is my, you know, this is my, my great aunt, blah,

blah, blah. He's this black dude and all these fucking Australian white backpackers are coming. And he's like, that's my fucking brother in law, man. Yeah. Holy fuck. Okay. And while this relationship ultimately doesn't last, you know, these, these, these relationships with travelers and also you're in prison, you're just, you know, you're finding yourself when you're traveling. So that's true. You know, we've said this before, we're different people when we're abroad. So anyway, Thomas realizes there's a revenue stream here. And at the height of the tours, it's only 25 Bolivianos or five US dollars at the time, 363 as of recording to enter San Pedro for a tour and double that to stay the night and chop up some lines of the world's purest cocaine

with your tour guide with different prisoners offering you different tours via taxis to the gate. It's like visiting Napa Valley or like the south of France, like, like you do, but for blow, but for blow. Yeah, exactly. Like chocolate tours, coffee tours, wine tours, blow tours. Exactly. Beautiful. Horrible. It's, it's bittersweet. This eventually this whole, you know, come in, have a tour. This ends with the prison getting written up in Lonely Planet, of course. Oh, shit. As the world's most bizarre tourist attraction. Oh my good lord. So unfortunately, are you telling me that you could have made me a tourist in San Pedro, but you decided to make me an inmate of San Pedro? I said what I said. Don't know how I feel about

that. Maybe if you wanted to be a tourist instead of an inmate, you shouldn't have smuggled all that blow on the airport, huh? You know what? I do what I want. And I'm gonna need you to start taking more accountability if you're going to keep bringing your cocaine addiction into this podcast. I just want to express my true soul. Unfortunately, if you're out there preparing your trip to see the pool that they drown the child sex predators in, you should know that the tourists have gotten much more expensive since the release of the book Marching Powder. Okay. Just owing to the prison's new lease on infamy and that it's become much harder for tourists to gain access inside of the prison in general. Yeah, okay. This is due both to the crimes committed against children

that I mentioned earlier, although neither was committed by an outsider. They resulted in increased security and paranoia across the board. Paranoia not helped by the fact that literally everybody is constantly doing cocaine, I imagine. That's fueling some things, perhaps? Yeah. And also, because a news camera caught the tours, which were previously unofficially denied open secret on camera. So they were filming something and they caught the tours on camera. And prior to this, the official line was no, there are no tours. This getting caught on film resulted in an outcry, which resulted in the cops shutting down the tours, which resulted in a riot because that's an income stream for the inmates. Totally gone. Yeah. This resulted in 80 children being evacuated

from the prison. As far as I can tell, nowadays, walking tours of La Paz tend to bring visitors to the outside wall of San Pedro, not inside. And from there, it's up to you to find a corrupt guard to pay off in order to gain admission. But it's more rare and more expensive than it was. Yeah. I would imagine that a tourist could go to one of the nearby highrises and get like just like a looksie. And that would be that. I don't know. Tours are weird. Who knows? It seems like the draw for a lot of people was like the craziness of being in and amongst this place and having this story to be like, I went in and it was like a city within a city. And we did, there was the first time I ever did bloat. Like there are people who are like, I met my husband

there when we were backpacking. And we tell people we met staying in a prison, like the novelty of this sort of the lonely planet crowd, right? Yeah. Yeah. The adventurism. Yeah. Exactly. It was a little bit of like, sort of pseudo adventurous tourism. And really, I gather that it was and is mostly quite safe for the tourists because nobody wants to have like first of all, you'd much rather in life in general, don't kill an expat because then you've got two governments breathing down your neck. That's just good sense, folks. It's a little rough. Yeah. And then second of all, it's an income source or was a really prominent income source for the inmates and nobody wanted to fuck with that. Right. Yeah. And if you kill the tourists,

then no other tourists would come, certainly. So exactly. And then you're putting a lot of people's livelihoods on the line in a situation where as we've discussed, you can't fucking take a piss without someone trying to charge you for it. Exactly. Yeah. And that's pretty much the gist of San Pedro. There is all these threats of reform that kind of never actually happen. And the other thing too is this is like less we forget because it's so autonomous. There's no bars on the window. This is basically a minimum security prison. You can like fully just go stab somebody. So I mean, probably you probably shouldn't like, there would probably be consequences if you stabbed somebody, you'd get sent off to solitary for a bit. Yeah. Or you'd get more time in jail

or whatever. Or somebody else would come stab you. Yeah. But because of that, it's like, it's a minimum security prison. And the alternative is this other place that's called Choncho Coro, which is like a hardcore maximum security fucking guards riding your ass every day kind of prison. So most of the people in San Pedro are like, I can be with my fucking family here. I can make a living here. You know what I can do a lot of really good cocaine here, which I'm sure is not. Yeah. Not unpleasant until it is. Yeah. Yeah. In 2020, I saw that there was an uprising there because they weren't giving the prisoners and their families COVID tests. So there's that. Oh, yeah, they need to do that. You need to do that. But as for you, fictional Josie, if you

kept your nose clean, pardon the pun, your sentence should be up in about eight to 10 years, maybe less if they release you early due to overcrowding. But in true SP style, there's one last surprise waiting for you on your way out the door. In order to leave, you need to pay the bill for all the water and electricity you consumed over the course of your stay. Oh my God, the entire stay? One last little piece of salt in the wound. Yes. In one fail swoop. And if you cannot pay it, you can't leave. Is that what's happening? Effectively, yes. Oh my God. Oh my God. So let's hope you sold yourself at a profit and haven't blown all your money on Buntitos and various inter-prison protection rackets. Because otherwise, it could mean even more long days and nights in

San Pedro, Bolivia's most infamous prison. What the f**king f**k? Let's say you live like two blocks away from San Pedro, and you run a bakery. All of a sudden, you get caught up, blah, blah, blah, you get into San Pedro, and then of course, a very strange and weird transition. But then you and your family start running a bakery, and it's like, oh, we just moved locations. That's all. Exactly. And you're living your same life? And also now my wife is addicted to the world's purest cocaine, which I can get for cents on the dollar. Yeah, yeah, there's not two. Yeah. F**king, it's just so, like, the visual of it in this picture is wild, because like, the walls are painted aqua pretty, and there's like a bright yellow and blue awnings, and you can tell that it's

like tin roofs, and it's falling apart in some places, but it doesn't look... Doesn't look like my idea of a prison. No, certainly not a prison, and it also looks like it might be kind of like an okay neighborhood too. Yeah, and it's surrounded by this, like, these skyscrapers and the scenery of La Paz that's in this valley within a high mountain is quite beautiful. Yeah. You might be forgiven for thinking it's something other than it is. A school or religious community that has like decided to live in this area or something, or the walls are for security to keep people out instead of people in. I think that's what I keep coming back to is like this question of who's staying out and who's coming in and who's staying in and who's coming out.

My idea of prison is so much more like it's a hard defining line. Those who are in want out, and those who are out do not want to go in, but this plays with that in such a weird way. Yeah, like kids are coming in and out. Tourists are coming in and out. It has the purest cocaine, so there might be some people who are like, fuck it, I'm going to San Pedro. You know, it's just like... Exactly. And of course, because of the corruption, there's people who have absolutely no reason to be there. They're just forcibly put there. And so that that question of like, should they be in there or not is not even, I mean, that's kind of... And the guards don't want to go in. The guards won't go in. The guards just stay outside. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It feels stranger than fiction,

but when you think about the forces driving a prison that works this way, which are basically like capitalism, corruption, not that unbelievable. So you're telling me, though, that you were about to smuggle all of that cocaine that you hadn't once thought about what prison in Bolivia might be like. I was really high. Okay. And on that note... Oh God. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find your podcasts. We usually release new episodes every other Sunday, and you can also find us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy.com. And if you liked the show,

consider subscribing, leaving a review, or just tell a friend. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this week's episode were the book Marching Powder by Rusty Young. Also by Rusty Young, I read an essay called A Law Unto Themselves, San Pedro Prison in La Bath Bolivia, published in Architectural Review June 15th, 2018. I read an article called Inmates at Bolivia Prison Stage Uprising Over Lock of Medical Services Amid Suspected Coronavirus Deaths in VOA News, that's from July 28th, 2020. Bolivia San Pedro Tourist Prison, 20 Years On, by Vicky Baker and BBC News, 25th February, 2017. I read a photo essay called Inside a Bolivian Prison Village by Andrea Carriba in Orion Magazine. I read Self-Governance in San Pedro Prison

by David B. Scarback in the Independent Review, volume 14, number 4, spring 2010, pages 569-585. To learn more about Operation Condor, you can visit www.cels.org.ar slash especiales.espdciales slash plancondor slash ien slash. I also read a translated version of Bolivia's Law 1008, also known as Le Milocho. I looked at an overview of corruption and anti-corruption in Bolivia, hosted a Knowledge Hub, the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index Entry on Bolivia, and a 1985 Human Rights Watch Report called Bolivia Human Rights Violations in the War on Drugs. For this myth, I used Geographics YouTube channel, their episode, The Lake Nioh's Disaster, A Silent Death That Killed Hundreds. And I read an article by John Richard Saylor,

published June 9th, 2022 at Atlas Obscura, and the article is called The Invisible Threat Beneath Himmler's Deadly Lake. Our interstitial music was by Mitchell Collins. I saw you're currently listening to It's T Street by Brian Steele. Thanks for listening.