The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare (14 page)

‘Another day in Los Teques,’ said Eddy.

‘You need to be careful all the time,’ said Silvio. ‘Especially in the passageways. Those crackhead trash will stab you for the price of a stone.’

What made it worse was that it was a visitor who was killed, and a woman. In Venezuela, the familia was supposed to be sacred. Anyone who started trouble on visit day would be shot. That was the rule.

But Eddy was right – an hour later the visits were back on. The rancho was shut down, but mothers, nieces, daughters and so on continued filing into Maxima with bags of food, whiling away the afternoon eating and shagging their partners in the cells. The whole prison was one sick, sadistic place. Life was nothing.

We later heard the women were a mother and daughter.

‘It was his wife, that’s whose head he blew off,’ said Silvio.

‘I’d hate to see what he does to his enemies,’ said Eddy.

‘They say he was off his head on crack,’ said Silvio. ‘That his wife missed the last visit day and in his drugged-out mind he believed she was with another man.’

‘Not unusual in these waters,’ said Eddy.

‘No, they said she missed the day because she was sick.’

After that I was on edge. I’d heard one killing and gunfire for months, but this was the first time I’d seen someone murdered right in front of my eyes. I realised how easy it was to get killed in here. You just piss off the wrong person who happens to be on crack and has a gun and you’re dead. I could only make sure it wasn’t me. I wasn’t going to die here. I had a family to get home to some day.

‘
IRLANDÉS, VISITA,
’ SAID ONE OF THE LUCEROS TO ME, POINTING OUT TO THE passageway. I was sure it was the Irish consul, the old guy. I hadn’t seen him since my first few days in Macuto, which was over two months ago. That seemed like a lifetime ago now. So I walked out into the corridor and up to the barred gate where one of the
aguas
– the cops, so called because they were dressed in navy-blue uniforms – was on sentry, sitting on a chair. There was no sign of the consul. Up ahead I saw a small man, about my height, with narrow shoulders. His hair was brushed to the side and he wore glasses. The cop stood up and opened the gate, and I walked through. ‘I’m Father Pat,’ said my visitor, holding out a hand.

‘How ya doing,’ I said. He was dressed smartly in civvies: shirt, jacket and trousers. No dog collar. I put him down as being in his late 60s.

‘The consul told me you were here,’ he said. He spoke in a slow drawl. ‘I visit the Irish who come for a stay,’ he laughed. ‘Billy, the other lad, he’ll be down in about an hour. Did you meet him?’

I was amazed. Another Paddy in this hellhole and an Irish priest who visits prisoners from the old country. ‘Never met him,’ I answered. ‘A couple of dodgy lawyers in Macuto jail told me there was someone else, but I’ve never seen him. I was starting to think it was just some story.’

‘Billy’s young,’ said Father Pat. ‘Mid-20s. Has been in about a year. And those lawyers, they’re doing good work to get him out.’

‘Pair of chancers – said for 10,000 euro they could get me free and home. Didn’t believe a word.’

‘Ah, yes, but they do good work.’

I doubted it. I told him how I got caught in the airport after trying to do a run for a drug gang back home.

‘I see,’ he said, his face showing no emotions. He wasn’t one for judging. He was a fan of Irish sports, the GAA, and filled me in about a couple of the football games back in Ireland. The sliding economy back home got a mention too. ‘It’s getting worse, I hear.’

‘I’d still rather that than be here,’ I said, and Father Pat laughed.

I told Father Pat about the beatings, stabbings and murders I’d seen and heard about. ‘I know, it’s crazy,’ he said, shaking his head, a trace of sorrow in his voice. ‘That’s the way it is in the jails, Paul, and all over Venezuela. I’d like to tell you otherwise.’ I didn’t tell him what the cops did to me in the National Guard’s antidrogas headquarters. That night was now filed away in the dark corners of my mind.

Father Pat went on to give me some background on the government. President Hugo Chávez was the chief and he had been in power since 1999. He was elected in a landslide victory on a ticket to take the country’s oil wealth out of the hands of Venezuela’s wealthy minority and spread it out to the majority poor who lived in the slums. It was a revolución, Chávez called it. He also won praise for improving human rights, such as getting better access to education for the poor.

‘To some he’s a god,’ said Father Pat. ‘They believe that. They’d die for him.’

‘The state of this place,’ I said, ‘no sign of angels in here.’ We both laughed.

All the while the crackhead cell-block outcasts in the passageways were walking up to Father Pat with tall stories for money. ‘Padre, I am sick and need to call my mama.’ He passed no comment and just fished note after note from his pockets to give to them: small sums of 2,000 bolos (about 40 cents).

‘You know what they’re going to do with that?’ I said. ‘They’ll put that towards buying part of a stone. You know, crack cocaine.’ But he made no comment. I stood there clenching my teeth. I wanted to punch the cell-block outcast scum and send them packing.

Father Pat, who said he had been a priest stationed in Venezuela for more than 35 years, gave me his take on the revolution. He was no fan. The poor were less hungry all right, but Chávez was currying favour with the underclass. ‘Breadcrumbs for a vote.’ Piece by piece, Chávez was turning Venezuela into a Cuban-style country, a communist government masquerading as a socialist revolution. It was my first real insight into Venezuelan politics. You were either for or against Chávez. ‘They want to either kill him or take a bullet for him,’ said Father Pat, ‘there’s nothing in the middle.’

Some good news for me was that Father Pat said he could get me some money from an NGO back home in Dublin. The Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas sent over cash to inmates such as myself locked up abroad to make life a bit better in hellhole prisons like Los Teques. ‘I’ll bring it in for you,’ he said. ‘I did it for Billy. They send it to me.’ It was a one-off payment of 500 euro. I was delighted. Every penny would be needed inside. I didn’t even have a cup or a plate, or my own cushion to sleep on.

‘I’m not planning on staying here for eight years,’ I said, telling Father Pat about my plan to apply for early parole after eighteen months – and get it.

‘It’s possible,’ he said cautiously, ‘but you’d have to get your Spanish together.’ Father Pat knew about the psychological test you had to pass to qualify for parole – which you had to do in the local tongue.

All of a sudden he pulled a small Bible out of a shoulder bag he was carrying. ‘I’m just going to say a few words,’ he said. He read a couple of Gospels and catechisms, phrases such as ‘love thy brother’ echoing throughout the passageway where a few days before I’d seen a man shoot his wife’s head off. I was no Mass-goer, but I remembered the prayers off by heart from my days as an altar boy when I was a nipper. The words flowed back to me and then we ended it. ‘Amen,’ said Father Pat.

‘Amen.’

‘God be with you.’

‘God be with you.’ I wasn’t a religious man, but I was open to any solace from this place I was in. If it was a priest with a Bible, so be it.

Father Pat then took hold of a little silver box swinging off the end of a medallion he wore. It was where he kept the host for the Communion. He popped open the lid, took out one of the wafers and placed in my hand.

‘Amen,’ said Father Pat, blessing himself.

‘Amen.’ I felt my spirits lift.

* * *

I needed to make money – and fast. I wanted to sort myself out with a few basics, such as a tobo to store my few toiletries and clothes, like my Irish rugby jersey. I also needed kitchen basics, such as a fork. I was getting tired of scooping up the food with my fingers in the rancho. I still had the coke from the haul the cops seized in the airport. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I knew flogging it in the wing might mean a beating from the bosses – or maybe a bullet. Selling drugs was their trade. Making money was ultimately why they were jefes – and in this case they made a killing off their captive customers in the wing. But I needed cash to tide me over till my sister’s Western Union came through. The 350 euro I’d asked for might take a while. It was going to Mike’s contact in Colombia. How long it would take to arrive in Caracas I had no idea.

I had the coke in the talc bottle hidden in my wash bag. But it had been a few months since I’d got caught in Simón Bolívar airport. Did coke go off? I didn’t know, but I thought it wise to try it out before thinking of selling it. I didn’t want to snort it myself. My head wasn’t in a good place, and the last thing I needed was a load of paranoia from the coke. I was good mates with Eddy and thought he would make a good guinea pig. The idea twigged in my head when one evening everyone was talking about it being his birthday the next day. I had the perfect gift for him.

‘I have a surprise for you tomorrow.’

‘What?’ said Eddy, picking his nose.

‘A few grams.’

‘Where’d you get it from?’ he said quickly. We were standing out in the yard and he looked around to see if anyone was listening, then turned back to me.

‘I swallowed a couple of balloons. If I shit it out in the morning I’ll give you a bit.’ That was the story that I gave. I wanted him to think I’d swallowed the coke in condoms and that’s how I had got it into the jail. That’s how many did. They’d carry it for weeks like that, passing it out when they went to the toilet, then washing it (or not) and swallowing it again. I didn’t want Eddy to know I had a talc bottle full of about 300 g of coke in a wash bag sitting on the ground in the yard. I trusted him, but it was best he didn’t know. At the time, a gram inside cost twenty-five thousand bolos, or about five euro. So I had a stash of some five million bolos, or one thousand euro – massive money in the prison. So much that a crackhead would slit your throat to get it.

* * *

It was a bit after 9 p.m. and the usual time to go to sleep. I’d been moved from my spot on the floor in the hallway where I spent my first night and had been given a ‘lovely’ space in the toilet. That night myself and two others went through our nightly routine preparing the floor where the three of us would squash into the small area.

After the last of the prisoners bathed, by ladling water over their heads from an oil drum in the corner, myself, Ricardo and a Veno went into our ‘bedroom’. We first ran a couple of rags over the floor to dry up the water. Then, armed with pieces of cardboard, we stood over the small area next to the squat toilet and spent about ten minutes fanning the floor to dry it as best we could. The pieces of cardboard then became our under sheets. We put down a piece each and rolled our colchonetas over them. The Veno tucked himself up against one of the walls and Ricardo against the other. A gap of just a few feet in the middle was my space. It was awful. I could only sleep on my side. And the whack of BO off the Veno was terrible. He worked in the kitchen and stank of stale sweat and whatever slop they’d cooked that day.

None of us was comfortable. Over a few nights we tried to bed down in different ways to see which worked best. In the beginning we’d agreed to sleep with our heads at opposite ends. ‘Irishman, you are smaller than me,’ said Ricardo, ‘it is better this way.’

‘We’ll try it out,’ I said. My head was now close to the door to the toilet, with my feet stretching out nestling between Ricardo’s head and the Veno’s. It didn’t work – for me, anyway. Inmates wandering in to use the toilet in the middle of the night were stepping on my face. It went on till the next morning. ‘Aggghh, fucking bastard,’ I shouted every few minutes after my forehead or the side of my face got stood on.

On my first morning after a night in the toilet I woke up to the usual cries from the lucero shouting ‘
levántate
’ (‘get up’). I wanted to punch him in the face. I hadn’t got a wink all night. I stood up and stretched, my knees cracking, feeling as if my bones had been put through a grinder. The ground was covered in sticky piss. I lifted up my colchoneta and as usual the cardboard was soggy around the edges and the cushion damp. I felt like a caged animal lying in piss – and not even my own.

Vampy wasn’t impressed in the morning, as I’d been waking up most of the 70-odd bodies squashed on the floor in the cell next to us with my roars. ‘
Tú, mama huevo,
’ (‘You, cocksucker’) he said with a scowl over my roars at night from the toilet. ‘Fucking, fucking bastard.’ I waved him off. I was wrecked and not in the mood for him. And what was he complaining about? He had his own bed – a privilege for arming the bosses with his DIY weapons.

* * *

I was standing out in the yard chatting to Silvio. One of the inmates started shouting at me and pointing up. ‘
Irlandés, compañero,
your country.’ I raised my eyes to a ledge about 20 ft above, to the Church wing. The Church wing was where inmates went to dry out. A nuthouse run by evangelicals. Good for rehab, I was told. No drugs, no sex with visits, nothing. There was a guy with a mop of mousey-brown hair and pale skin.

‘Father Pat told me about you,’ he said. ‘You’re the Irish guy?’ It was Billy, the other Paddy. So he really did exist.

‘Yeah, that’s me. Are you coming down?’ I shouted up.

‘I dunno, I might do. I’ll talk to the jefe.’ He needed permission first.

That was the chat over. Short and sweet. It was too hard to talk to him at a height, shouting over the noise of everyone else chatting.

* * *

Most of the afternoons I passed sitting out in the yard. Many of the others were out on jobs they’d been assigned by the prison: lugging out rubbish, working in the kitchen or sweeping floors. That’s why Maxima was known as the workers’ wing: most had some job keeping the jail going. Those of us who stayed in the cell block were mostly the gringos who didn’t have good enough Spanish to work in the prison. There wasn’t much to do other than sit in the hallway and watch DVDs. They were on around the clock, action flicks such as
Rambo
or Steven Seagal movies. Mostly stupid stuff with blood and guts. For the Venos, right up their street.