The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare (34 page)

The cop stood with one foot in the passageway and one in the wing. He called off the visitas. Inmates threw their arms around their women and children and said goodbye, then the families ran into the passageway where the cop shouted, ‘
Correte, correte.
’ (‘Run, run.’)

About an hour later, Billy and the other gringo lads appeared at the wing door. Pale faces. Shaken. The cop ushered them in. ‘Jaysus, you made it,’ I said to Billy.

‘We did, boy, we did.’ I was relieved beyond all imagination. Billy had his whole life ahead of him – no young man should see the end of his days in this hellhole.

‘It was awful up there, awful,’ added Dieter, who had been with them in their makeshift tent. ‘We didn’t know if we would live.’

‘I was woken up by the shooting,’ said Billy, talking quickly. ‘There were holes all over the top of the tent.’ He stopped and caught his breath. ‘If we hadn’t been sleeping we’d be dead.’ His eyes widened as if his last words had just jumped back into his head and he’d understood them for the first time. Part of me laughed inside. Billy’s fondness of lying down probably saved his life.

‘We had to run,’ said Dieter, shifting on his feet as he spoke.

‘It was awful,’ said Billy. ‘Porto was the first to run out. Bullets lashed into his legs and he fell back. One of the prisoners walked over and shot him in the head. He was screaming at them, “No, no.” There was nothing we could do.’

‘Jesus,’ I said. It was only just dawning on me how bad it must have been up there. My spot in the gym seemed peaceful in comparison. I knew I’d done well to steer clear of the roof and the disco.

‘We were thinking should we stay or go,’ said Dieter. ‘We had to go. After a few minutes the shooters were piling up on the roof from Wing 1.’

‘We ran off,’ said Billy, ‘to the stairwell down to the Special and Mostrico wings. There were machine guns pointing in at us. Bullets flying everywhere.’ He stopped again to catch his breath. ‘We just had to run.’ They took refuge in the Special. The inmates there knew gringos weren’t behind the shooting and let them take cover.

‘What was it all about?’ I asked.

‘We don’t know,’ said Billy. ‘Something about a row in the disco. Then we ran out of the wing when a cop came after the shooting ended. Down in the passageways outside. It was horrible. Full of bodies, Paul, full of them.’

‘How many? Dead or hurt?’ I said.

‘Loads, we walked about 50 metres and there were bodies all the way. Some covered with sheets. Must have been dead. Others had visitors looking after them, wrapping bandages around them. Blood, blood everywhere.’ Billy, I knew he was already a bit unstable and this might put him over the edge altogether. ‘It was an awful sight.’

‘All right, Billy, all right,’ I said. ‘I get the picture.’ I knew this was bad for the injured. There was never a doctor in on a Sunday in the jail, and likely not in the clinic in Los Teques town either. I also knew from my own experience there probably wasn’t a jail ambulance available to get them there.

Vito started shouting. He had been part of the stampede that ran from the yard into the safety of the wing when the gunfire started. ‘These people, these fucking people – when will it be over? All this war. Fighting. Shooting. When will it be over?’

The talk soon changed. What would happen now? ‘The Black Cops,’ said Billy, ‘they’ll be in. They’ll sort these boyos out.’

I was told they were an elite unit called the Guardia Negra, or ‘Black Cops’, but I didn’t know if that was an official name or just what the prisoners called them. We all went out for número as usual a few hours later, at 5 p.m. The main cop, Napoleon, came into the wing, a truncheon hanging from his belt. He was with three other aguas and a dark, slim guy in his 50s with curly black hair. He was dressed in a cream-coloured jacket over a low-necked T-shirt that showed the top of his chest. A sharp-looking guy. Reminded me of Sonny Crockett from
Miami Vice
.

‘That’s him,’ said Billy. ‘That’s the boss guy.’ Billy was already familiar with the Guardia Negra. He’d been in the prison a couple of years before, when the Black Cops had stormed the jail during the last
masacre
and more than ten inmates were reported killed.

The Black Cop boss walked up and down the yard while a cop counted us one by one, doing the usual número. All the bosses in our wing had their guns hidden, stashed in holes in the wall and in false floors, I imagined. The National Guard weren’t edgy doing the count, and the Black Cop boss had his hands in his pockets. They knew we hadn’t started the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We were the workers’ wing; they knew that.

Later I saw the rest of the Black Cops, a motley crew of what I believed were mercenaries. One wore a pirate bandana emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, black combats and a T-shirt, and had a sword strapped on his back. He looked like a ninja. Another wore a baseball cap and black jeans. Another had six guns sticking out of holsters all over his body, strapped to his arms, legs and waist. One of them had the handle of a knife, gleaming white like ivory, in his ankle boot. They all had bullet belts around their waists and slung over their shoulders and carried heavy machine guns. They didn’t look afraid to use them. There were seven of them, each with his own individual look, so we called them the A-Team and the Magnificent Seven. They were mean-looking guys, and I was sure they had carte blanche to kill. No questions asked.

But I didn’t hear another shot fired in the jail. All the cell-block bosses knew that these boys meant business and had long ago put down their arms.

The next morning I stepped out into the passageway to go the canteen for breakfast. The passageway was spotless. There was only the smell of disinfectant.

In the days that followed, I heard the A-Team swooped into all the other wings and removed about 60 prisoners, going from cell block to cell block standing down the ‘army council’ of bosses, underbosses and luceros. They were all identified, bundled into prison vans and whisked off to other jails. A bullet in the head awaited many of them. They’d broken the code in the Venezuelan jail system: you don’t start trouble on visit days. The familia was sacred. The price for putting the inmates’ loved ones in danger was paid with your life.

Word was the National Guard in the watchtowers had been taking photos of the asesinos on the roof, but I didn’t know if the troops even fired a round. Their job was to make sure no one escaped. You could be shot to death inside for all they cared.

A few days later the visitors came back in as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t believe it. One of them brought in a newspaper, which ran a big story about the Los Teques riot. I got a hold of it and my eyes scanned across a headline of one of the reports: ‘
Domingo de Sangre
’, or Bloody Sunday. According to the story, six were killed and eighteen injured, including three visitors. One newspaper said two women were among the dead, meaning they were visitors too – somebody’s mother, wife or girlfriend. Ambulances brought the dead and injured to hospitals, it said. We heard most were ferried to the hospital in Los Teques town in private cars or any way they could. I’d say it was like the injured bought a lottery ticket on the way, by hoping a doctor would be on call when they got there. The slain inmates were in their early 20s to early 30s. We were sure a lot more lost their lives and were hurt that day. We later heard that three or four had died from their injuries in hospital, bringing the death toll to at least ten.

There were two reasons given for the riot that led to the bloodshed. One was that a cell-block jefe had invited a group of prostitutes for the fiesta. A bunch of lags got boisterous and tried to seduce them (presumably without paying) and other inmates came to ‘rescue’ the chicas hired for the night’s entertainment, sparking a row between the two groups of prisoners. Guns were used to settle it the next day.

In another – more believable – account, a prisoner had made ‘inappropriate’ comments about another inmate’s wife being dressed ‘provocatively’ in the disco, a tiff that later ignited the bloodshed. The word in Maxima was that the guy from Wing 1 who made the offending comments was a cell-block jefe. He had been invited to the husband’s cell block, in Wing 2, the next morning by the boss of that wing ‘for a chat’. As a peace gesture, he turned up unarmed and without his henchmen, a rarity for a boss, believing nothing would happen to him on a visit day. He was wrong. An asesino was waiting for him and shot him in the head to settle the row. The shooting show then kicked off when the compadres of the slain jefe came out guns blazing in retaliation.

The National Guard were also criticised in a comment piece in the press for not being up to the job of keeping the peace in jails. The writer was on the money there. The opinion article, by a prisoner-welfare group, also said Los Teques was built for 350 but housed 1,800. That meant there were about 400 more inmates than I thought there were.

For now, however, there was peace in the jail. It was great. The Magnificent Seven stood armed to the teeth in the passageways and escorted the cops in for every headcount. I knew no gun battles would break out with them around. The director and all her cohorts went missing, sidelined, for the weeks the Black Cops were in charge. For five weeks there wasn’t a prisoner with a gun in sight.

We were all shepherded up to the roof, wing by wing, for a few hours each night. The Magnificent Seven and their search team went about with metal detectors, sweeping the walls looking for guns, grenades and ammo. The bosses were wiped out of most of their weapons and were down to just a few knives and a couple of pistols and revolvers. But, like always, it’d only be a matter of time before they’d build up another arsenal.

I knew more than ever that I had to get out of this prison. I would not let these animals take my life, my bloody body lying on the floor in the passageway, covered with a sheet. Shipped back to my family in Ireland in a box. I would not die behind the walls of Los Teques. I had plans afoot to get out of here.

IT FELT LIKE AN INTERROGATION. BUT I HAD TO ANSWER THE QUESTION. And properly. It meant I had a chance at getting parole after 18 months. Or serving the full eight years. No way. I’ll answer. I’ll tell the truth. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Isn’t it?

‘Why were you a drug mule?’ There it was again.

‘For the
dinero
, the money,’ I said. A roar of laughter broke out.

‘Aha. No. That is the wrong answer. Under no circumstances say you did it for the money.’ I was sitting in a classroom full of gringos. The man who asked me the question was a small tubby guy. He was our new Spanish teacher. He wasn’t interested in teaching verbs, though. He was giving us the low-down on how to pass the psychological exam and get parole.

‘Then what do we say?’ said Hanz, who was next to me. We were sitting in the classroom where Silvio used to teach us Spanish and escape routes to Colombia.

‘There are a number of things you can say,’ said Guatemala, the teacher, who, naturally, was from Guatemala. ‘You can say you were depressed. That you were going through a difficult time. But never say you did it for the money. Anyone who says that fails. Always.

‘Now, the second important question: what have you learned from your crime and time in jail?’ he asked us. He had lived in Canada and spoke perfect English.

‘Not to get caught the next time,’ said Dieter. We all laughed.

‘Aha, no. You will be sure to fail. That I can guarantee. You must say you have learned not to do drugs any more and have learned the errors of your ways. And talk about how much you love your family: how you miss them and are sorry you brought this trouble upon them, and that you made a stupid mistake.’

I was scribbling all the prepared answers into a notebook. The others were doing the same – I never noticed them being so attentive in any of Silvio’s Spanish classes.

‘But there is a caveat,’ continued Guatemala. ‘You have to be careful. When you get parole you will be released to work in Venezuela to finish your sentence. So you don’t want the examiner thinking that you’ll jump on the plane home the minute you get released. No no,’ he said, wagging his finger back and forth like a windscreen wiper. ‘You must say that you are looking forward to working in the community in Venezuela, to making a contribution to society here. So you’re letting the examiner know you want to set up a life in Caracas. That’s what they want to hear.’

He finished going through the standard first few questions we would be asked in the oral exam. ‘
Como se llama?
’ (‘What’s your name?’) ‘
Cuál es su apellido?
’ (‘What is your surname?’) ‘
Tus padres estan vivos?
’ (‘Are your parents alive?’) ‘
Cuál es el nombre de tú papa?
’ (‘What is your father’s name?’) ‘
Como se llama tú mama?
’ (‘What is your mother’s name?’) I could learn the first five off by heart in Spanish, but the order of the other ninety-odd questions was never the same, said Guatemala. Pity, I thought.

The director’s office was just downstairs. I wondered what she would think if she knew we were preparing for the psychological test to get out on parole. But I supposed that in a way it was a Spanish class.

‘Now,’ continued Guatemala, ‘the next day we will focus on the drawings.’

‘What do you mean drawings?’ I said. ‘It’s not an art exam.’ Eddy broke out laughing, stabbing his pen in the wooden desk in time with his giggles.

‘Yes, very good, Paul,’ said Guatemala. ‘You are right. But we are not drawing masterpieces of the Flemish tradition, just simple matchstick men of your families.’

‘Be easy for the Nigerians,’ I said, ‘with all the famines they have over there.’

‘Fuck you,’ laughed Abah, one of two Nigerians in Maxima.

‘That’s enough,’ said Guatemala, finally irritated. ‘That’ll be all today. Now, if you walk past the director’s office later, please try to speak Spanish. Say
hola
, at least.’

* * *

The prison was back to ‘normal’. The A-Team had done their job by clearing out the bosses and luceros in the other wings who were behind kicking off the prison shoot-out. They’d also cleared out the Maxima bosses of their heavy-duty weapons; they were just down to a few handguns and knives. But it wouldn’t be long before they, and all the other cell-block bosses, would rearm. An insight from Silvio came to mind: ‘There will be kidnappings, hunger strikes, then a riot. Things get better, then they will go back to the same.’ One big vicious circle.