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MARCHING POWDER

ears. 'That's why I call him Crack Cat. He's happy now so you can pat him, if you like. Crack Cat only needs a little bit, so Alonso has to be careful. That base is very strong and maybe, if the cat has a big night smoking, he might overdose.'

A cocaine-addicted cat wasn't the only surprise Ricardo had in store for me during our tour that afternoon. We had one more stop: Julio's.

'This guy is also a base addict,' Ricardo said to me under his breath as Julio opened the door. 'Only far worse.'

Julio was pale and skinny and he wouldn't meet my eye when we were introduced. He motioned for us to come in, all the while looking nervously at the floor. His room was even more horrible than Alonso's. It was lit by a single bulb dangling from the ceiling by a thin cable. The concrete walls were unpainted and, apart from a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, it seemed Julio owned nothing in the world.

Ricardo held out two coins and Julio almost snatched them out of his hands.

'Why did you give him two bolivianos instead of one?' I asked once Julio had left to buy the base.

'You'll see in a minute.'

When Julio returned, he had two packets of cocaine base, known locally as basé. He sat down on the bed, placed an entire packet in the pipe and lit it. As he sucked furiously, the veins on his forehead popped and his whole face turned ghostly white. He held the smoke in for so long that I thought he'd stopped breathing. For those few moments, he didn't seem human.

After he'd finally blown out the smoke, Julio stood up suddenly, reached into his pocket and produced a knife. I jumped back instinctively, thinking he was going to attack me, but instead he lifted up his shirt and slashed the knife across his stomach, drawing a perfectly straight line of blood. Just as quickly, he put the bloodied knife back in his pocket and sat down.

Ricardo said something and I watched, still completely horrified, as Julio stood up again and took his shirt off. Blood was trickling down his stomach and I noticed his entire torso and both arms were covered in thin, white scars from similar cuts. I felt sick in the stomach. I was also completely disgusted with Ricardo. The extra