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THE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF COCAINE

crimes once they get out. Well, if prisons are no more than schools for further criminality, then San Pedro prison was the International University of Cocaine, where you could study under some of South America's leading professors: laboratory chemists, expert accountants and worldly businessmen.

And at this particular university, students didn't even have to wait until they graduated and got back out into the wide world in order to start practising their careers. We had all the necessary conditions to work right there on the inside, including investment capital, factories, a captive labour force, transport couriers, telephones and faxes, as well as some friendly police who got their cut for looking the other way.

There were all sorts of scams going on inside the prison, but the main business was definitely drugs; that was what most of us had been convicted for and that was the most profitable product to sell. Trading in cocaine was so common that in San Pedro it was simply known as negocios - 'business'. Everyone in prison talked about negocios, which was natural enough - they all needed money and, for many, that was the only way they knew how to get it.

Reasonable cash could be made by supplying the local demand, including the La Paz market and inside the prison itself, but of course the highest profits were to be made in exportation. And in the case of exporting cocaine, the fact that I was a foreigner worked to my advantage, for a change. Bolivia, being one of the biggest cocaine producers in the world and San Pedro prison being where many of the sellers were concentrated, there was no shortage of people willing and able to export; however, what these people didn't have were buyers at the other end. And that was what I did have. I knew the European market, and my people with ready cash had exactly the opposite problem: they didn't have sellers. Because of this, the other inmates were always making me business proposals that involved using my contacts. At first, I wasn't interested. I knew there was definitely money to be made, which would have been helpful when I got out, but I had recently sent five thousand dollars to the judge and I believed that I would be leaving San Pedro shortly anyway. My lawyers promised me it would be before Christmas. There was no point in taking any stupid risks that might jeopardise my chances.

The fact of being stuck in prison meant that the risks were definitely higher, since I would have no choice other than to rely on outside