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MARCHING POWDER

The laboratories were run out of inmates' rooms at night. The bigger ones could produce several kilos a night, but there were also smaller operators who ran cruder laboratories using makeshift equipment and substitute chemicals, although the quality was never as high.

The whole process, from pasta básica to the white cocaine crystals that you sniff, could take several nights' work if it was done carefully, or one night if they were in a rush. The pasta básica was first treated with water and sulphuric acid, then stirred to separate out the cocaine solution, before being siphoned off using a hose. Once that concentrated paste had been filtered and dried, you had cocaine base – basé – which was sold to the inmates to be smoked. Or if you added more chemicals, such as hydrogen chloride, ether or acetone, you could then filter it through strainers and pieces of cloth to refine it further and get a better product. The resulting substance would be left to crystallise properly, leaving you with pure cocaine crystals. This final drying process took many hours, which was why they did everything at night, when the other inmates were asleep and there was no chance of the police coming into the prison. The paste was usually dried under lamps or heated to make it crystallise faster.

The chemist – known as the cocinero – supervised each of these steps, but went to sleep in between times. Nevertheless, someone had to be awake the whole time in order to keep an eye on how things were going. My job was to stir the mixture regularly, making sure that it was consistent and dried evenly and that the right temperature was maintained. If any of it settled on the bottom of the tray, it could burn and ruin the whole batch. A single mistake would cost thousands of dollars, so I had to set the alarm clock and wake the cocinero up every hour to check, or whenever something looked like it was going wrong.

The actual steps involved in making cocaine seemed simple when you watched someone who knew what he was doing. But there was a lot of skill and experience involved for the cocinero to get the exact chemical balance, knowing how long to allow for each stage, and when to add more of a chemical. The top cocineros earned good money, but the actual laboratory workers, like myself, were never paid much, and only when the money from a sale came through. Or you could take the salary option I did, which was to be paid in cocaine. At the end of a night, you might be given ten or twenty grams, depending on how much had been produced and how generous the bosses were feeling.