📸 Photo

MARCHING POWDER

'Why? What's up, man?' I asked, after he had checked the corridor again through the observation hatch. 'Why are you so nervous?'

'Listen, Thomas,' he whispered. 'I've got a message for you from a powerful friend. But you didn't hear it from me, OK?' I nodded. 'The brother of Jose Luis Velasco works for the FELCN.' I waited for him to say more, but that was all he had to say.

'And what?' I asked.

'I can't say anything more. That's all I was told to say. Your friend just said to be careful about what you say about those two.' Chino checked the corridor again and then slipped out of my cell. I didn't know what to make of it. I wasn't sure if the powerful friend was the governor and he was trying to warn me of something, or if the Velascos had put Chino up to it to scare me.

I went out into the corridor again, but Chino was already gone. I continued with my washing. By the time I was on my last sock, the others had finished cleaning their cells and were back outside. They were sitting on the wooden benches, leaning against the wall, with the afternoon sun streaming down on their faces. The guards were nowhere to be seen. I sat down next to Chino and lit a cigarette. I thought he might tell me something more, but from the way he was acting, we hadn't had the conversation.

It was a beautiful afternoon in the Andean mountain range. We looked upwards, staring into the cloudless sky, trying to spot birds. In La Paz, bird spotting always helped to pass the time, because hardly any lived at that altitude, apart from pigeons. Anyway, none that I had seen from jail. I smoked cigarette after cigarette and squinted into the blueness until my eyes began to itch and my eyesight went blurry. I wasn't used to that amount of daylight so I closed my eyes until the vision blotches went away. I stayed throughout the afternoon in that position: propped against the wall, eyelids shut, the warmth of the sun on my face, thinking about nothing. An hour later, the guards still hadn't returned us to our cells.

'What's going on?' I finally called across to Chapako, who had been in and out of the previous punishment section more than any of the others.

'I'd say we're getting a visit from derechos humanos,' he yelled back. The others nodded knowingly and chuckled among themselves, but I didn't understand. My Spanish was good by then, but in all my years

304