📸 Photo

SAMIR

It was only early, but the party got under way immediately. We went into the common room and took it in turns to stand at the end of the corridor, keeping watch for the guards. It had been weeks since anyone had touched alcohol, so we were drunk very quickly, but the coke sobered us up instantly. It made my mouth go numb for the first time in months. After such a long break, it felt the same as it had the very first time I tried it. I felt fantastic. I even found myself talking to Jorge Velasco and not hating him at all. And once we were high on cocaine, we could keep drinking as much as we liked.

Gradually, the lookout became bored. When it was Chino’s turn, he kept returning to check on how we were doing, staying longer and longer each time to join in on the conversation. Finally, the post was abandoned entirely when Samir refused to do his shift.

Just as our party was getting into full swing, the delegation from the Bolivian Human Rights Assembly arrived. Chino, who was seated next to me with his back to the wall, was in the middle of telling a joke about the president’s wife, when the others looked up suddenly. We didn’t need to turn around to know that someone important was standing behind us; we could tell just by their expressions.

Chino was clever. He pretended that his sudden pause was deliberate, and carried on telling his joke as if nothing had happened, slowly moving the bottle of rum under the table. Following his lead, I slipped the bag of cocaine into my underpants. However, the others were stupid; they scrambled madly to hide all the beer cans.

The human rights visit was only short. They inspected the bathroom area, tested the water, checked the conditions in a few of the cells, and looked in the exercise yard. The head of the delegation then told the guards to leave the room while he interviewed us privately. He wrote down our responses on his notepad.

‘Do they give you enough food?’ he asked, looking over to the cooker where we had put some rice on to boil, to make it look like we were preparing to eat. None of us seemed concerned that the water had evaporated and the rice was burning. We obviously weren’t starving. We nodded our heads.

‘How often do the guards let you out?’ All the time. All day sometimes. Chapako was sunburned.

‘Do you have any specific complaints?’ he asked, concluding his