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A SPECIAL VISITOR

Samir took several days to recover from his beating. When he did, he was sentenced to another ninety days, and conditions in La Grulla went back to the way they had been when I first arrived there. All privileges were withdrawn: they took away my heater and all our blankets; they fed us on soup twice a day; they removed the light bulbs from their sockets; and yard time never lasted a minute longer than four hours. Things probably would have stayed that way, if it hadn’t been for the arrival of a very special visitor.

The politician, Gabriel Sanchez, arrived, escorted by two policemen. He was wearing a suit and tie and walking ahead of his escorts, who were wheeling two large suitcases. As he walked down the corridor, the other inmates rattled their doors and hissed at him. He ignored them, but he looked tense.

‘You’re dead, Mr Politician,’ Chapako whispered, spitting on the back of his suit. His police escorts didn’t say anything.

Sanchez had been sent to La Grulla for his own protection. It wasn’t difficult to have someone killed in a Bolivian prison – families of murder or rape victims did it all the time. Some of the poorer inmates would do anything for money, but in the case of a politician who had stolen forty million dollars from the Bolivian people and spent it on plastic surgery and a beach house in Miami, they would have performed the service for free. The only other place the politician might have been safe was in Posta, with all the other millionaires. But even there, someone probably could have got to him.

‘Wait ’til tonight, cabrón!’ yelled Chino. ‘You’d better have your money ready or we’re going to cut you up alive.’

Sanchez was placed in the seventh cell. By then, the guards had