📸 Photo

MARCHING POWDER

inmates of San Pedro as a way of bringing in extra income to support their family. She had also leased various pieces of office equipment, including a photocopier. I qualified for the discount photocopying rate, since I needed one hundred copies of a single page.

Through contacts in the prison administration, I had managed to locate someone who knew a worker in the filing section of the drug court. He had told me more details of the Velascos' defence and I'd paid him fifty dollars for a copy of one specific page of it: the statement signed by both Jorge and Jose Luis Velasco testifying that they had been working in the prison as undercover agents with the FELCN drug police over a period of several months with the aim of providing information on drug dealing within the prison. The statement was entirely false. I knew it and they knew it, but the other prisoners didn't.

Across the top of each copy I wrote the word 'Buzos' in thick red marker pen — our word for 'informants' — and then distributed them throughout every section of the prison. I stuck copies on walls, on noticeboards, under people's doors, and I handed the remainder directly to inmates as I walked around. In San Pedro, there was only one class of prisoner more despised than rapists and child molesters: police informants. I wanted the Velascos dead. However, when they got word of what was happening, they fled to the main gates and bribed the guards to be transferred to La Muralla. Even then, it was doubtful that they would survive long.

A few days later, Jorge went to the authorities. He feared for his life and asked to retract his statement. He told them the truth — that he and his father weren't really informants and that I had nothing to do with the two hundred grams of cocaine found in their room. For his own safety, he also told this to every prisoner he came in contact with. The Velascos began accusing each other of lying. I had done a good job on them; there was now a complete inconsistency between their statements, which put their whole defence in disarray. And with it, the case against me crumbled completely. There was no way the judges could convict me now.

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I wanted to celebrate my revenge against the Velascos immediately. I was actually looking forward to going to court for my next appearance. By then, I had completed four-and-a-half years of my original six-year,

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