Going to Prison
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning I go to prison. I'm substitute teaching a basic computer skills class at the women's prison while a friend is out of town for three weeks. There are three one hour classes a day focusing on typing, word and excel. The classes themselves are extremely boring – women mostly work on their own – but being in the prison is quite an experience. The prisons here are incredibly different from those in the US (or in the movies).
The San Sebastian Rehabilitation Center for Women (the prison) is like a little town. San Sebastian is about the size of a city block around and three or four floors high, organized around a central courtyard. There is a men’s prison just across the plaza which is much bigger and even more labyrinthine. The prisoners have to pay for everything; a cell (which is a room – usually shared), food, clothes, etc. So everyone works. The women's prison runs a laundry service and there's a knitting project and a wood shop where they work with prisoners from the men’s facility. Some women earn money by running restaurants or shops or working at the daycare (kids live with their moms) in the prison.
In the men’s prison there is a shoe factory and a larger wood shop where they make furniture, which is sold on the plaza outside the prison. The shoe factory isn’t big enough for most of the shoe-making process, so people do a lot of the work in their cells. The entire prison reeks of glue (toluene?) and the men said that rats, cockroaches and other bugs are everywhere. During my one visit to the men’s prison, I saw one cell. To access the cell you had to climb up a rickety ladder and then shimmy down an extremely narrow, windowless hallway. The room was like a coffin; about 8 feet long and 5 feet wide and I couldn’t stand up straight (I’m 5’5” ish). I spotted a little teddy bear and asked the guy if he lived in the room alone. He said that he shared the cell with one other man and that he was lucky because his family could still live outside of the prison. Many men share their cell’s with their spouses and children, because they can’t afford to pay for two ‘homes’ and because their families want to be near them.
Click on the Read More! link to read about drugs and fashion shows.
During my second class a woman about my age wondered into the classroom and asked what was going on. I assumed that since she didn't look Bolivian, didn’t know about the computer classes and she spoke English but not Spanish, that she was a volunteer/tourist too. There are a few organizations that work in the prison doing education, healthcare, and other projects and some have foreign volunteers. She introduced herself as Pom and told me she's from the Philippines. I told her about the classes and asked her what she was doing in the prison. She said that she had been in the prison for a week because she "was working for a man," which means that she was doing some sort of trafficking of cocaine and got caught. Pom said she will probably be in jail for 3 - 8 years and seemed terrified by the thought of it. Then she asked me if I knew how to ask permission to boil an egg in Spanish, because she wanted to use someone’s stove (I’m sure there’s a fee associated with that) to cook some food.
I felt bad for my previous assumption and even worse because she doesn’t speak Spanish or have any family here. In some ways Pom may be worse off than the Bolivian prisoners, because they may have connections and can at least speak the language. I saw her recently and asked her how she was doing. She said she had gotten a job in the woodshop because she needed money to eat. I asked if it was going ok and she said, “I’m surviving.”
Most of the women, about 90%, are in prison on drug charges, usually really small scale. For example, they may have agreed to carry some coca paste through a checkpoint or boarder. Coca paste is a product made from mashed coca leaves mixed with sulphuric acid. To process paste into cocaine involves a lot of chemicals which are heavily regulated in Bolivia, a lot of this processing happens far away from where the coca is grown. For transporting the paste some people are paid as little as 200 bolivianos (about $25). Most of the people in the prison are poor and had hoped to make a little extra money. These are not the big narcotraffickers and druglords. Because they are poor, they couldn’t afford to bribe the appropriate people and now they're in jail for 3 - 15 years, sometimes more.
Last Thursday Elsa, a very flamboyant woman who always wears extremely low-cut shirts, informed me that the last class was canceled because there was a graduation ceremony/fashion show. Women who had finished classes in artsy things, like sewing, clothing design, painting tablecloths and doing hair were displaying their projects and being honored for their work. Several special guests and ‘dignitaries’ were milling around looking at the finished clothes and pillows and whatnot when I locked up the computer classroom. There was a gigantic sound system set up in the courtyard which kept being either way too loud or completely breaking. The courtyard, as the only communal or outdoor space, is normally a pretty packed place; it’s where the restaurants and the laundry facility are, as well as where vistors are received, the children play, women knit and generally where people hang out. To make space for the graduation everything was shoved to the sides of the courtyard. Children kept running everywhere and people just went about their normal business while the dignitaries gave long-winded, boring speeches. Most of the graduates wore clothes they had made and several adolescent girls paraded around in crazy hair-dos, a demonstration from the hair styling class. Their piled high hair started to melt as soon as the rain came. After the sound system was repaired, a group of women did a dispirited dance – trying not to slip on the wet concrete. I left the ceremony highly amused by it all, and headed home in the rain.
The San Sebastian Rehabilitation Center for Women (the prison) is like a little town. San Sebastian is about the size of a city block around and three or four floors high, organized around a central courtyard. There is a men’s prison just across the plaza which is much bigger and even more labyrinthine. The prisoners have to pay for everything; a cell (which is a room – usually shared), food, clothes, etc. So everyone works. The women's prison runs a laundry service and there's a knitting project and a wood shop where they work with prisoners from the men’s facility. Some women earn money by running restaurants or shops or working at the daycare (kids live with their moms) in the prison.
In the men’s prison there is a shoe factory and a larger wood shop where they make furniture, which is sold on the plaza outside the prison. The shoe factory isn’t big enough for most of the shoe-making process, so people do a lot of the work in their cells. The entire prison reeks of glue (toluene?) and the men said that rats, cockroaches and other bugs are everywhere. During my one visit to the men’s prison, I saw one cell. To access the cell you had to climb up a rickety ladder and then shimmy down an extremely narrow, windowless hallway. The room was like a coffin; about 8 feet long and 5 feet wide and I couldn’t stand up straight (I’m 5’5” ish). I spotted a little teddy bear and asked the guy if he lived in the room alone. He said that he shared the cell with one other man and that he was lucky because his family could still live outside of the prison. Many men share their cell’s with their spouses and children, because they can’t afford to pay for two ‘homes’ and because their families want to be near them.
Click on the Read More! link to read about drugs and fashion shows.
During my second class a woman about my age wondered into the classroom and asked what was going on. I assumed that since she didn't look Bolivian, didn’t know about the computer classes and she spoke English but not Spanish, that she was a volunteer/tourist too. There are a few organizations that work in the prison doing education, healthcare, and other projects and some have foreign volunteers. She introduced herself as Pom and told me she's from the Philippines. I told her about the classes and asked her what she was doing in the prison. She said that she had been in the prison for a week because she "was working for a man," which means that she was doing some sort of trafficking of cocaine and got caught. Pom said she will probably be in jail for 3 - 8 years and seemed terrified by the thought of it. Then she asked me if I knew how to ask permission to boil an egg in Spanish, because she wanted to use someone’s stove (I’m sure there’s a fee associated with that) to cook some food.
I felt bad for my previous assumption and even worse because she doesn’t speak Spanish or have any family here. In some ways Pom may be worse off than the Bolivian prisoners, because they may have connections and can at least speak the language. I saw her recently and asked her how she was doing. She said she had gotten a job in the woodshop because she needed money to eat. I asked if it was going ok and she said, “I’m surviving.”
Most of the women, about 90%, are in prison on drug charges, usually really small scale. For example, they may have agreed to carry some coca paste through a checkpoint or boarder. Coca paste is a product made from mashed coca leaves mixed with sulphuric acid. To process paste into cocaine involves a lot of chemicals which are heavily regulated in Bolivia, a lot of this processing happens far away from where the coca is grown. For transporting the paste some people are paid as little as 200 bolivianos (about $25). Most of the people in the prison are poor and had hoped to make a little extra money. These are not the big narcotraffickers and druglords. Because they are poor, they couldn’t afford to bribe the appropriate people and now they're in jail for 3 - 15 years, sometimes more.
Last Thursday Elsa, a very flamboyant woman who always wears extremely low-cut shirts, informed me that the last class was canceled because there was a graduation ceremony/fashion show. Women who had finished classes in artsy things, like sewing, clothing design, painting tablecloths and doing hair were displaying their projects and being honored for their work. Several special guests and ‘dignitaries’ were milling around looking at the finished clothes and pillows and whatnot when I locked up the computer classroom. There was a gigantic sound system set up in the courtyard which kept being either way too loud or completely breaking. The courtyard, as the only communal or outdoor space, is normally a pretty packed place; it’s where the restaurants and the laundry facility are, as well as where vistors are received, the children play, women knit and generally where people hang out. To make space for the graduation everything was shoved to the sides of the courtyard. Children kept running everywhere and people just went about their normal business while the dignitaries gave long-winded, boring speeches. Most of the graduates wore clothes they had made and several adolescent girls paraded around in crazy hair-dos, a demonstration from the hair styling class. Their piled high hair started to melt as soon as the rain came. After the sound system was repaired, a group of women did a dispirited dance – trying not to slip on the wet concrete. I left the ceremony highly amused by it all, and headed home in the rain.
posted by Emily @ 4:39 PM
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