Fresh Powder

Being a dude in my early twenties I'm sure it comes as no surprise that over the last couple of years a plethora of my mates have traveled to various parts of the globe in order to soak up some cultural capital and hopefully meet some babes. Next time if your up for a little jet setting and the old continent of South America is your destination of choice be sure to check out the Jail at La Paz and prepare to lose your mind.

Recently i read for the second time the glorious piece of typing on paper bound with some cardboard entitled Marching Powder. This book is an out of control real life account of about 5 years in a dudes life and keeps you captivated from the moment you are acquainted with the protagonist, an English drug trafficker named Thomas. Thomas made the mistake of dealing with the wrong Bolivian law officials and paid the price by being sent to La Paz, which has to be the worlds most ridiculous prison. Marching Powder is the story of Thomas' time in the prison and provides a confronting, powerful and darkly comical account of what he had to undergo to survive. In this nuts joke for a penal system inmates are expected to buy their own apartments, and with a range of criminals branching from overly rich and equally corrupt politicians, to violent crack addicts the accommodation varies accordingly from five and half star, to the squalor of dingy drug dens.

Hundreds of women and children live in the prison as their patriarch struggles to provide for them all within the prison. As a result each prisoner has to find a niche in order to make money to survive. Some make and sell the purest cocaine in the world, other organise jobs to be carried out on the outside, others are doctors, lawyers or tradies who offer their skills within the prison. For Thomas, he became the prisons unofficial tour guide. This is a job that led him to babes, mates, money and also a world of hectic problems. While it may seem just like a mini society, violence and peril are never far away and some of the shit that goes down blows you away and corruption and bribery are never more than the throw of a Panina (the local beer) away.

While the book poignantly captures the corruption, brutality violence and constant struggle for survival so vividly, it is the forging of unlikely friendships and juxtaposition between horror and humour and cruelty and friendship that makes it so friging rad. Also the novel is laden with pieces of subversive language that allows the inmates to perfectly capture their own unique living conditions and unbelievably corrupt and volatile relationships with their captors.

This is a video of the conditions taken by some dudes who went on a tour of the jail. Check it out and read the book for yourself.