In Bogota's prison inferno

Overpopulation, murder for hire, prostitution, drug running  -- everything goes: Colombian penal institutions are bursting at the seams. If they succeed, inmates say they will "head north." 

By W. E. GUTMAN 

BOGOTA -- "When you arrive at La Modelo, your only luggage is fear.  You can feel it in your throat, in the pit of your stomach and, suddenly, as if an icy hand had you in its grip -- in your balls.  You don't know if you're about to vomit or shit in your pants.  You just stand there, hoping it's only a bad dream, a sinister joke.  For the first time in your life you think of suicide and you wonder whether a fear of death will surrender you to the life of horror that awaits you inside."

Carlos (an alias) spent six months in this Bogota dungeon before he was cleared of all charges.  During his incarceration in one of Colombia's worse lockups, Carlos was beaten for looking a "cacique" in the eye.  He was stabbed by another inmate for refusing to part with his cigarettes.  He very narrowly escaped gang rape by two of his cellmates.  And, in late October, he was nearly crushed to death when a spontaneous revolt erupted during which prisoners took 3,000 visitors hostage, including women and children.

Carlos will never forget.

First stop, the jaula, a pit of evil and perversion where inmates are sorted and assigned a cell block.  It is the inmates -- while guards look on with manifest amusement -- who perform the triage.  Shock gives way to nausea: Two to three people per square meter of urine- and feces-slick stone floor.

In 1998, using their right of tutela, an appeals and conflict resolution mechanism granted them by the constitution, inmates called for an investigation.  Appalled by the inhuman conditions they witnessed, officers of the Constitutional Court gave authorities four years to "fix" the problem.  Two years have passed and the worse has worsened.  

THE BANALITY OF DEATH

Behind bars, everything has a price.  The "cacique," an inmate who governs a row of cells, ushers Carlos into his private world.

There's a giant TV set, a shower, a double bed.  Garish rugs depicting Biblical scenes cover one of the walls.  "Dripping in gold jewelry, this ugly ape [the cacique was murdered last December by his successor] points to the bed and says, 'If you want to sleep here it'll cost you one million six hundred thousand pesos.'  I tell him I'd rather sleep in the hallway.  'In this case,' he retorts, 'the rent is 50,000 pesos (about $40) -- a week.  In advance!'"

Drugs, weapons, booze, whores -- even the right to kill -- all are the cacique's exclusive dominion.  Official figures put at about 200 the number of inmates who died a violent death in Colombia's 168 prisons during the first six months of 2000, a figure "stupefying in its implausibility" according to a lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity.  "Murders are a daily occurrence," he said.  "As the rate of incarceration increases, so does the number of homicides.  There is compelling evidence that over one thousand people died in Colombian prisons this year alone."

Petty crimes consign victims of Colombia's crumbling economy to long prison terms.  Those who can afford to buy their freedom rarely see the inside of a jail.  In Medellin, more than 6,500 prisoners, many of them incarcerated for misdemeanors, are jammed in a facility designed to house not more than 1,800.  Some pine away for years, 35 abreast in a space barely large enough for six.  In five years of repressive policies engineered to dam a growing tide of violence, the number of inmates has doubled.  It now exceeds the 50,000 mark.

GUARDS OR HOSTAGES?

La Defensoria del Pueblo, an organization that mediates disputes between prisoners and authorities, and lobbies for the rights of inmates, learned that the 6,500 guards in the nation's penal system were being kept ignorant of their rights.  Alone among hundreds of armed convicts, they are at the mercy of their wards.  Many have been taken hostage and used as bargaining tools.

"I too managed to obtain a weapon for protection," Carlos admits.  "An acquaintance in the Ejercito Popular de Liberacion told me he was planning to smuggle munitions and 10 kilos of dynamite.  He urged me to take advantage of the 'transfer.'  Everything went without a hitch."  According to Carlos, the guards conducted their routine perfunctory search and the contraband moved right through.

"The paramilitary walk around with mini-Uzis outfitted with silencers bigger than my arm," Carlos adds with disdain.

The 36-year war that is slowly bleeding Colombia dry has opened a second front at La Modelo.  Massacre after massacre, the paramilitary, in cahoots with drug runners and prison guards, have since taken over six of the prison's buildings.  The strategy is simple: guards sap the strength and resolve of guerrilla sympathizers among the prison population by conducting surprise searches, exerting psychological pressure and resorting to torture when all else fails.

The most recent battle, last April, left 26 dead and 18 injured.  According to one witness, "the cannonade -- explosions and assault rifles -- filled the air for 11 hours."

"Victims were removed one blood-soaked body part at a time," said an American recently released after serving 17 months for possession of two joints of marijuana.

VIOLENCE AND DECREPITUDE

Every once in a while, exhausted, their ranks decimated, the adversaries suspend their fire and pledge a return to some state of normalcy.  But pledges in La Modelo are fleeting and spurious, the tools of Machiavellian power struggles waged on the lowest rungs of human society.  Predictably, violence, corruption, overpopulation and decrepitude re-emerge as both brutal and inescapable realities of prison life.

"What can we do," lamented a Colombian jurist.  "We're plagued with so many priorities that people refuse to waste money on criminals.  Besides, prisoners don't vote.  So the political imperative is to abstain from politics and look the other way."

Carlos, who studied law, was eventually able to argue his way out of La Modelo.  He is now in hiding.  The human chaff, the down-and-out and the hardened gangsters with whom he lived in bestial intimacy for six months are not so fortunate.  Trapped in a system that often snares the innocent and spits out thugs, they will do their time and return, stripped of their dignity, to a world made worse in their absence and against which they are sure to unleash the fullness of their wrath and resentment.  Most plan to leave the country.  Where?  "North," they all intone.  North means the United States and Canada.

"I have a brother in law in San Antonio," Pedro smiles, baring a row of gold teeth.  Pedro, 18, is serving a 20-year sentence for armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder.  He expects to bail out "anytime now.  Money, man, money!  That's all it takes," he brags in perfect English.