By now the San Pedro prison tours are surely Bolivia’s worst kept secret. It seems like every backpacker coming to La Paz has heard that it’s possible to bribe your way into the prison, and that once inside you’re welcome to take as much locally-made cocaine as you like (provided you don’t tell anyone about it – wink).

While the glamour and sleaze of the San Pedro tours will continue to echo up and down the gringo trail for a long time to come, the less thrilling recent developments at the prison will no doubt take a lot longer to find a willing audience. Of course when talking about something that never officially existed it’s hard to find or provide reliable information, but for now it’s a generally accepted fact that there will be no more tours at San Pedro, at least not for some time.

The tours have never been very reliable. They have started and stopped and started again over the last few years, always hovering somewhere in the middle ground between possible and impossible, existent and non-existent. At the start of the year though the tours were gaining in fame and popularity; word was spreading that they were safer and easier than ever. This was the beginning of their end though; as they gained a higher and higher profile it became harder and harder to disguise their existence.

In January a (very good) article appeared in Britain’s The Guardian, which provided prices for the tours, details of how to get into the prison, and even the names of who could organise tours. In February a video was posted on youtube.com showing both backpackers and cocaine inside the prison. When the Bolivian media got hold of this video the tours became just too undeniably existent to ignore. The director of the prison was fired and his replacement clamped down on not just the tours but also other liberties within the prison Whether this director is serious about cleaning up the prison, or whether he to will eventually turn a blind eye and a greased palm to the tours remains to be seen (prison reform has been discussed and promised before, but there have as yet been no substantial changes).

It seems unlikely that tourists will be entering San Pedro again any time soon, though. Even if this scandal quickly dies down, something bigger is looming on the horizon. Brad Pitt’s production company’s film adaptation of Marching Powder – the book that first popularised the prison tours – is set for release in 2010. Once this comes out and San Pedro becomes even more widely known the ensuing scrutiny will make it all but impossible to resume tours.

Even in the short months since the tours ceased at San Pedro, word is spreading that tours are running in other prisons. It was perhaps inevitable that where a demand existed a supply would be found. And this is the daft truth of the whole prison tour business; San Pedro was always whispered of and marketed as a truly unique jail, but in fact it is just one example of Bolivia’s rotten penal and justice systems. Walking by the prison in Sucre, which looks almost identical to the school on the adjacent block, I’ve seen couples kissing through the main gates, and an ice cream vendor selling to guards and inmates. School children come and go; grizzled, idle men sit in the concrete patio behind the gate. This prison may be smaller, but it is not so very different to San Pedro. I have heard similar things from volunteers who worked at the prisons in Cochabamba.

This, I would suggest, is a far more worthwhile and memorable way to visit a Bolivian prison; to volunteer to teach classes to inmates or to work with prison reform programs. Rather than perpetuating a corrupt and repressive system, volunteering actually ensures that some good comes of this silly gringo fascination.

 

My first blog about the San Pedro conundrum.

An outstanding article that sheds light on life within the prison and the reality behind prison tours: http://www.boliviabella.com/san-pedro-prison-tour.html

The Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/jan/17/prison-tour-la-paz-bolivia

More on Marching Powder: http://www.marchingpowder.com

 

Organisations working in Bolivian prisons:

Ayni Ruway (prison rehabilitation program), in partnership with Sustainable Bolivia: http://www.sustainablebolivia.org/AYNI%20RUWAY.html

Article by a prison volunteer: http://www.volunteerbolivia.org/brian.htm

Prison Fellowship International: http://www.pfi.org/national-ministries/americas/bolivia