Marching Powder: A True Story of a British Drug Smuggler In a Bolivian Jail

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Initially, he brushed me off, saying I should return the next day. I responded that I was leaving La Paz in the morning, and this was my only chance. The protagonist is a drug smuggler; he was caught red-handed and is sent to a bizarre prison in which you pay to enter and pay to own a cell. The guards never really enter the prison grounds in general, and the prisoners are essentially allowed to live a "free" life within the prison walls. Some prisoners live with their wives and children, some turn their cells into tiendas and restaurants. While I have no doubt that prisons in Bolivia are filled with corruption, drugs and danger, I'm not willing to believe much of what McFadden tells me. He manages to be both a criminal mastermind and a Really Nice Guy; manages to meet the Woman Of His Dreams; manages to survive against all odds and become the Big Man on (Prison) Campus. And manages to make James Fray look like a credible story-teller. Arrested and kept in a holding cell for thirteen days, Thomas was robbed by his arresting officers which left him no money to buy food. Frozen and starving Thomas begged to be moved to a prison. The officers found this desire to be moved to prison hysterically funny. Thomas soon found out why, starting with being transported by taxi to San Pedro prison - & being expected to pay. The true story of an English drug-smuggler, a notorious Bolivian prison and enough cocaine to cover the Andes ...

The book starts off with McFadden at the La Paz airport, waiting to smuggle drugs through the customs when he gets arrested. With this, his saga starts. He is tortured by the drug police, but the interesting part of the story comes when he is actually shifted to the San Pedro prison. He finds that inmates have to pay for everything there, including the taxi fare to reach there and an entry fee to have the honour of going to prison. I won't elaborate much on this since McFadden talks in detail about it. And Bolivian jail is where Thomas almost died of starvation and exposure (to cold) within the first few weeks.

The afternoon was slipping away, and a drizzle was starting to fall from the grey clouds above the city. Both men still appear to be close friends so obviously Thomas is happy for Young to claim sole credit for writing this. Thomas does owe Rusty his freedom. While thousands of struggling Bolivians make their livelihood in the controversial coca leaf plantations, the majority of them have never seen as much as a gram of the white powder that has made their country infamous. This book establishes that San Pedro is not your average prison. Inmates are expected to buy their cells from real estate agents. Others run shops and restaurants. Women and children live with imprisoned family members. It is a place where corrupt politicians and drug lords live in luxury apartments, while the poorest prisoners are subjected to squalor and deprivation. Violence is a constant threat, and sections of San Pedro that echo with the sound of children by day house some of Bolivia's busiest cocaine laboratories by night. In San Pedro, cocaine--"Bolivian marching powder"--makes life bearable. Even the prison cat is addicted.

The shit is just wild. There is lots of coke and violence in the book, and much spectacle to it, which makes it entertaining. Not having read Marching Powder nor having any experience bribing my way into Latin American prisons, I stood in the plaza wondering what to do next. When Thomas McFadden made a detour through Bolivia to get five kilos of cocaine through to Europe, justice finally caught up with him. Smuggling drugs around the world since the tender age of 15, McFadden has been successful in destroying hundreds of lives around the world before he even landed in Bolivia. As it turns out, you can't trust criminals and he found himself captured even though he had paid off his bribes. You can tell I don't like the man, can't you? But I didn't have time to read a book, and I didn't even bother to Google the prison before my plane touched down on one of the world's highest tarmacs (4,000 meters above sea level). Colombiano by Rusty Young - Books - Random House Books Australia". www.randomhouse.com.au. Archived from the original on 25 April 2016.

Marching Powder

What I got was full of corruption, crime and drugs. But also a fair bit of boredom and self-pity. No matter how nice he was he was still a convicted drug smuggler and dealer and I can't have any sympathy for him at all. If he'd been innocent I would have felt differently. But he was there because he deserved to be. So for me that really took away from the book. He was trying to sound innocent and garner sympathy but I just didn't buy it. The fact that we, the reader, are asked to buy into the unfairness and unjustness of firstly Thomas' betrayal in the original bust, and again later on after all the bribery, well he was trying to traffic cocaine, so sad to bad. San Pedro is Bolivia's most notorious prison. Small-time drug smuggler Thomas McFadden found himself on the inside. Marching Powder is the story of how he navigated this dark world of gangs, drugs and corruption to come out on top. urn:lcp:marchingpowdertr0000youn_a7u1:epub:2ac22e25-845b-48b9-8ed7-06d0cadb014b Foldoutcount 0 Identifier marchingpowdertr0000youn_a7u1 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s247xvhxts6 Invoice 1652 Isbn 073291180X

His rise to one of the most important guy is questionable. There is nothing to support this. Its really just hearsay. I also felt he 'scammed' the people that would visit, from the Christian Ministry service, to the Mormon guy, to the Tourists. The whole book had the feeling of 'I didn't snort cocaine by choice, mister, it kinda just fell up my nose'. Thomas holds himself accountable for nothing. By the time I rounded the final corner, nobody had approached me about a tour, so I became more proactive, using my Spanish to ask a guard directly. The tours had been running long enough to be mentioned in printed guidebooks. McFadden was proud that none of his visitors were ever robbed (which, he explains, would've been the end of his business). Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail (book)- 2003

Colombiano was published in Australia in August 2017 and was the highest-selling Australian fiction title that month. It will be released worldwide in 2018. The walls were several stories high, but they looked made of mud. The front facade featured a nice paint job, while the other three sides were unfinished. But since my attempt, I've heard of at least one group of tourists who were not allowed to leave before being robbed of their possessions. In other words, bring a little cash and leave the camera and phone at the hostel. If prisons are no more than schools for further criminality, then San Pedro prison was the International University of Cocaine, where you could study under some of South America's leading professors: laboratory chemists, expert accountants and worldly businessmen," McFadden notes halfway through. The entrepreneur decides to capitalise on the knowledge and experience of his fellow inmates by offering guided tours to wide-eyed visitors, like Young, and these visits become a big part of how he manages to stay positive throughout most of his time inside, though he is bit by periods of depression for his seemingly hopeless plight. My only objection is that McFadden often makes outrageous statements referring not only to San Pedro prisoners, but Bolivians in general. Despite the fact that he only spent a few days in Bolivia before being incarcerated, McFadden seems to believe that San Pedro is a microcosm of Bolivian Society. Take, for example: “hardly anyone in Bolivia admits to taking drugs, but… how could you not take cocaine in a country where a gram is cheaper than a bear?”

Thomas survived in San Pedro by his charm & business acumen. A terrifying place made bearable by copious amounts of drugs. By the end, I was seriously hoping that Thomas would end up as someone's bitch and they'd live happily ever after. It would make it easier to pass all that cocaine, I guess. Where inmates make the rules: Bolivia's cocaine-fuelled San Pedro prison - Conversations - ABC Radio". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 25 July 2017.Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail (book)- released 2003 This is just one of those amazing true stories. If a fiction author wrote it, you would think it was too unbelievable. I dare anyone to try to read this book and remain non-nonplussed by the fuctupedness in this story. Thomas found himself in a bizarre world, the prison reflecting all that is wrong with South American society. Prisoners have to pay an entrance fee and buy their own cells (the alternative is to sleep outside and die of exposure), prisoners' wives and children often live inside too, high quality cocaine is manufactured and sold from the prison.