I was walking on the patio—arriving late because Carlos had once again neglected to unlock and open my cell door—when Rubén noticed the tear across my other pant leg. He was particularly attentive that day, having been the one to alert the sycophants that I was still locked in my cell. He had heard me singing “How Great Thou Art” from my window. I had not planned the moment as any sort of demonstration. I simply sang because the hymn was in my heart and because a man locked in a cage by petty tyrants must do something to keep his soul upright. Yet that small act—singing from behind bars into the open air of the patio—revealed something about the spirit God gives to those who trust Him. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).

It was Carlos who had locked me in. The little pervert had exercised authority he did not have: after lending me his dustpan so I could sweep, he bolted and latched me into my cell. Sergio and Carlos had been out in the hallway enjoying their sycophant status as mozos, and they chided me for being outside my cell, noting that the pacos had cameras turned on and would catch me if I were not careful. I had temporarily moved my plastic chair, bag of trash, and bath towel into the hallway to make room to sweep—hardly a capital offense. I was not worried that a gendarme would hassle me over the infraction any more than they would for kissing Pamela during quarantine-era visitation; I was something of a favorite son. Nonetheless, Carlos took it upon himself to bolt me in.

I took it in stride and sang three additional hymns in retaliation. Confrontations with petty tyrants were hardly worth getting worked up over. That response—singing hymns rather than cursing, maintaining composure rather than banging on the door—was not heroism in any conventional sense. It was simply the ordinary outworking of a spirit that refuses to be governed by fear. The Apostle Paul wrote those words to Timothy not from a comfortable study but from a Roman prison, and their force is magnified when read under similar conditions. Power, love, and a sound mind are not the natural products of confinement. They are gifts of the Holy Spirit, sustained by grace, and they manifest in ways that the world often overlooks—a hymn sung from a barred window, a refusal to descend into rage, the quiet maintenance of dignity when everything around you conspires to strip it away.

Miami and the Ministry of Service

Miami was doing my laundry that day, and later he sewed my now hobo-look cotton slacks. The tear across the pant leg had given me the appearance of a man rather further down on his luck than I cared to project. Miami’s service was characteristic. He was a former flight engineer—trained, disciplined, and resourceful—and he had taken upon himself a range of duties that went far beyond what any inmate owed another. He washed my clothes, cleaned my bathroom while I was at visitation, reheated my food, and performed a dozen small mercies that kept daily life from collapsing into the squalor that threatened everyone in módulo 118.

I have reflected often on the theology of mutual dependence that operated among us. Miami served me. I, in turn, shared my food—pizza, burritos, quesadillas, sandwiches, chips, candies, celery sticks—with Miami, Rubén, Ismael, Delfín, Michael, and just about anyone who asked. Pamela and my supporters outside provided abundantly, and I distributed what I received according to the principle of Galatians 6:9-10: “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” The body of Christ functions even in prison—indeed, it may function more visibly there than in many comfortable churches where the members scarcely need one another for anything. Despite his conviction, Miami was no pedophile.

Miami once remarked to me, after I teased him, that the gang was spoiled, “No, but you, John, are spoiled the most; you are like the nucleus of the atom around here, and all of us are the electrons circling you.” I chuckled at the metaphor, but I understood his point. The small economy of generosity that operated in 118—food shared, laundry done, favors exchanged, cigarettes distributed to sweeten relations with guards, lemons and peaches slipped through the portal by mozo Marcelo—was a microcosm of the interdependence that Scripture commands. “For the body is not one member, but many” (1 Corinthians 12:14). We were a strange body, to be sure—composed of murderers, thieves, drug addicts, pedophiles, a former flight engineer, an Evangelical ranchero (food service worker), and a Baptist pastor-professor locked up for defending himself against a mob. But the principle held nonetheless.

The pants, however, were beyond Miami’s ability to fully restore. Pamela and Jana would have to go to the American store in Viña del Mar and see if they could find another pair and a pair of shoes in my size—U.S. 12½ or 13—to slip into an upcoming encomienda bag, just as Pamela had done with the dustpan (the wooden handle was not allowed) that arrived that day. Such were the logistics of maintaining a semblance of civilized appearance behind bars: your wife shops at a specialty store, smuggles trousers into a canvas sack of groceries, and hopes the guards do not reject them at the gate. The indignity of it all was constant. Yet it was also, in its way, a form of love—and love, Paul tells Timothy, is one of the three marks of the spirit that God gives in place of fear.

The Mattress Deal

Even more goodies were in store for me. A twin-size mattress—as opposed to the torturous identical single-size foam slabs that reos were given by the gendarme central planners—had been sitting in the hallway outside Aníbal and Franco’s cell for days. Miami had cleaned the mildew off it. Franco had paid 20,000 pesos (USD 23) for this supposedly “new” creature comfort to someone in módulo 105, but could not make it work in his cell. So he offered to sell it to me at cost.

My chronic left shoulder pain made the decision easy. I accepted the deal. For another 10,000 pesos, Aníbal would rent a hand-held grinder—a galletón—and come the next day to cut off my upper bunk supports, making room for the much larger mattress. This meant the bed could never again sleep more than two reos. If I could sleep better and possibly eliminate my shoulder pain for forty dollars, and be guaranteed not to have two cellmates crammed into that tiny space in the future, I was game. My fitted sheets were already twin size anyway—being oversized for the narrow single beds I had been forced to sleep on for well over a year. Pamela transferred the cash to the account Franco indicated.

The transaction was quintessentially prison. Everything operated through a network of barter, cash transfers, favors, and improvised solutions. There were no receipts, no consumer protections, no return policies. You paid a man in another módulo through your wife’s bank transfer, and a Chilean flight engineer cleaned the mildew off your mattress, and a fellow inmate with a rented angle grinder cut your bunk posts while sparks flew in a cell the size of a bathroom. It was the free market operating under conditions of radical scarcity—proof, if any were needed, that human beings will always find ways to trade, cooperate, and improve their circumstances, no matter how thoroughly the state attempts to reduce them to managed livestock.

Thief Aníbal (jailed for twenty-five years after trying to blow up the hall of justice courthouse complex) cut off the two bedposts at my feet the following day. The new width was fabulous, although the mattress was quite soft. I could not wait to see if I slept better and if the shoulder soreness would depart. Indeed, the new mattress did seem to be alleviating my left shoulder pain—a small mercy, but in prison, small mercies are not small at all.

Angelino: Thirty Years Behind Bars

Neighboring ranchero Angelino—forty-seven years old—appeared around the time Franco and I struck our bargain. “So, you have been writing?” he asked me. I gave a weak affirmative, unsure of why this heretofore stranger was making such an inquiry.

He explained that he, too, had been writing about his jail experiences, but was awaiting the end of his parole or release before publishing. He had been in jail for most of thirty years, since age seventeen. He came from a family of criminals and robbers, noting his conviction that he was born with criminal DNA, as opposed to those who learned to be criminals later in life. He said that, growing up, everything in his house was stolen from someone else. His father and three brothers had all been with him in the Valparaíso penitentiary at the same time. There was a cell in some módulos specifically designated for his family members at certain points in time, while at others they were spread out across different módulos. Being in jail was part of their lives and a chosen profession. He had lived in módulos 103 (old), 104, 105, 114, and 115.