The Drug Economy: Evidence and Analysis

Yet not all appetites in prison were so benign. The drug problem in the Valparaíso penitentiary was massive, systematic, and—despite the authorities’ protestations—primarily sustained by the gendarmes themselves. Before returning to our cells one evening, I had the opportunity to discuss the economics of the drug situation with Miami, Rubén, Ismael, and Moroni. Even Michael hung around to listen for a while, although listening was not his strong suit—it was hard for him to stay quiet for more than forty-five seconds.

“Listen,” I said. “The top gendarme officers all make over four million pesos per month, and their rule here is remarkably similar to a plantation owner governing his slaves. Merely being confined generates a transfer payment from taxpayers to gendarmería. Revenue and profit are functions of the number of enrolled prisoners. The modern ‘masters’ have an incentive to keep their ‘slaves’ alive enough to generate the desired revenue. And the rank-and-file pacos, who earn seventy to eighty percent less than officers for most of their thirty-year careers, treat the reos as a business opportunity—earning three to twenty times their base salary by selling drugs, liquor, cellphones, and contraband.”

The economic evidence was compelling. The price of drugs had remained constant over the past year, usually sold in little envelopes with price tags of 5,000, 10,000, or 20,000 pesos (roughly USD 5.50, 11.00, or 22.00). This stability during a period when visitation had been halted or severely curtailed was itself powerful proof. Economic theory shows that when demand is unchanged—and especially if it increases during stressful quarantine periods—the price will rise if supply falls. The stability of drug prices demonstrated that supply had remained unchanged. Without visitors, the only way significant quantities of illegal drugs could enter a prison of 3,000 inmates was through the gendarmes themselves.

Cristián reported that the street price for a gram of marijuana had risen from 5,000 to 6,000 pesos, while in jail, the quantity per envelope had dropped from one gram to 0.7 or 0.8 grams. Sergio, arguably closest to the situation as a machucado, said he had seen no change whatsoever in módulos 114 and 103: 10,000 pesos still bought one gram of marijuana, 1.5 grams of freebase cocaine, or three pills. The gendarmes famously blamed visitors for the drug supply—their home-baked goods, their bodies. Yet the claim did not hold water. Whatever contribution visitors made was evidently small compared to the revenue generated by pacos and prison workers.

The “drunk” in Paul’s formulation—those stupefied by substances rather than hunger for truth—were thus being supplied and exploited by the very system that claimed to punish them. The state, which purported to confine men for their crimes, was simultaneously profiting from the continuation of their vices. It was a satanic irony of the first order, and it confirmed what Scripture teaches about the corruption of earthly powers. “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?” (Psalm 94:20). The Chilean penal system was not merely negligent. It was complicit. And the machucados who drowned their misery in freebase cocaine and marijuana were, in a real sense, being drugged by their own jailers.

Guillermo and the Cost of Sobriety

The human cost of this system was visible in individual lives. Over in módulo 111, Guillermo—my former cellmate, jailed for contempt of court after trying to remove his mother’s corpse from his estranged sister’s home, a quiet, intelligent, decent man—reported that he was once again being threatened at knifepoint in his cell for not buying or consuming drugs. He needed to get out of there as soon as possible. I could not offer much in the way of helpful comments and directed the poor soul to Miami.

How was Guillermo going to last the next three to five years in that environment? He needed to get out of that cell fast and change módulos if possible. The tragedy of Guillermo was the tragedy of the sober man in a system designed for the drunk. He wanted to read, to think, to behave decently, to serve out his sentence without being destroyed by it. But the drug culture of the prison—sustained, as I have shown, largely by the gendarmes themselves—made sobriety a form of rebellion, and rebellion invited punishment from fellow inmates who needed everyone around them to participate in the collective stupor or at least buy stupefacients.

Later, his situation worsened further. He had been moved out of his horrid cell in 111 to even worse circumstances. He shared his new cell with eight machucados and had to sleep on his mattress on the damp, filthy floor. Rats would sniff him and lick or nibble at his head at night, and bugs would get into his hair. He said his first night was terrible. I was horrified by what was happening to my former cellmate, but there was nothing that Miami, I, or anyone in 118 could do.

The Scripture that came to mind was not one of comfort but of judgment: “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people” (Isaiah 10:1-2). The system that placed Guillermo among drug-addled machucados who threatened him with knives was not merely inefficient. It was wicked. And the God who sees all things will not overlook it.

Castro, Masks, and the Refusal to Confess

In prison, many things come at you out of the blue, especially with low-IQ men like Castro. “You need to always bring your mask down to the patio with you,” barked Castro at me. He had called all the reos to line up and sign for their receipt of the “New Process for Qualifying for Good Conduct”—a document for benefits and parole. Overhearing Castro’s barking, Cristián ran into the dining hall and retrieved a spare mask, lending it to me. “It’s good to have people looking out for me,” I mused. Why the masks had suddenly become a burr under his saddle was unclear to me, unless he was impressing some colleagues in the psychology area visiting the cell block. He was certainly fast and loose with rules on anything else he deemed unimportant. I got in line to sign the form.

After a short wait, I filled in my name and, instead of a signature, handwrote in English: “Refused to sign.” Why not? I was certainly not going to confess to crimes I did not commit to some gendarme social worker or psychologist to qualify for benefits. Neither was Miami. Yet despite our principled refusal, at that same moment, other prison employees were putting on their chemical-filled, gas-powered backpacks to fumigate 118A for bedbugs. There was never a dull day in terrestrial hell.

Castro embodied the spirit of petty authoritarianism that pervades prison systems worldwide—a small man with small authority, using both to maximum irritating effect. Yet he was now permanently in charge of 118, and his presence guaranteed that there would always be friction. The tyranny of small men is one of the defining features of life under state coercion and a strong argument for limiting government power over individuals.

The Wisdom of Fools and the Folly of the Wise

Michael, for his part, could not help bursting out at one point—running off at the mouth again—ignorantly rendering his opinions about American culture. He said that the country was full of crazy people who shot kids in schools, even though he had never been to the United States or even known or consulted with any Americans. The too-skinny babbler was quintessentially Chilean in that sense; he never lacked an opinion about any topic and almost always avoided opportunities to learn something new.

The typical Chilean never lets facts or solid theory undermine a well-developed opinion. In a sense, sadly, one could argue that Chile is a nation full of fools—at least by biblical standards. As Solomon wrote, “Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge: but a fool layeth open his folly” (Proverbs 13:16), and “A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself” (Proverbs 18:2). The Apostle Paul referred to such people as “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

This was the deeper meaning of the “drunkenness” in Paul’s metaphor from 1 Corinthians 11. It was not only chemical intoxication—though that was rampant—but intellectual and spiritual intoxication: the stupor of a mind that has never been awakened to truth, that processes the world through gossip, television, received opinion, and the endless repetition of ignorance. The drug-addled machucado and the opinionated fool were, in this sense, brothers. Both were drunk. Both were incapable of the sustained attention required to learn, think, question, and grow. And both were, in consequence, easy to manage—which was precisely what the system wanted.

Against this background, reading was not merely a pastime. It was an act of resistance. Every book I opened on that patio was a small declaration of independence from the intellectual prison that confined most of my fellow inmates as thoroughly as the physical walls confined their bodies. Miami understood this. Guillermo understood this. Ismael, who was slowly growing as a chess player and occasionally picked up a book, was beginning to understand it. But for the majority, the world of sustained thought remained as distant and unreachable as New Zealand from our floating carrier in the South Pacific.