A CONTEMPLATION OF
PARAGUAYAN PRISONS
"The stench was enough to gag
you," was all that Gary Maynard would say after he got back. He was talking about the informal AIDS ward
we had walked through at Tacumbú, the big, overcrowded prison on the
outskirts of Asunción. I was
surprised. A slender, intense man with a deceptively easy-going demeanor, Gary
had been the head of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for 5 years, and
before that, the warden at McAlister, where he had carried out the executions
of at least three deathrow inmates, and had been there for all the prison
riots, and the big changes that had to take place to reform Oklahoma prisons
during the 70s and 80s. He was also a
retired general in the Oklahoma National Guard and thus, presumably, used to
less-than-ideal conditions. We were
there as a part of six-person team from the U.S. hired by the Paraguayan
Ministry of Justice and Labor to recommend changes, provide training, and to
help secure financing for construction projects. Of the twenty or so official and unofficial prisons in Paraguay, we
were here to visit three within the Asunción city limits.
It
was my 13th or 14th trip to Paraguay, and my fourth visit
to Tacumbú. I wasn’t surprised by conditions, but neither was I immune
to the human degradation and the erosion of conscience that occurred at every
level. Thank god it was not a hot
day. The smells were bearable, and
tempers were under control, with the exception of a few vociferously desperate
inmates who screamed at me to let them tell me the real story – what was really
going on in this most forgotten of hellholes, where Elizabeth Nietzsche had
founded a white supremacist utopian community in the 1880s, and Nazi war
criminals had instructed the Paraguayan secret police in the most effective
methods of torture. Torture rarely took
place in the prisons, according to sources.
The most heinous torture tended to be reserved for political prisoners
since there were fewer consequences in maiming those of the disenfranchised or
at least politically marginalized.
During Stroessner’s time, torture took place at the central police
department, just down the street from the presidential palace.
Actually, conditions in
Tacumbú had improved since we were there in May. Now we were coming off winter and the spring
heat had not yet made itself felt in late September. Now there were fewer prisoners (by a hundred or so, due to legal
reforms), and the Paraguayan officials had installed a new kitchen (in which
they prepared vegetable stew and other nutritious items which were completely
uninteresting to the Paraguayan palate, which tended to prefer the heavy corn,
cheese, and meat dishes of chipas, chipa guasu, carne mascada, with lots of
mandioca and tere-ré). In addition, there was a new infirmary in which
the sick could rest (but not much more because there were no medicines), and
there was a new shower / latrine area. New materials were given to the inmates,
in the form of personal hygiene items, a blanket, and a new mattress. In addition, the inmates had received a
medical assessment, and there were records on each inmate, which included
medical and criminal history. This was
something new, and it allowed the prison administrators to separate out the
ones with active tuberculosis and the ones dying from AIDS.
Like
Mayan temples in the Guatemalan wilds, these half-built, half-eroded cellblocks
were monuments to a bizarre combination of good intentions and abject venality,
mixed with power and elitism. As in
Chiapas or Guatemala, they were covered by climbing vines and other kinds of
noxious jungle growth. This was a
monument to a vast slippage will – somewhere along the way, the Tupi-Guarani
heritage that stressed communal well-being had been erased in the wake of
rampant alcoholism, substance abuse, and despair. Somewhere, the Catholic notion of distributive justice and
concern for the poor had slipped into something akin to “steal it IF you can,
WHILE you can, WHENEVER you can, HOWEVER you can.” I had collected about $5,000 of medical donations to give to the
Paraguayan’s children’s prison. It was
patently evident that any donations would, post-haste, be sold and socked away
in someone’s Miami account. I gave the
donations to a friend in Sumgait, Azerbaijan instead. Azerbaijan is known for being a tad corrupt as well, but it was
the principle of the thing.
What
turns people into such heartless wretches?
During the Cold War, the old Marxist ideology went something like
this: “We are at the stage of Socialism
now – but if we work hard together, eventually, we’ll achieve PURE
COMMUNISM.” That was such a utopian
concept. During the 1960s, Che Guevara
(born just 200 miles from here), preached his violent, by-any-means-necessary,
jihad-tinged brand of utopian Marxism.
Nirvana was just around the corner.
Sadly,
it turned out to be not achievable. In
fact, Che and his ilk turned out to be as elitist and exclusionary as anyone
else, using the poor as pawns and cannon fodder. They called them “idiotas utiles” in Paraguay – a term still used
for anyone who is conveniently used for someone else’s gain. In the worst-case
scenario, you’re human toilet paper.
When they’re finished, they flush you down the toilet, with the same
amount of regard given you as the real paper.
Oh, well, it’s true enough that when I hear
Che’s inflammatory rhetoric (downloadable from .wav files on the Internet), I
get worked up. Yes, it’s true enough –
consumerism is bestialization. To be
driven only by the sensation – the thrill of novelty, and to be cured of angst
and introspection by the diversion-cum-entertainment activity of incessant consumerism
– leads to an animalizing mindlessness.
What’s worse is the notion that you can reinvent yourself by buying your
new persona-du-jour. While this is
partially true (appearances do matter, after all – our ideas of meaning are too
semiotically driven to escape that), it is also vitally not true. So, the comfortable notion that perhaps
painful instrospection is not necessary, nor is disciplining one’s mind in
order to be deliberately constructivist (albeit positivistic) vis-à-vis
the world of phenomenon, proves itself to be pathetically inadequate. In the Paraguayan prisons, they say that
Paraguayan prisoners are fairly passive – all it takes is one Argentine to
create a problem. Apparently, most
Argentines are a lot like Che was – they mouth off a lot.
I
returned to the world of Tacumbú.
Here in the shadows of Jesuit missions, and utopian dreamers who wanted
to help save the Guarani Indians from the rapacity of the Portuguese and
Spanish crowns, who sought gold, and if not gold, crops such as yerba mate,
sugar, and cotton harvested from vast plantations they called
“latifundios.” When Paraguay gained its
independence from Spain in the early 19th century, the first leader
of the country, a xenophobic dictator named “Dr. Francia” sealed the borders
and insisted that the Paraguayans import no European luxury goods, but that all
be manufactured in-country. It was also
against the law to marry a foreigner.
As a result, women began to develop lovely lace, crochet, and
embroidered fabrics which are still in use today – nanduti, ao po-i, etc. with
designs unaltered since colonial days.
The sealed-off borders led to a profound suspicion of the outside, and
when President Lopez decided to declare war on Argentina and Brazil, the
Paraguayans fought valiantly. The
results were spectacularly ugly. The
same was true with other wars led by megalomaniacal dictators and self-anointed
leaders with internecine urges. By the
time Stroessner assumed power, the country was all too happy to profit (at
last) from its history of isolation and quirky refusal to play by the
rules. So, Paraguay became a major
informal duty-free zone, attracting droves of Argentines and Brazilians
attracted to cheap electronics, knock-off consumer goods, pirated software,
pirated music, untaxed cigarettes, alcohol, false documents, and any other
contraband item that could make quick profits for the people in power. With an economy based on the deliberate
flaunting of international trade regulations, and its workforce engaged in de
facto illegal activities, who could possibly have the nerve to judge one’s
brother? Who could be so
hypocritical? Clearly, prisons in
Paraguay did not serve the same function as in other countries. They were either convenient business centers
for the efficient administration of scams and contrabanding, or they were
places to punish those who failed to live up to expectations.
We went around the corner to the
Travesti Pabellon. In English, this
would translate to the “Transvestite Cell Block.” It was a decrepit one-story building filled with filthy pots and
pans and dirty beds. There were six
transvestites living there, separated from the general population to protect
them from the other population. At
least that was the story. I suspected
that the reality was that this was a brothel of sorts. The transvestites were not the only
homosexuals in Tacumbú. However,
they were the only ones who identified themselves as “female” and who were
either taking hormones to grow breasts and lose facial hair, or were simply
dressing as women. Most of the
transvestites had worked a certain area near downtown Asunción where a
kind of rough trade had developed with anonymous clients driving up in
limousines. The transvestites didn't
have pimps, but they often had to defend the best corners from the newcomers
who wanted the territory. This led to a
significant amount of stabbings and gunshot wounds. They were also often harassed by the police. Many were arrested many times, but not all
ended up here -- just the most unlucky.
Here in Tacumbú, most seemed to be pretty obviously addicted to
something -- perhaps heroin, perhaps something else.
The
travestis were not dressed in prison uniforms (the prison didn’t have any
anyway), but they were not dressed in drag (to my disappointment). Actually,
they seemed pretty depressed. Outside
their cellblock was a patch of dirt with a few deep holes, partially filled
in. I asked what the deep holes were
for. They were about four feet deep,
and were between two buildings.
"That's where the prisoners did
"Kambo-shu" to the ones who misbehaved."
"What's Kambo-shu?" I
asked.
"It's Guaraní. It means Cambodia -- the prisoners saw what
the Cambodians did to U.S. prisoners of war, and they liked the concept. They
buried prisoners up to their necks and left them there in the heat of the
day. Sometimes they poured sorghum
molasses on their heads to attract ants."
Still,
this “trasvesti” cellblock was starting to get to me. I had just read a series of articles and interviews in the
newspaper, Noticias, of the transvestite street-hustlers near downtown
Asuncion. They talked about their lives
and their need for acceptance. They
also talked about the difficulties of obtaining adequate quantities of
hormones, and the high cost of surgery.
After reading it, I told my friend Benito, “Hey, let’s go to a gay
bar.”
I
had a typically American point of view, I supposed. For me, it seemed rather absurd that people who were tortured and
often killed for their sexual orientation, would be so monstrous and
well-organized. To be honest, one could
certainly expect aberrant behavior in this country. Anyone too repulsed by torture, sado-masochistic male-female relationships,
emotional and physical blackmail, surreptitious and underground love liaisons,
and a well-entrenched “favor” system, would have gotten out. It was difficult, but not impossible to
leave Paraguay. It was particularly
easy to get to Argentina, and then from there, go to other countries.
Entrenched Guarani ways were perhaps the major impediment, plus, the
realization that once one learns to swim in the polluted, dank, but predictable
waters of the pond, the little fish could have comfortably parasitic relations
with the big fish.
"Thank God for the prison
reform effort!" I said. Inside, I
wondered what had been instituted to take its place, but in secret. Nature abhors a vacuum. There would always be ways of disciplining
and punishing those who strayed from the norm (no matter how perverse that
"norm" may seem). I thought
of the writings of Michel Foucault. I
felt a bit sick.
The current Paraguayan
administration was very intrigued by the idea of having a prison industry,
first to supply uniforms to other branches of the government, and then
branching out to agriculture and ranching.
The Paraguayans were absolutely floored by the vast prison industries in
Oklahoma, in which furniture, food products, horticulture items were
manufactured, and basic secretarial services were provided a fraction of the
cost of other services. The obvious
ethical problems and conflicts of interest didn't worry the Paraguayans. They liked the idea, and could see obvious
benefits. Perhaps in Paraguayan hands,
prison labor would reach the extremes of the Oklahoma system, which had forced small
family-owned businesses which had formerly provided services into extinction.
Also, with the new private prison lobbied "truth in sentencing" and
"three strikes you're out" it was imperative to find some way to make
the prisons be self-sufficient, and maximize shareholder value. The Oklahoma penitentiary system was quite
controversial in its utilization of prison labor, and in the number of people
incarcerated (51,000 in a State with a population of 3 million. In contrast, Paraguay, with a population of
5 million, has around 6,000 prisoners).
"Do you ever have problems with
Amnesty International?" asked an administrator during the three days of
seminars given by the Oklahoma team to approximately 325 attendees from
throughout the Paraguayan prison system.
We were an interesting crew – Gary Maynard, a former Oklahoma
Corrections System Director and retired Oklahoma National Guard general; James
Saffle, the current Oklahoma Penitentiary System Director; Tommy Warren, the
owner of the first private prisons in the state of Texas; Calvin Burgess, the
owner of hotels and prisons in Oklahoma; and me, the director of training
programs at The University of Oklahoma College of Continuing Education.
I
was the originator of the contacts, thanks to my obsession with Paraguay and
Bolivia. I was fairly content in the
realization that I knew nothing of prisons.
However, thanks to the dozen or so projects I had done with the Paraguayan
government and private sector, I did know people throughout Paraguay, and I was
the natural nexus for any sort of Oklahoma / Paraguay initiative. This realization carried with it a bit of
emotional baggage, since I knew that I was often played, and that my interest
in the country made me vulnerable to whatever self-promoting scheme a
Paraguayan entity might come up with.
Right now, we were there to make the
Paraguayan Ministry of Justice and Labor look good. Not only had I brought with me back in May a person who claimed
to be able to offer $50 million of financing, I also assembled a group of
experts in prison construction and administration capable of training wardens
and prison officials as well as designing cost-effective prisons that could be
more or less self-sustainable if prison industry could be instituted.
"Yes," replied
Saffle. "We ignore the
demonstrations and we pay no attention to their protests. We follow the laws of the State. We do not respond to outside
influences." I cringed, although I
realized that the Paraguayans admired that kind of talk. Saffle himself cut an
imposing figure. He was tall,
heavy-set, and had the sort of right-wing, Christian fundamentalist rigidity
that Oklahoma votors seemed to like in their wardens and penitentiary directors.
Paraguayans
liked raw power and strong-arm tactics. This was most clear when Lino Oviedo, a
former general in Stroessner’s army, decided to run for President of the
Republic of Paraguay. He was obsessed
with crime and punishment, and one of his campaign promises was to “fry” the
corrupt Paraguayan officials in the same way the “Texas fries its
criminals.” This was dramatic, and in
my opinion, deeply troubling. What made
capital punishment attractive to Paraguayans?
I certainly couldn’t see it. I was reminded of my conversations with
Lino Oviedo's campaign manager, the one who helped organize all the
spectacularly theatrical events, in which his inflammatory rhetoric excited the
Paraguayans -- "Que gaucho!" - they often commented.
Saffle's sudden echo of
authoritarianism aroused a little ripple of admiration mixed with hostility --
admiration that he would openly show disregard Amnesty International's attempts
at moral suasion, but hostility that the giant North Americans could again
operate with impunity, and disregard protests or complaints. Paraguay and Oklahoma had more in common
than might be observed at first.
Paraguay considered itself “El Corazon de Sud America” (The Heart of
South America), while Oklahoma billed itself as “America’s Heartland.” Both had agricultural sectors characterized
by the cultivation of cotton, soy, peanuts, cattle, and horses. Both had economically laggard economies.
Both had large river ports that provided slow but cheap shipping -- access to
the sea.
But in Tacumbú, (in contrast
with the highly organized Oklahoma prison counterpart) there was an informal
prison industry. Interestingly enough,
the prison industry managed by inmates.
Tiny pineapples, oranges, and other fruit were available at the
prisoner-run cantinas -- as were any other item requested by an inmate. It was an important source of income for the
"caciques" (the leaders of the gangs), who worked in collaboration
with the guards. In reality, the prison
was more or less self-sufficient, since little money is spent by the Paraguayan
government to maintain prisoners, and most comes in the form of support from
family members or friends who bring gifts and money. Visiting hours are not very restricted (particularly when one can
bribe a guard for about 10,000 guaranis, or $3.00). Unless the corruption situation is changed, the current
Paraguayan administration despairs of making substantial changes, since
typically any state-supplied items are stolen by inmates and/or guards and sold
on the street, leaving the prison itself a decrepit shell where survival is
only possible if one has significant resources coming in from outside, or
significant resourcefulness within in order to "work the system" and
rise up in the hierarchy of prisoners.
In fact, my first visit to
Tacumbú involved the “informal economy.” It was late on a Sunday night, and I was with a friend of mine –
an expeditor for the Paraguayan Administration of Ports. His former boss was in prison, and my friend
wanted to pay his respects. He was also
delivering some money. That was
necessary in order to stay out of the part of Tacumbú the Oklahoma
delegation was visiting. The former president of the Colorado Party was staying
in the “Tacumbú Hilton” where he had a private room with cell phone and
laundry privileges. This cost about $50
per day. I’m not sure who got the money
or how it was paid, but that was the price to stay out of the inferno on the
other side of the “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter” gates. The other prisoners in Tacumbú
“Hilton” ranged from ex-bank presidents to foreigners who had decided to hole
up with their ill-gotten gains in Paraguay, thinking that non-extradition would
protect them. Little did they know that
it was their fate to have their nest eggs gnawed to the bone by Paraguayan
“piranhas” and, once their booty was spent, they’d have their assets seized
while languishing in prison on trumped-up charges. After a bit of Tacumbú, these foreign white-collar
criminals took to contacting their embassies begging to be extradited back to
their home country, regardless of the length of the prison sentence.
What
on earth were we doing in Paraguay?
What could we possibly teach Paraguayans about a “better way”? Read Brave
New World a hundred times and find out, finally, how to enslave the will as
well as the resources?
In contrast to Tacumbú, the
women's prison seemed almost benign.
Named La Casa del Buen Pastor, it had begun as a project of a local
order of nuns to provide a home for wayward girls. Founded in 1830, it was located in the middle of Asunción. Although we were in the center of town, the
prison itself seemed quiet, almost serene.
That feeling was more pronounced in the chapel, where candles flickered
around an altar and a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary, and numerous
paintings of saints. The scent of rose
petals and eucalyptus hung in the air.
“Why are women here?” I asked the director, a young woman who,
before working as a warden, had been an accountant somewhere. She was tall,
thick-waisted, wearing a tight miniskirt with a blue blazer. Her current
occupation seemed to be an odd career choice, but in a country where jobs are
political payoffs, lack of experience and outright incompetency are the norm.
I already knew the answer to the
question. I had been given a
publication by the Ministry of Justice and Labor, which detailed conditions in
the women’s prisons throughout Paraguay.
The publication said that most women were incarcerated for prostitution,
assault and murder. In Oklahoma, most
women were incarcerated for crimes against property – passing bad checks (as
little as $20 was a felony), having their cars used in the commitment of a
crime (the bad-boy lover uses the lady’s car to rob a convenience store), being
arrested with drugs. Some were actually there for assault on abusive
boyfriends, etc., but not the majority, despite the fact that Oklahoma
possessed the second-highest spousal and girlfriend abuse rate in the U.S.
“Most are here at Buen Pastor
because they murdered their husbands or boyfriends (concubines, as they would
say),” she replied.
“Wow. How exciting,” I said. It was a joke. She laughed and said that it wasn’t all that progressive a notion
– after all, usually the murder took place after years and years of abuse.
“Sometimes the women are abused by
their boyfriends, and sometimes the boyfriends are molesting their
daughters. So, they do something about
it.”
That approach didn’t seem
particularly productive to me, but who was I to judge? Again, there was a pervasive sense that the
collective will to change – to actually liberate society from oppressive
patronage and Mafiosi thinking – was utterly lacking. If it meant security, people seemed inclined to do it. And, the idea of delaying gratification by
sacrificing and getting a real education, was also lacking. Street-smartness was valued, as was the
ability to be an “expeditor” for those with money and “needs.” It was a society of a few privileged elite,
and layer after layer of hangers-on and parasites. Although there were family-owned small businesses, they too,
seemed to collapse upon themselves in their eagerness to please the
patron. No one wanted to make waves,
except to show everyone else they had influential friends. Thus, I was invited to hundreds of showers,
receptions, asadas, birthday parties, dinners, and weekend trips. At first, I was flattered. Then I realized it was that I could be
touted as a “powerful and very famous American” and then, they could, by
extension, have access to that. So, I
was a tool used to inspire envy and hunger for easily-gotten spoils.
I once read how a young girl’s very
own mother “sold” her prepubescent virgin daughter to the ex-dictator
Stroessner (or to one within the “magic circle”), for money, for a job for a
couple of relatives, for a bouquet of roses.
Was that the only way to get ahead?
Certainly education wasn’t the way.
If anything, the culture tended to be philistine – and, even those with
five-year degrees, obtained after parking themselves in classrooms while a
professor read to them from the only available book, were called “Doctor.” Chile had a great reputation for good
universities. Private universities were
springing up to meet the demand for documents that would allow one entry to a
job. But, how was the quality? It, too, tended to be all about appearances
and scam affiliations with U.S. universities of some fame. A person with a Paraguayan university degree
was perhaps as ignorant as one without a degree. This was not to say that there were not intelligent professionals
who had somehow managed to become educated.
But, theirs was an uphill task.
Those who were actually educated deserved a medal of valor, since the
rewards were ephemeral, self-generated.
One would have to be independently wealthy to indulge oneself in the
luxury of an education, particularly in the humanities or fine arts. Of course, in that way, the U.S. was not so
different. But, the same slippage of
will was evident. It was just too easy
to sell out, play the game, and spend one’s time making elaborate shows of
loyalty rather than developing independent, creative, and deeply questioning
lines of thought.
Back in the women’s prison in the
middle of Asunción. We left the
cool, dark recesses of the chapel and walked through the patio to the artisan
area where women were making clay sculptures.
The environment was fairly pleasant – mango and papaya trees shaded the
walkway, and the sound of leaves rustling added a romantic quality to the
scene. It was hard to believe it was a
prison. Later, the hard reality was
driven in when I looked at the cells – five women in each cell, a cell that was
too small to house even one person. The
only redeeming factor was that the women were not forced to stay inside
them. They were dank, dark, fetid
places.
“Our primary problem is with
theft. Women steal from each other,”
said one of the prison officials.
I wondered how I would manage if I
happened to be in such a place. It would be fairly unpleasant, of that I was
sure. Since all Americans are believed
to be rich, the first thing extracted from me would be daily rent. Then, my family would be contacted for money. One might as well be a hostage – the only
difference is that one is legally sanctioned by the country, the other is not.
We toured the juvenile facilities,
and then the place where mothers could stay with their children until they were
2 years of age. Visitation was a daily
right, with no restrictions. Perhaps it
helped with separation anxiety; perhaps it merely reinforced the notion that
mom was a jailbird. I didn’t know.
Life was tough for women here. There were many reasons for that, most of
them historical and cultural. For
example, the fact that most women were forced to fend for themselves and their
various progeny was a sad reality.
Thanks to the church-authorized stance on polygamy as a necessary method
for repopulating the country after the disastrous Triple Alliance War, women
had become accustomed to what they referred to as “irresponsible
paternity.” The Triple Alliance War
(Guerra de la Triple Alianza) occurred in the 1870s, when the dictator-du-jour,
Mariscal Lopez, declared war on Brazil and Argentina, for reasons I never
managed to clarify in my mind. It was
most definitely a suicidal gesture – the tiny Paraguayan army could never hope
to wipe out Brazil’s and Argentina’s better-equipped, better financed, and
wildly more populous armies. Certainly
the valor in the face of certain death was remarkable. Paraguayan armies fought to the death.
First,
the men of fighting age were sent out, then older men, then young boys, and
even at one point, women.
All
were slaughtered. After the war, the
country was so desperate to have men of breeding age, that they opened up the
country to virtually any criminal, opportunist, or fascistically-inclined
utopian experiment-monger, including Elisabeth Nietzsche and her husband’s “New
Germania” white supremacist experiment somewhere in the jungles near
Concepción.
When
the 4,000 scraggly, ragtag male survivors were asked to help repopulate the
land, it was a daunting prospect, with disproportionate rewards for the men,
and nothing but extra work for the women.
There were about 200 women for every man. It was a good ratio if you were a guy and you liked to shop
around. It was hell for the women. They were lucky to be able to have a kid at
all, and in order to snag a man, the women became masters of coquetry,
seduction, and so-called feminine wiles.
They really knew how to “play” a man – I had seen a couple of these
former belles in action, and, to be honest, they made me nauseous. They flattered, fawned, and made Paraguayan
guys feel quite stud-like and empowered.
A
novelist friend of mine, Dirma, was typical.
She tended to gesture with exaggeratedly (and campily) feminine motions,
was persistently redolent of French perfume, and her ears, fingers, neck were
always encrusted in gold and jewels.
She flattered Paraguayan men to no end, which they, of course, loved.
“What
an excellent woman – a true lady. Dirma
knows how to be a real woman. You could
learn something from her,” was Benito’s response to her.
I
doubted it. Even if I had been born in
Paraguay, I doubted it would have taken – I was much too independent, and could
only conform for a limited amount of time.
However, I could not envision myself as a person obsessed with revenge
fantasies, either.
We
were sitting in the lounge of the Gran Hotel del Paraguay, the one-time palace
of Madame Lynch, the Irish wife of President Lopez during the 1870s. It was a pleasant place, with large ceiling
fans and original murals on the walls, with Louis XIV-inspired botanicals,
flowers, garlanded ladies. It was once
a grand ballroom, and women wearing light, tissue-gauze dresses with
hand-crochet and lace, swirled about, whirling with music as though isolation
could protect one from the cruel realities of bordering countries with
expansionist ideas, and a harsh world where women could not afford to not be
designing, male-obsessed, and entrepreneurial.
They also had to have a strong back.
Women tended to pull more than their own weight.
Dirma daubed bright cherry lipstick to her
lips. Her perfectly-lacquered fingertips
fluttered daintily through the air like glassine hummingbird wings. She was fanning herself with a bamboo-spined
fan with shiny, cardboard flowers to catch the damp, thick air and churn it
into curl-inducing waftings.
She
asked me, “Susan, where did you find such an excellent man??”
“I
found him bribing officials at the airport,” was what I wanted to say. Of course, I said nothing more than, “Oh
yes, he’s nice isn’t he.”
Virtue
turns to vice, upon being misapplied; and sometimes vice, once turned, can turn
to virtue. At least, that was the
philosophy.
And
so, men were putty in these Paraguayan women’s hands. I could never hope to understand it as one within the system
could. Perhaps no one actually
understood his or her actions. It was a
matter of custom, of habit. It was not
something necessary to understand. The
continuity of a country and a people often created its own exigencies. And, it is easier to act in accordance with
tradition rather than independent thought.
According
to popular lore, once crossed, Paraguayan women could be harsh (vicious, in
fact). Revenge was sweet. And, it built up over time. Paraguayan men on every level, had
inculcated within them a sense of that impregnable and ubiquitous impunity that
I saw everywhere.
In
the shadow of a broad-leaved mango tree off the patio of the Casa of the Buen
Pastor, I contemplated women’s lives here.
Perhaps my views were too harsh. Perhaps I didn’t understand. Perhaps it was impossible for me, as an
American woman, to grasp the mindset of a Paraguayan woman. I resisted understanding prison
psychology. No one lived long – it was
wearing, always having to watch one’s back.
The conditions were abominable, health-compromising, and the
psychological burden worse. Once entered
into, the dualities of crime and punishment, hiddenness and shaming exposure,
virgin and whore, working drudge and relentless coquette, were not easily
shaken off.
We
only live once. What do we live
for? Sensation, adventure, finally
sated curiosity? Or do we live for
stability, security, future rewards and delayed gratification? How do we make the decisions that put us
either firmly inside or on the margins of our society’s mores? These are questions that my contact with
Paraguayan prisons put into play. They
were uncomfortable and ultimately unanswerable.
The five prison industry specialists I had with me – private prison owners, directors (past and present) of state and federal prisons – did not appear to be overly affected by what they saw. They were able to hammer everything they saw and place it within a nice, neat template they could call “justice.” For me, the notion of justice was too amorphous, too culturally and temporally determined. And so, I remained deeply troubled, haunted by my own understanding of self-destructive urges. I also could understand the internalization of the crime and punishment motif, and the self-excoriating rage of self-hatred that would allow one to plunge into a life of a “trasvesti” street hooker, or one bought and sold in prison, with only a slow and humiliating death in the AIDS ward as an absolute. It was too much to tease out in one brief moment of contemplation. It would take me time, patience, and distance to begin to put this into perspective. Perhaps I never would.