Rex Broekman of The Huaraz Telegraph visited Victor Perez Liendo prison to interview Lewis Charles Cornelius, a 51-year-old  South African, about conditions in the Huaraz prison. This article was published in two parts from the July 2012 and April 2013 editions of the Huaraz Telegraph.

At 9 AM I met the Tourist Police to accompany me into the penitentiary. Despite having read Marching Powder and being a fan of prison movies, I had no clue what to expect. I was excited but nervous. Could I get in with my camera? Would the guards let me have the interview and would the gringo be willing to meet me? Huaraz Telegraph contributor Trevor and I brought fruit, cookies, snacks and drinks, common things to bring to inmates. Hopefully the foreigner would be happy to tell his story.

Huaraz prison exterior

When we arrived at the Huaraz prison near Rosas Pampa Stadium, we found a long line of visitors waiting to see their family and friends. From the outside, it didn’t look like a modern prison. Visitors can only see male convicts on Sundays. Female convicts receive visitors on Wednesdays.

Unfortunately we had to leave our camera, cell phones, and other electronic devices with the guards. The young Diego Placencia Vidal from the Tourist Police had to leave his gun and bullets as well.

When we went in, we had to register and leave our passports. Then we were searched individually by another guard. After I was cleared to enter, Trevor was denied because of a visit to Sierra Andina and X-treme Bar the night before and was still intoxicated. I was on my own.

Once inside, I was brought to one of those places where you speak to prisoners with a fence between us. The guards told me they would call the South African, and Lewis Charles Cornelius appeared. I thought he’d at least be behind the fence, but he was on the same side. Could he stab, hit, or touch me? Yes, he could.

Lewis introduced himself and asked why I was here. I told him about the newspaper and asked him to tell his story. I gave him the food from the market.

“Sure, no problem,” Lewis said. Lewis was happy with my visit as started talking, full of energy. I asked him why he was in the Huaraz prison. He replied that he had been incarcerated since October 2005 after being caught in Lima’s Jorge Chavez International Airport with 17 kilos of raw cocaine.

Lewis claims he was asked to check in someone else’s bag on a flight to South Africa. He didn’t inspect before trying to pass airport security, who found 17 kilos of cocaine. “I got 12 years and six months sentenced with benefits but on the 9th of October 2009, I was transferred to Huaraz without any reason I am aware of. Here in Huaraz I lost all the benefits I had before in Lima (Callao) because I appealed my sentence four times. I have lost the ’2-9-6′ [code referring to Peruvian prison benefits or restrictions]. Now I am HIV positive. I receive treatment and I am staying in the Topico hospital section," Lewis added.

Lewis Charles Cornelius is HIV positive.

Lewis went on: "After three years, my wife stopped sending me letters. I thought that this was very rare, but then I found out that my wife had been caught with drugs in Bolivia, three years after me. I assure you man, she was not trafficking but she's still in prison. I am not married Rex but love the woman I call my wife very much. We have eight children together and I'm almost 52. I wouldn’t lie to you at this stage; I hope to get out soon."

I asked Lewis if he gets outside help. "Nothing man! When I come out one day, I will for sure sue my embassy. I used to have communication with my wife and children but [the South African Embassy] haven’t visited me once. They make promises, like Peruvians here, but never fulfill them. Two years ago an inmate spoke to my embassy and heard that they would visit my wife in Bolivia. It's compulsory! But they haven’t visited me once in Huaraz. They must think it's too far from Lima. They not only neglect my human rights here, but also rob my personal items. My wife sent me a Bible once but it never arrived. My wife must be thinking why I don't accept her things but I never even see them. I get only one visitor every now and then."

I asked Lewis about his contact with the other inmates? "I get discriminated against a lot here. Not just by inmates, but especially by the guards. They hate South Africans. They like to demonstrate their power. We get beaten for nothing. Sometimes we have to sit on our knees and if we move one muscle, we get hit. They hit us to make an example. 'Pachas' was an inmate in the hospital for two weeks until he died. Eight of us were mistreated badly but only Pachas was sent to the hospital."

Lewis showed me a big scar on his chest and continued, "When I and seven others were hit, all the inmates decided to have a hunger strike. But when Human Rights visited us, nothing changed. I live without fear, I am not scared. I am getting older but I still know how to defend myself because of some martial arts I practiced in the past. But luckily most inmates respect me. I don't have much contact with them as I was transferred out of the heavily secured section into the infirmary. Things are quieter here."

I asked about the food. "Not too bad. We get soup, olives, bread, and some Quaker oats in the morning. We can buy stuff here but you have to have money."

Does he get any news from the outside? "A little bit. There's a pavilion with a television and we hear when new inmates are brought in."

How are the prison cell conditions and what does your day look like? "There is a hole in every cell for a toilet and in 'Maximum', two people stay in one cell, sharing a bunk bed. In other parts of the prison, inmates have to share a cell with sometimes more than ten others. You'd probably say it's really dirty. When we wake up, we wash ourselves, then have breakfast and read newspapers. It's difficult when you don't have money. No money in prison means life has no value."

How does he make money? "I don’t! Sometimes lawyers visiting the inmates give me a couple soles. There was one fat but friendly lawyer who used to help me out with small cash but he passed away unfortunately. If you have money here, you're king. There are shops in jail run by convicts. It's expensive to buy something. A box of milk is five soles for example [three in supermarkets]. You can even buy razors at those shops." I thought to myself, he must be short on cash because of his beard.

Has he ever considered suicide? "Yes, on many occasions but I have eight children and a wife you know. I believe in God and believe He has saved me a spot in heaven."

Are there many sexual violations and rapes? "The Bible says that relations between man and man or woman and woman are wrong. However, I have no opinion about that. They have to do whatever they want. I don’t have it in me. I consider myself a helper, not a violator. In the past I was a millionaire you know. I was running a diamond digging company but three family businesses went down the drain - all because of trusting the wrong people. Now I am broke and need 15,000 soles to get out. I am trying to contact Prisoners Abroad, which is an English organization, but you don’t need to be an Englishman to get help. Maybe you or your readers can help me with that. I just need someone to send the message."

I asked how Lewis contracted the HIV virus. "Needles man, needles. When my wife stopped sending letters or when people kept them from me, I started to use drugs, back in the Callao prison. Now I have to take pills every day, but other inmates here get twice the pills. I feel discriminated against. There is alcohol and drugs abuse here as well. They make every sort of alcohol here, from potatoes, rice, and even tomatoes. I think 85% of the inmates use drugs."

Does he use drugs? "No, I have been clean for more than two years. I have to take care of myself having AIDS. When you lose weight because of diarrhea with AIDS, you will never gain the same weight as before. Finally, you will die because of being underweight. You cannot get out of bed anymore. You have no energy. You can eat as much as you want but won’t gain weight ever again."

When leaving Lewis asked if I could send my story to Gringo Karl and Katty Portela, AKA 'La Flor de Huaraz'. Lewis claims he befriended Karl when they were both locked up in Callao.

According to a guard, there were 596 men and 40 women incarcerated at the Huaraz prison. Some were sentenced for stealing food and just had to spend one night, others served much longer sentences for murder. Lewis Charles Cornelius is set to be released in 2017. He can be visited on Sundays and would greatly appreciate small amounts of money, food, or useful materials like old clothes or soap.

Rex's 2nd Visit to the Huaraz Prison - one year later

I packed some old sneakers, a baseball cap, a body warmer, a jacket, and many t-shirts. This time I know not to take any food because last time Lewis mentioned he'd rather have soap, shampoo, or new shoes.

I imagined how Lewis would be, whether the HIV virus had taken its toll on his body. Had he read his story in the paper? And if so, what did he think? Had the article encouraged people to visit or write? Maybe he'd been transferred to another prison, or the authorities didn't like my story and wouldn't let me see him again.

When I arrived at the prison I noticed a sign saying (in Spanish): "To enter the prison, bring your DNI" (Peruvian identity card).

Damn, I forgot! I explained to the guard that I had forgotten my ID, but I was only visiting the Tópico, the infirmary. The guard called his supervisor, who I recognized from the first time I visited. I asked if he could make an exception, and he agreed.

I had to leave my voice recorder and key chain. I didn't bring my cell phone, which are also prohibited. The guards had seen the previous editions of The Huaraz Telegraph and were curious about our interviews. The guard checking the clothes I brought for Lewis said I couldn't take the shoes into the prison because he wanted them! I scowled and he relented.

After a body search, I passed though to the inner courtyard where I had previously interviewed Lewis. Then I heard him shout from a short distance, "Rex Broekman, how nice to see you!"

Lewis had been trying to sell chewing gum to visitors near the entrance patio. He hadn’t changed at all, immediately starting to talk and wore his heart on his sleeve. I handed him the bag of clothes. He was most happy with the two pairs of shoes. I also gave him two editions of The Huaraz Telegraph. He smiled and said, "Excellent, I was hoping for this."

I asked him if I could see his cell and have our interview there. While walking, I noticed Lewis commanded respect in the prison. I was offered chewing gum, sweets, and other stuff by other inmates. But when Lewis told them off they left. We went through two steel-chained doors to the infirmary. On my left I noticed a big, smoky kitchen with huge pots on the floor; they were preparing the meals for the jailbirds.

Then there was another door to get to his cell. At the end of the hall there was a tiled shower. I was impressed, the water was probably cold but it didn’t look as bad as I’d expected. Lewis took a right turn and we arrived at his cell. Lewis put the bag of clothes on his bed and asked me to sit. His cellmates were surprised at my arrival and came to shake hands.

Lewis asked if I knew Erica. Erica was a young lady from South Africa who visited Lewis after reading my story. He spoke eagerly of her visit. He said, "I am actually a bit worried, Rex, because I haven’t heard from her again. She told me that she had to leave the country and would go north and then come back, but she hasn't." It became apparent that I was Lewis’s first visitor in over two months.

Lewis wanted to share some things with The Huaraz Telegraph that he held back last time. He showed me documents from his trial and subsequent sentence in 2006. Among the documents was a psychological report describing Lewis' behavior and conduct.

According to this document, Lewis was born on August 1, 1960, and has eight children. More, translated from Spanish: “He is a fair-skinned adult with brown hair and his personality is defined as that of a normal person and constitution. He is approximately 1.75 m tall with three tattoos – one on his left shoulder, another on his left hand, and a third on his chest. Furthermore, he has one scar on his right hand from a motor accident." Lewis declares in this document that his parents have passed away and that he is the youngest of twelve children. In addition, the document states that Lewis is "cooperating well to questions, thinking them over before answering in simple Spanish."

Lewis' first psychological interview took place in June 2010, and has had no less than 106 sessions since. Lewis "shows responsibility, punctuality, and discipline" at those sessions. The document concludes that Lewis "has no signs of being a psychopath and that the likelihood of social reinsertion is high," and that this psychological test "recommends he receive requested benefits."

Lewis reminds me, "Look, as I told you before on your first visit, I got sentenced 2-9-6, which means I can apply for parole. Instead I was transferred to Huaraz and lost the benefits. The officials here claim I'm under the 2-9-7 sentence, which doesn't allow conditional release. As I have done half of my sentence, I should be released but no one wants to hear my case. I would have been out already if I had someone on the outside!"

Lewis said he had been beaten by eight or nine guards. Those guards' full names are listed in his complaint. "I was abused on the 23rd of October last year and after 20 days the prosecutor came with cameras for an interview and a small investigation. Where the hell are you going to find marks after 20 days? It was unbelievable!"

Then Lewis showed me a hand written declaration of his intention to go on another hunger strike. "That guy there in the corner, wearing that bleached jogging suit, is sexually abusing that old man there. He lifts him up and throws him on the floor, the rest you can imagine. Two months ago he cruelly removed a toenail from his right foot. I try to keep things clean here in Tópico. I have even got [personnel] to give us soap and antibacterial liquids so we can disinfect the place. It's a prison but also an infirmary, you know?" Lewis fumes when he talks about the guards.

"Gestapo, that’s what they are, pieces of shit. They treat me like an animal. When beating me they say things like: ‘Hit the dog’. Nine against one, they beat me for fun. Now I have respect, but I fought for it. They know I have HIV and I can take their lives."

Lewis then told me a delegation from his embassy visited in August. "I could hardly speak to them. The main guy was Moheng Motlhale and he was accompanied by two others. It took the bastards 30 months to see me and the warden ruined it all. He filled his office with nurses saying there was no place where we could meet. Then when they arrived the second time I got a called to the warden's office. He said we only had five minutes because the warden had to leave. He's just trying to dodge them because my rights are being violated. The white guy from the embassy noticed it luckily and said they'd come back, but you're the first visitor since Christmas and they should have been here two weeks ago."

I asked Lewis what he would do when he is released. "I am trying to improve my Spanish so I can work here in Peru in the tourist industry. But I have heard they'll put me on a plane to South Africa, and I may never be able to come back to Peru. Although there are also rumors that this might not be the case. Maybe I can work at an airport!"

I replied, "Of course, you're a specialist after all!" He laughed and I looked around his cell. I counted seven beds, but Lewis stated that there were actually eight cellmates. Three had HIV and another had a non-infectious strand of tuberculosis. One of the eight was a 92-year-old serving a 14 year sentence for abusing a 7-year-old boy. There was a small stove and a black and white television.

Lewis Charles Cornelius looking healthier.

Lewis looked healthier than he did six months ago. He said, "Because I take better care of myself. I hate the packages of carbohydrates we get served here so if possible I make some spaghetti or potatoes with vegetables. I got the head nurse transferred because she was lazy and fat. The new nurse makes sure everyone gets their medication on time. I avoid greasy food and maintain order and discipline."

He added, "I sell chewing gum to make money. Yesterday I made one sol fifty! Some inmates call me Mick Jagger and ask me to sing 'Satisfaction'."

I asked if Lewis celebrated Christmas. "Heartbreaking, to be honest. You'll see other inmates getting visits from family members but I didn't have one single visit. I am surviving because I am strong and intelligent. But remember, no matter how intelligent you are you can’t beat the corrupt system. It's all about the money."

Before saying goodbye I asked Lewis what he thought of The Huaraz Telegraph. "It's an excellent newspaper, Rex. I like to read history and I now know a lot more about the area and Peru. I knew nothing about the earthquake for example,” (referring to the 1970 Ancash Earthquake which killed over 20,000 people). "I also liked the food page like that story about your countryman, the waffleman," (referring to Dirk Wolkers' Dutch Waffles in Huaraz). "That guy must make a fortune. I also like the map of Huaraz for the tourists, good job!"

Lewis Charles Cornelius is to be released in 2017. He can be visited on Sundays and kindly requests that visitors bring a small amount of money, food, or useful things like old clothes or soap. It is safe to visit the prison, but feel free to visit the Tourist Police on the Main Square (Plaza de Armas) if you want them to accompany you.

[end]

This is a pared down version of the original articles in The Huaraz Telegraph. To read the full articles, which include official and handwritten documents from Cornelius' case, see the PDFs for the July 2012 and April 2013 editions of The Huaraz Telegraph.

Victor Perez Liendo prison in Huaraz, Peru:

Contributed Story: Afrikaaner in Huaraz Prison

This article was contributed by Benjy Hansen-Bundy of Colombia Reports. See his blog at pocketsounds.net.

Knife Chase Bogota: 4:30 PM, October 10, 2012

I was jogging on the byway perched on the hills above the city. I passed a leafy stretch near the university into a dodgier neighborhood. Ten yards in front of me a group of young men waited to cross the street. They watched me hungrily. Their conversation – their every movement – froze at the sight of this misinformed gringo running through like he’s in Venice Beach.

They made no move, no space for me to pass, so I Adrian Petersoned my way through a little gap, careful not to brush anyone. I considered the byway too busy with traffic for a robbery to go down. It would also be absurd for anyone to chase down a jogger.

I ran towards where the National Park extends into the hillside. Three blocks downhill, there are nice residential and university buildings. I reached an unpromising, walled-in, leafy area. It was well cordoned off, so I descended rapidly to get around it and find greener pastures.

The first portion of my descent was on a steep, narrow, winding path. My passage was blocked by a young girl descending at a leisurely pace. I slowed to a walk. After a block she turned off the path and it opened up to a normal road, still very steep. I started running at a quick pace, SBTRKT blaring in my headphones. I caught strange looks from mothers on their stoops and storekeepers rubbing their bellies. I was 300 yards from nicer streets. The grade of the road was steep and I was running fast. I sensed motion behind me and turned to look. I saw a man with shaved head and street clothes sprinting toward me, holding a kitchen knife in slasher grip. He was a meter or two away.

Our eyes locked. I first thought this is a joke. In a fraction of a second I wondered whether he would stick me. Then someone else shouted, “Money!” I realized all his buddies were behind me, also running, though not so fast. I ripped the earbuds from my ears.

The man chasing me with a knife kept pace despite wearing jeans. Our feet slapped the pavement loudly. My adrenaline never kicked in. I was running the bare minimum like I always did in sports – just fast enough not to get murked. I felt the urge to stop and explain how ridiculous this is, because I’m not a bad guy. But I realized stopping was not an option.

So I spike my beloved iPod between my legs, just to give that motherfucker a reason to stop chasing me, and in 50 yards it was over. I walked, looking back, wondering where in the fuck I actually am. Like what fucking planet.

[end]

The only thing I’ll add is that, generally, the upper hillsides of mountains in Colombia are sketchy. Like the favelas in Rio de Janeiro and the comunas from Caracas to Medellin, rich folks don’t build nice homes on steep inclines on the sides of mountains. Poor people build shantytowns there.

In Bogota, the thoroughfare Avenida Circunvalar is a border that separates hillside slums from urban luxury, and Circunvalar is the “byway” from this story. As soon as you pass Circuvalar going up from La Macarena, Chapinero Alto, or any other northern neighborhood that straddles La Septima, you generally find low income housing and maybe gang activity. They are tiny neighborhoods, but often estrato 0 or 1. My last year in Bogota I lived on Calle 51, which leads directly to the Pardo Rubio neighborhood above Circunvalar. Pardo Rubio residents walked down 51 to get to the Transmilenio or Septima and Trece busetas. Once you’re hip to the neighborhoods “upstairs,” it’s easy to spot the passersby who live there. Judging from the descriptions in this story, Benjy’s pursuers most likely came from Pardo Rubio.

Stay safe!

Contributed Story: Knife Chase Bogota

This is a contributed story.

After aimless wander through Cusco, Machu Picchu, and Ica, I found a new home in the great white city of Arequipa. I fell in love with her rich historical architecture and palate pleasing delicacies, but I fell in stupid love for her rumba, the Arequipeña nightlife. My gringo features and Spanish fluency made for daily debauchery. I walked the streets like I owned them. I knew all the clubs, bars, and their owners. Almost every night you could find me on Calle San Fransico.

This particular night I received a bonus from the English institute where I had been working. I had already called my cocaine dealer and was passing my pre-high excitement time at Deja Va . I got the call and met him outside to do the transaction, a transaction that had played out some 50 times before. Bullshitting about weather, making a hand exchange, then a quick chao. After putting the life of the party in my pocket I set out for a taxi and back to my apartment to snort a small mountain.

In Peru there are official and unofficial taxis (see Taxis in Colombia vs. Peru). A gringo buddy who had lived there for years refused to get into unofficial taxis whenever we went out. I thought he was a pussy. He was adamant, and told me about robberies. My comfort in Peru overcame his warnings.

Back on San Fransisco I hailed the first taxi, unofficial of course. I hopped in the passenger seat and gave directions. As we drove I noticed we were taking a different route. There are many alleys in Arequipa, so a slightly different route didn’t concern me much.

All of a sudden he hit a speed bump, stopped the taxi and leaned out his window. Did we have a flat? I instinctively leaned over to see. At that moment my door flung open and some guy jumped on me swinging. I tried to grab his arms. I was seated and he was on top of me. I felt another fist hit me from my left, the bastard taxi driver. I was still struggling with the guy on top of me when two other ladrones got in the back seat. One dropped my seat back, which put me in an impossible position. But my adrenaline was flowing so I wrestled or bit anything I could. Then that’s when I felt cold steel pressed against my temple.

It’s amazing how cold, sober, and hopeless you feel at that moment.

I continued to struggle and the gunman smacked me with the butt. Another put a knife against my nut sack. I switched from struggling to negotiating. They covered my eyes with a handkerchief.

I first acted dumb as if I didn’t speak Spanish, but one of them said he knew me. I could not see his face. Today I suspect who he was.

We drove around as they emptied my pockets. Wallet, cell, phone, 600 soles, and 2 grams of blow. After 20 minutes of driving, they passed my debit card to the driver of a second car. They asked for my pin.

I was helpless and frustrated, but not afraid for my life. I had been listening to their conversation. They weren’t killers. I could tell they had done this before and just worked on lame threats, like “We’ll find out where you live and kill your family!” Yeah, in Alaska?

I gave incorrect pin numbers until they grew upset. The butt of the gun slammed against my knee. I felt the knife against my man muscle. I gave them the pin number.

After withdrawing what they could we drove to some field outside the city limits. They continued with lame threats until they stopped the car. I was still blindfolded when somebody put 3 soles in my hand for a taxi, and told me to get out with the blindfold and don’t take it off until they leave. I told them since they fucked my night they could at least give me my coke back. Somebody put the 2 grams in my hand and they drove off. I walked until I found an official taxi and went home.

[end]

I learned of taxi assaults as soon as I moved to Peru. I learned to take the safe brands. My Taxis in Colombia vs. Peru article needs an updating as far as the safety signals. I previously wrote that I started adding safe brands until I had about a dozen. In Lima, however, taxis don’t have the giant placard with the brand name. So I’ve adjusted my rules.

In Arequipa, recognized brands are the best way to go. But in the last assault I heard of, the victim claimed she took an Imperial taxi, one of the safest brands in town. However, you need to discern the real from the fake. Several unregistered taxis copy the well-known brands, down to the name sometimes. You need to be able to distinguish the real from the fake by knowing the correct font and design. Also, drivers for registered brand usually have a uniform, an ID card prominently displayed on the dash with their name and picture, and telephone numbers for the company all over the body and interior.

In Lima or Arequipa, look for red and white reflector tape on each side of the car. In additon to reflector tape, most importantly, confirm there is a license plate number painted on the body of the car, and that it matches the license plate on the car. A telephone number on the passenger side door is a bonus.

Finally, I always rely on a general impression of the driver. Old or young? Clean and well kept or ragged clothes and unwashed? Note the same things in the car. I’ve never had a problem with a taxi in part because I because I pay close attention to every detail about the driver and his car.

Stay safe!

Contributed Story: Robbed by Arequipa Taxi

In December 2012 Peruvian tourism suffered a small catastrophe. Three gringos posted an article titled Nightmare in Peru on their blog devoted to chronicling their road trip from the United States to the tip of South America. You have to read the original post to get all the details. Here’s my summary:

Jed Wolfrom and his wife Meghan Doherty embarked on a road trip from the US to the tip of South America in a modified camper. In Peru they met up with Jed’s sister, Jennifer. Before seeing Machu Picchu, they decided to camp in the village of Pallcca in the region of Ocongate. They were approached by villagers who began blowing whistles and making cell phone calls. More villagers arrived. The gringos refused to show their documents and tried to leave. The villagers picked up rocks as the tourists took off down the dirt road. Unfortunately it led nowhere and they had to head back where they came from, and the villagers had constructed rock barricades. The locals pelted the truck with rocks and it wrecked. The villagers surrounded the truck. Jed maced them with bear spray and the gringos fled on foot. The village – “at least 30 people” – gave chase through the woods with flashlights while pelting their prey with rocks. The gringos were apprehended and brought to the “Presidente” of the village, and beaten all the way. They were all bleeding from the head and “Jed’s front teeth were knocked out, his eye blundered shut by a rock.” They were brought into the village and surrounded by “at least 33 people that I could see but there were many in the back ground – including young children.” They held a tribunal / interrogation in what’s assumed to be Quechua amongst villagers and broken Spanish with the defendants. Interrogations and beatings went on for hours before they were told to sign a statement saying they’d been driving drunk when they wrecked their truck, which caused their injuries. The village leaders kept the American passports. After signing the statement the gringos were brought to the truck, which had been looted as their pockets had been, and told to wait for the police. The first arrival was obviously a fraud, so the foreigners told him the fake story from the signed statement. At 7:30 in the morning, Peruvian National Police arrived and took them to Ocongate, where the gringos told their story. From there they were taken to Cusco, which has a US Consular office and major tourism police office. In Cusco they received medical attention while dealing with the authorities before moving to Lima.

NBC’s Today Show did this segment on the Nightmare in Peru:

So what the hell happened?

My first instinct was to believe they got robbed. I wouldn’t have jumped to that conclusion from any pro-gringo or anti-Indian bias, however. Being an occasionally misbehaved foreigner myself, I know some gringos deserve what they get (see Gringos Who Don’t Know How to Act in Colombia). But this trio included two girls. Female presence has a taming effect on men. If they were three guys, I could see some troublemaking and I’d have my doubts. Or one girl with a few guys. But one guy with his wife and sister? How much trouble could they get into? I was inclined to believe the gringos’ side of the story.

But I also have experience with the Peruvian indigenous and pueblos. I always believed they were a docile people, and I’ve been well off the beaten path (Sicuani, during The Cusco Incident). I thought the biggest risk in those areas would be getting overcharged for a taxi, for a difference of a dollar or two. And for such poor, docile Indians, I’d rather just pay it to save the stress of haggling and feel good about the Quechua kids with no plumbing who could eat an egg or some other kind of protein for a change with the extra money.

Could I be wrong about the docile, indigenous Peruvians? They’re not docile at all if you ask Jennifer, Meghan, and Jed. Could the rural areas of Peru be more dangerous than I thought?

My suegro is a career police officer in Arequipa, and early in his career he was sent to various rural areas in the height of the Shining Path insurgency. He has experience with these indigenous communities. I recorded our hour-long conversation. Download the interview with my PNP father-in-law about the Nightmare in Peru (Spanish).

Suegro doesn’t believe the gringos’ story. Here’s the jist of our discussion, paraphrased:

Suegro: Why did the villagers attack? There has to be a motive. The tourists were drinking, they had a problem with one of the villagers. When you have a problem with one villager, the whole village comes down on you. That’s how they are.

Me: Is it possible the village targeted them for robbery?

Suegro: No, in all my career I’ve never seen an indigenous pueblo of thieves. I’ve seen them loot an overturned truck. I’ve seen an entire village keep quiet when we learned they executed a thief among their own. But I’ve never seen a village-wide robbery like that. The foreigners are not telling the truth. They did something. Indians are not going to hit people with rocks for fun. She’s hiding something. She’s lying.

One key point that convinces Suegro is the fact that no charges were filed. The required protocol of a police station in that situation would be to explicitly ask the tourists if they wished to press charges. There’s no way to complete the report without clarifying whether or not charges will be filed. The victims must have opted NOT to file charges, signing and fingerprinting that declaration with the PNP.

In the Today Show video above, the reporter explains that the victims couldn’t recognize anybody in a sketchy photo lineup. That’s why they didn’t press charges. That doesn’t convince Suegro.

But what could the gringos – two girls and a guy who seem sober and reasonable in their TV interview – be hiding? The most I can imagine is a more liberal use of bear spray than what’s told in the original story. But would Jed the mountain man, backed up by two non-street-looking gringas, be the first to use violence? It’s far-fetched, but Suegro is convinced they’re hiding something.

I looked up what people were saying around the web. In the 125 comments from the El Comercio story, some Peruvians badmouth indigenous Peruvians and others criticize gringos. Others defend both sides.

The gringos who blame the villagers all the way almost exclusively come from outside Peru, and never lived in Peru. I imagine most had never heard of the Quechua language before the story, and probably wouldn’t remember it now.

In the gringo-in-Peru blogosphere, on the other hand, it’s almost the opposite. I haven’t found one taking a strong stance against the villagers, which I attribute in part to their never having heard such a horror story from Peruvian Indians, and in part to political correctness / anti-West ideology.

This argument from Streets of Lima:

[I]n my days traveling in Peru, I always–as a friend of mine put it–”Dressed in rags.” If I were to spend a week in Cusco, I would bring a small satchel with extra underwear and a shirt and shorts to wear while I washed my other clothes. I also traveled with a fanny pack (people have often ridiculed me because this fanny pack appears in many of my pictures). Although it’s not fashionable, my fanny pack allowed me to always have my passport firmly against my body. I never even carried a camera most of the time, and I never brought enough money along to be of interest.

In short, I kept a low profile and was always ready to move fast. My security measures were extreme (almost to the level of paranoia), which is probably why nothing ever happened to me. I wouldn’t have attempted to drive around Peru in a rented camper with ten thousand dollars of equipment, and I don’t recommend it.

I think Walter’s precautions are extreme. But I definitely woulnd’t bring $10,000 worth of toys to go camping in an area of extreme poverty. Not normal, going-hungry poverty. We’re talking $1.25 / day, growth-stunting, extreme poverty. I’m the last guy to ever lay blame on victims of crime or say stupid shit like dar papaya, and I’ve been the first to ridicule  the rich Peruvians or Colombians afraid to visit the most middle class neighborhoods of their own country, but there are lines I don’t cross. And when it comes to camping in extreme poverty regions with stuff worth more than the entire village’s combined salaries, I’ll pass. I was actually surprised they made it to Peru with all that shit. They passed through Mexico’s rural border areas, Central American gangland, and paraco- and FARC-dominated red zones in Colombia. I would’ve thought they were home free. After all that, getting robbed by Quechuas?

This blog post seems to take the side of the villagers with these points:

1. “Tourists, especially American tourists, often behave abroad in ways that they would not in their home countries.”
2. Language proficiency – “we cannot really know what messages were being transmitted across language boundaries.”
3. Cattle rustling – “cattle – especially in these times of climate change – are vital to a family or community’s livelihood … the presence of an outsider could have been associated with such a threat.”
4. “The history of white men rolling up in the Andes.”

All those points (except climate change, which I can’t figure out how to apply here) and the Streets of Lima argument and even the Peruvians’ vitriolic comments on El Comercio contain at least a bit of truth for somebody. But all of them together make this incident impossible to understand.

After Suegro’s opinion that they’re hiding something, combined with my own instincts that two gringas and a gringo with $10,000 worth of toys would not do too much to provoke the locals, I decided to wait and see what came out before publishing something. Wait and see.

Over three months later, nothing came out. We haven’t heard the villagers’ side of the story. So my conclusion is that I’m stumped. I don’t have an opinion. What happened is NOT typical in any sense. Entire villages of thieving, predatory Peruvian Indians just don’t exist. Three Americans (two females) who are open-minded enough to visit obscure regions of the world generally don’t pick fights. And why aren’t there formal charges? Nothing makes sense. I’m going to chalk it up as a freak-incident, an anamoly. As the Peruvian authorities are claiming it, I believe it was a misunderstanding.

In my current studies of Peruvian history, I came across some indepth looks at rondas campesinas and their impact on the countryside sierra. This from The Peru Reader by Duke University Press:

Rondas campesinas, or peasant patrols, began in 1976 to combat thieves in the northern mountains of Cajamarca. By the early 1980s, they had taken over much of the work of the official courts by resolving disputes over land or family arguments, and they supervised small public works projects, becoming a major rallying point for peasant pride. The original rondas campesinas in northern Peru are often confused with the quite different organizations of the same name in Ayacucho and the southern highlands, which formed a decade later to combat the Shining Path.

The rondas were started to combat rustling and livestock theft, which was needed given the loss of one animal could break an indigenous Peruvian family living in extreme poverty. But the vigilantes graduated from theft prevention to battling the Shining Path guerrillas. They completely replaced local government in many areas. At their height, former President Alberto Fujimori‘s government officially recognized the rondas, and armed them with Winchester rifles.

Understanding Peruvian history is important to this story. The police don’t really enter these pueblos. They’re self-administered. What seemed to these three tourists an illegal lynching was actually a longstanding form of local law enforcement. More from The Peru Reader:

Village Justice

As the patrols spread, their duties also multiplied. In some villages, they organized small public works projects, for example, cleaning irrigation canals or constructing health posts and meeting halls. Most extraordinary in the patrols’ development, however, is their role in administering justice. More important than patrolling, throughout the north their principal activity now consists of arreglos, or village-based trials. At assemblies attended by the entire village and presided over by the elected patrol steering committee, small yet often bitter disputes – property disagreements, inheritances, water rights, and intrigues – are settled. These are problems that abound in rural communities: “small town, big hell,” as they say in the mountains. Resolution comes after long hours of often contentious debate by the light of a Coleman lantern or a kerosene lamp made from a can of Gloria brand evaporated milk. At times, the final settlement includes a fine or whipstrokes. In addition, the litigants almost always sign a “trial record.”

Rondas campesinas

Don’t fuck with.

Sound familiar?

This quirk of Peruvian society, combined with some wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time, a drop of miscommunication, and the possibility of an undisclosed slight or animosity on either side, formed a perfect storm for this freak-show anamoly incident.

That’s my conclusion.

The Nightmare in Peru helped fuel the silly hype behind the supposed Garrett Hand / Jamie Neal disapperance in Peru just two months later, who were reported missing by an overprotective mother before reappearing from an Amazon jungle / river tour. The US State Department warned of kidnapping plots targetting American tourists in another blow to Peruvian tourism in the international media. But with 699,680 foreign tourists visiting the Machu Picchu ruins in 2012, for an average of 1,910 per day, I don’t think Peruvian tourism has anything to worry about.

So where are Jed Wolfrom and his wife Meghan Doherty? I just checked in and was surprised to see they completed their road trip. A few months after the ordeal and the Today Show spot, the recovering couple continued to Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina in their camper! See them in Moving On and To the Final One, which show them smiling and having a great time. Spirit unbroken, amazing!

Nightmare in Peru: When Indians Attack!

Buy Confessions of an Online Hustler by Matt Forney
(Buying through that link supports Expat Chronicles)

Matt Forney was the publisher behind In Mala Fide, the vanguard of the “manosphere” and alt-right blogosphere. He recently came out of the closet under his real name (Matt Forney) and published Confessions of an Online Hustler. For anybody with hoop dreams of making money online from home, this book is a good place to start. Here are my highlights.

The Worst Reasons to Start Blogging

This is a mandatory step for anybody in the dreaming stage. Forney’s worst reasons include “I’ll Make Lots of Money,” “I Love to Write,” and “I Want to Be Famous.”

The first is the best myth to attack. You’re not going to make lots of money. Forney crunched the numbers and figured out Google Ads made him $0.13 / hour assuming a 20-hour work week. I have Google Ads on this site, and they pay about $100 every three months. That’s $400 / year, MAX. And that’s five years after starting.

Once you’re at 10,000 unique visitors / month, ads will start to bring in a trickle. But it still doesn’t add up to much. And getting to 10,000 uniques / month is something that very few bloggers accomplish.

Consistent with my recommendation in being public, I think everybody should have a blog. But don’t think you’re going to make any money. That’s the wrong attitude going in. This is the right attitude:

If you want to go anywhere with your blog, you’re going to have to work. That will mean forcing yourself to write when you really don’t want to. You’re not expected to hit a home run every time you step up to the plate, but you are expected to step up. Even if you’ve started to hate the game …

On How to Be a Better Writer, “Start Reading”

If you don’t read, you can’t write. It’s like trying to play guitar without having ever heard a single note of music.

I agree 100% and that’s why I consider reading to be a part of my job, and make time for it accordingly. Every Sunday I read all day long. The goal is to refrain from even turning on the computer. I read about 25 books per year. Get my reading recs every month by signing up for the Expat Chronicles newsletter.

Start Writing

Artists, athletes and musicians master their crafts through hard work; there’s no shortcut and no way around it. Whatever pointless activities you presently use to kill time right now, drop them and start writing.

I don’t know how many people I’ve met – whether they reached out or I met them casually – who fancied themselves writers and didn’t have a blog. It’s unbelievable. People think there are ways to be anointed with the title – “WRITER” – or even hired beforehand when they have nothing to show.

If you have any aspirations whatsoever to be a “writer,” you have to start writing hundreds and thousands of words. Hundreds of thousands of sentences, really. I’m a big believer in Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule, popularized in his book Outliers, which says that you need 10,000 hours’ practice to truly master something and be remarkable. The rule has been disputed, but you can’t really argue against things like practice and hard work. No matter how talented you are, 10,000 hours’ practice will make you better. And with the ever-increasing web use and internet literacy in the world, every year there will be more people trying to make it as “writers.” If you’re going to compete, you have to practice.

Learn From Your Mistakes and Get Over Them

People who play it safe and always follow the rules never get anywhere in life. You can’t err on the side of caution one hundred percent of the time … If you want to succeed at blogging, you will have to push the limits of what is acceptable.

Your content needs to be a little scandalous, or people won’t find it interesting. Even in the journalism business, which aims to stay free of opinion (just the facts), people want to read about scandal, conflict, opposing sides, etc. Publishing happy stories that nobody disagrees with is the quickest way to bore people to death. Actually, it won’t get that far because they won’t read it. Most people’s lives are boring most days, so they want something to pick them up. You don’t have to write about smoking crack or pimps beating whores, but it has to be contentious. And not contentious in a politically correct way, because that’s not really contentious.

The point of this section is getting over your mistakes. Forney published a rather scandalous article that offended the feminist community, for which he publicly apologized:

For example, a while ago, I wrote an article entitled “How to Rape Women and Get Away with It,” which I intended to be a satirical swipe at feminists who politicize rape and exaggerate its prevalence for selfserving reasons. While my friends and I thought it was amusing, and I tried to make it obvious that I wasn’t being serious, the article went viral and hurt people who had been the victims of real rape. I don’t believe in victimizing the already victimized, so I pulled the article and issued an apology.

Learn. Get over it. Good advice.

Shut Your Mouth and Do the Work

I’ve been writing so long that any mirth I might have gotten from the act itself is completely gone; there’s only the pursuit of another bit of rock, a temporary satiation of a permanent addiction. To me, writing isn’t a hobby, it’s a second job.

If you don’t view your hustle as a second job, it’s not going to go anywhere. You get off of your crappy 9 to 5 shift and start a 5 to 11 one. You work constant overtime, you skip going out to the bars, you work split shifts, you don’t go to bed until your deadlines are met and the paperwork’s been filed.

At this particular moment, I spend anywhere from four to seven hours a day on my hustles. I get maybe five
hours of sleep a night.

Hemingway said, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

Something else to understand if you plan to start a blog that makes money. You’re going to get bored writing before you make your first dollar. Are you sure you’re committed?

The Three Tiers of Online Hustling

Forney has an interesting template to follow in developing online businesses, a three tiered farm system if you will. The building block, a “Tier-3″ blog, is a cheap and easy forum for rants about everything and the kitchen sink. From there you identify the most popular articles – the ones that get shared and commented on – and set up a Tier-2 blog to focus on that subject. If something gets on at the Tier-2 level, you develop a Tier 1 product.

You can monetize via affiliate marketing (driving traffic to websites like Amazon in exchange for a cut of products sold), by running ads, and by soliciting PayPal donations.

Once you’ve established a presence with your tier-2 blog and gained a sizable audience, it’s time to advance to tier-1, the summit of Hustle Mountain. Tier-1 is a professional product that you sell, such as a book, an instructional DVD set, a CD, an online service or whatever.

You can write all the Amazon reviews you want or run Google ads all day long, but ultimately the only way to make good money on the Internet is to sell something of your own creation …

When you’ve created one tier-1 product, you need to keep moving on to the next one, using your tier-2 blog to expand your audience and strengthen your brand.

A book would be a Tier-1 product. I just published Bogota Brothel Tours: A Brief Career in Colombia’s Sex Trade, which Matt Forney reviewed and used his own Amazon affiliate link within the article.

Chapters 5-7 would be useful to someone who doesn’t have experience launching websites. And for the record, let me jump in the WordPress camp. Why would you use anything else?

Backscratching 101

On building your audience:

Bloggers are attention whores by definition. We write because we get validation from having other people
read our demented rants. There’s nothing wrong with admitting this; it’s certainly healthier than some of the other things people do in their spare time, like going to furry conventions.

The easiest way to stroke a blogger’s ego while helping yourself at the same time is to link to their blog. The simplest way is to have a blogroll, a list of links on your sidebar to your favorite blogs. You don’t have to link to every website you read, but it helps. Not only does linking to other peoples’ blogs get you noticed, some will add you to their blogrolls automatically as a gesture of appreciation. You can amp up the brownnosing by linking to other bloggers’ posts in your own articles. If you’ve got the inclination, you can even do “linkfest” posts in which all you do is link to other peoples’ work, or promote their articles on Twitter or Facebook.

I need to do more of that.

Of Course You Know, This Means War

Just keep in mind that bile and venom usually get more attention than sobriety and respect.

Rework, the short but brilliant business book by the guys at 37signals, had a chapter titled “Pick a Fight.” It’s the same logic. Find somebody who sucks and call them out. I almost attacked an expat site last year, and another this year. In both cases I didn’t do it. Maybe I should have. Forney has an entire section recommending I do.

SEO Made Simple: SEO is a Crock of Shit

Definitely against the grain:

The dirty little secret about SEO is that even if you tweak your site for maximum search traffic, only ten percent of searchers at most will convert into regular readers… and that ten percent is an optimistic figure. The vast majority of searchers will click onto your site, look at one page (the page they were searching for), and click off, never to visit your domain again …

Google is constantly changing their algorithms to improve the quality of their service. SEO tactics that can net you lots of traffic today will be out-of-date in six months to a year.

Instead of SEO, you should be focused on networking with blogs similar to your own.

Obviously do the basics. I do a comprehensive, bare minimum. After that I’ve found SEO to be as Forney describes it: cheap traffic that doesn’t come back.

Chapter 9 – Making Money

Buy the book!

They See You Bloggin’, They Hatin’

If you’re not bad enough to be hated, you’re not good enough to be loved.

If you don’t have haters, you’re probably not saying anything interesting. If you do have haters, you’re on the right track.

Final Thoughts

I would add to this passage that, as opposed to how the book started with the worst reasons to start blogging, these are the best reasons to start blogging:

It’s rewarding when people cite and comment on your work, and tell you that it’s influenced their own way of thinking. It’s rewarding when a young man stumbles across your blog, spends hours on end devouring your articles, then excitedly emails you thanking you for helping him find his way in the world. It’s rewarding when you receive a check in the mail for royalties from a book that you wrote, edited and marketed all by yourself.

Most importantly, it’s rewarding to look back at your body of word and marvel at the ideas you came with, the stories you shared, and the fun times you had.

The Best Defense is Not Having to Defend Yourself

On a personal note, I got that feeling of being rewarded that my writing had something to do with Forney’s book. We were in touch during his process of coming out of the closet, and I’m glad to have an outspoken, public blogger as a friend. Here’s his ode to being public, which sounds to me like a hat tip:

Is it because you’re afraid of losing your job? If you can be fired over something you wrote on the Internet, then it’s a surefire indicator that you have a shitty job. Do you think that Donald Trump or Bill Gates would lose their jobs if they admitted to snorting cocaine or banging hookers? Of course not, because they are valuable. If you’re such an expendable cog that a blog post can result in you ending up in the unemployment line, you need to take a second look at your chosen career field.

Is it because you’re afraid your friends will find out? Newsflash: if your friends are offended by your writing, they aren’t really your friends. Friends are supposed to be people that you should be comfortable being honest around, and who will have your back through thick and thin. If your friends will abandon you over a blog post, you need to re-evaluate who you’re letting into your life.

Is it because you’re afraid your family will disown you? Again, if your parents or siblings don’t respect your views or lifestyle, that’s their problem and theirs alone. Just because someone is genetically related to you doesn’t require you to have them in your life. If your family doesn’t appreciate your writing, you should consider cutting them off, because they’re likely dragging you down in other ways.

While I’ve lost a lot due to my blog, I’ve gained even more. I’ve made a number of friends who like and respect me for what I’ve done and what I believe. I’ve gained job and money-making opportunities by mere virtue of being a recognizable face in a niche where most people write under pseudonyms. My family has stood by me more or less no matter what I’ve done.

My philosophy is simple: I’m not going to compromise who I am in order to get people to like me. I’m not going to pretend to be someone I’m not or express views that I don’t hold so I can fit in with people I despise. I’d say it’s worked out pretty nicely so far.

Thanks Matt!

Buy Confessions of an Online Hustler by Matt Forney
(Buying through that link supports Expat Chronicles)

Buy Three Years of Hate: The Very Best of In Mala Fide

Profit Blogging with Matt Forney

My Hugo Chavez Rant has been an article in mind for a long time. I never wrote it because I only wanted to rant once, and the rant just kept growing because the news kept getting crazier and nuttier. Reading Venezuelan news is borderline sadistic, and it just keeps getting worse. I kept putting off my one Chavez article until something changed about the “Bolivarian Revolution.” This month marked that change in the death of Hugo Chavez.

If you’re completely in the dark about what’s been going on in Venezuela for the last 15 years, watch the Frontline documentary, The Hugo Chavez Show.

To help kick off the definitive article I read Blogging the Revolution by Francisco Toro and Juan Cristobal, the guys behind Caracas Chronicles (coincidence). I first found Caracas Chronicles by searching prisons in Latin America. Francisco Toro writes several pieces, this one on prison gladiators, for the New York Times blog, Latitude. Since then I’ve followed Caracas Chronicles and it’s great because it gets into the daily grind from an economist’s point of view.

The book is a summary of the most important posts from the last 10 years. Here’s the introduction by Guillermo Aveledo:

[T]he blog’s trio has tackled a myriad of different and, sadly, recurring issues: political encroachment and squabbles, economic and policy fallacies, sovereign debt, pollution, crime and security, drug trafficking, beauty queens, prison conditions and riots, labour issues, historical foibles, and so on.

I’m glad I read the book because it’s changed this rant entirely. Otherwise it would’ve been a crude rehash of what’s appeared on The Economist Americas page over the years. The two Caracas Chronicles guys, on the other hand, are Venezuelans living abroad. They’re inside the culture but outside the borders. They have a unique perspective: unclouded by short-term hysteria or desperation to remove Chavez yet not clueless gringos unaware of the country’s quirks. Take your undestanding of chavismo to the next level by reading this book.

One thing that never made sense was how Chavez could consolidate power so much in his second term. I’d accepted the theory that Venezuelan elite had invested to much wealth in the wealthy, and Chavez is what happens when the pendulum swung towards the poor. But still, he’s so bad. Why do so many Venezuelans allow it? How do they allow such stupidity to happen?

Then you have to understand the petrostate.

The petrostate is a mechanism that turns oil money into political power – or, more precisely, control of the state’s oil money into control of the state’s oil money into control of the state – in a self-perpetuating cycle.

The way you do that is by building a huge patronage network. It’s Tammany Hall politics on a national basis …

Success in life depends … on your ability to get your hands on piece of the [government] resource pie.

This outlook comes to dominate people’s relationship with the state. The state comes to be seen as an inexhaustible source of money. People come to believe that whatever problem they have, the state can and should solve it …

Within the petrostate mental model that’s what the state is for and governments are to be judged by how well they deliver on that promise …

Throughout the 40s, 50s, 60s and into the mid-70s, the petrostate model yielded a huge improvement in Venezuelans’ living standards. Infrastructure got built, people got jobs, and each generation could reasonably expect to live better than the one before. The country got universal schooling, free universitites, hospitals, public housing, sewers, phones, roads, highways, ports, airports, and all kinds of markers of modernity decades before other Latin American countries had them …

Venezuela was an island of democracy and stability in a continent torn apart by Marxist insurgents and coup-plotting generals …

The massive influx of oil dollars in the 70s shifted public morals in this country. Amidst the abundance of oil dollars, graft became accepted in a way it had never been before. The perception was that only a pendejo, a simpleton, would miss out on the opportunities for easy riches that profilerated in those days for the well-connected. A culture of easy-going racketeering, of matter-of-fact robbery, penetrated deep into the Venezuelan psyche. We’ve never managed to shake it …

Chavez’s peculiar contribution to the [petrostate model] has been to cut out the middlemen. In the old system, each client’s relationship was with the patron immediately above him. But the chavista patronage system only has two levels: the president and everyone else. These days, the relationships that underpin the system happen are televised; they are mediated rather than personal – the charismatic leader’s bond with each of his followers is unique …

In that light, you’d think efficiency has improved under Chavez. But then you have to keep in mind that sugar disappeared from store shelves this year, a classic market shortage.

A major point I got from the book was that jaw-dropping corruption and inefficiency (jaw-dropping, as opposed to typical corruption and inefficiency in Latin America) is nothing new in Venezuela. It’s been built in for two generations. It’s become a part of the national identity.

The next great point, the best I got from the book because it’s not confined to Venezuela, are the three primary schools of thought in Latin American brains (paradigms, if you will):

J.M Briceño’s “The Labyrinth of the Three Minotaurs” presents itself as a critical theory of Latin American culture in historical perspective …

[The three separate, mutually incompatible strains of Latin American thought] are the Western Rationalist discourse, the Mantuano (or Hispanic colonial) discourse, and the Savage discourse.

The European rationalist discourse is “structured by instrumental reason” along with science and technology. It sees social change as driven by laws, rules, and science. It stands alongside a pre-modern European discourse, the Mantuano discourse, that owed directly to Spain’s chivalric age, centered on a kind of medieval Catholicism that takes submission to hierarchy and the nobility of birth as its central values. At the other extreme, we have the savage discourse, which emerges from the “wounds” from the conquest of pre-European cultures and the transfer of African cultures into the Americas. It is steeped in nostalgia for a non-Western way of life, and views the European rationalist discourse as foreign, strange, and representative of oppression …

In Briceño Guerrero’s view, both the left and the right are strains within the Western Rationalist discourse. They may be radically at odds with one another – surely they are – yet they share the same basic faith in reason, in rational analysis, as the key to understanding and changing social reality … [Karl Marx and Adam Smith] may disagree on almost everything, but they share a faith in instrumental rationalism as a privileged method for ascertaining reality.

Chavismo does not … In a fundamental way, chavismo cannot be placed on a right-left axis without massively distorting both it and the axis. In fact, Chavismo not only falls outside that axis, it represents a rejection of the axis, a revolt of the epistemological order that sustains it …

Chavez’s political appeal is based on the emotional bond his rhetoric creates with an audience that profoundly resents its historic marginalization … Chavez validates the savage discourse, reflects it, affirms it, and ultimately embodies it …

The expression of will is reality enough, and no point of contact between it and the reality outside the discourse is needed. This is more than the opposition pundit-ocracy can handle. They cannot imagine, let alone understand, that millions of excluded Venezuelans actively want the nation’s affairs to be run on the basis of a savage (non-western/anti-rational) discourse, that they crave leaders who adopt such a stance, and that they are thrilled to reward Chavez with their votes because, not despite, his rejection of rationalism, of the demand for word and world to match …

Chavez’s only concern is to preserve his romantic vision of himself as a fearless leader of the downtrodden in their fight against an evil oligarchy. If the facts don’t happen to fit that narrative structure, then that’s too bad for the facts.

I guess this is obvious after the fact, but I’d never seen the idea of the savage discourse phrased so eloquently. If I read this years ago, countless situations in Latin American politics and argument would’ve made much more sense.

I previously wrote about the Spanish Legacy and classism, but never considered the savage element in Latin logic. I dumped everything together when there are three different forces in total. If you think about it, every Latin American politician falls into one of the three discourses – Western Rationalist, Spanish Legacy, or Savage – despite their orientation towards right or left.

Western Rationalists can be conservative or liberal, but they’re generally people who studied law or economics at gringo universtities, are well regarded by the gringo media, and develop reasonable political platforms based on data. They include Juan Manuel Santos, Enrique Peñalosa, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Alejandro Toledo.

The perfect Spanish Legacy candidate would be incarecerated ex-President of Peru Alberto Fujimori and ousted Bogota mayor Samuel Moreno. Chavez has Spanish Legacy influence as well (not pure Savage) given he uses government money to buy influence in a clear patrón style of cronyism. Spanish Legacy candidates are difficult to spot because they obviously aren’t going to run on platforms of authoritarianism, clientelism, nepotism, or elitism. They say what’s politically convenient to get elected, and what they do counts them as Spanish Legacy politicians.

Savage Discourse politicians would be the obvious Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa, and Evo Morales, who oppose “imperialism” for the sake of opposing gringos and whose economic moves make the educated scratch their heads. You generally won’t see one of these elected to national leadership outside countries with serious oil wealth (case in point: Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia), or you get a disaster like Argentina will see in the next few years.

These three discourses define Latin American politics. Hugo Chavez is a Savage for the cameras, and half Spanish Legacy in his actions. The Savage Discourse that elects officials like him, Correa, and Morales is wildly popular with disenfranchised Latin Americans. Anything rational or based on science and economics is suspicious, especially if it comes from Gringolandia. Defying the gringos is a value in itself, regardless of the results or any “truth.”

I’ve been thinking more and more about the lack of intellectual seriousness in chavismo, about its active hostility to specialist knowledge in general, and to economic knowedge in particular.

I think econophobia is at the heart of chavismo and of its popular appeal, its arrogance, its basic anti-rationalism and also its tendency to authoritariansim. Chavez holds specialist knowledge in deep, deep contempt …

It’s not even that chavistas are wrong in the causal claims they make. It’s that they don’t feel the need to put forward causal arguments at all. In their place, we get denunciations of greed and glorifications of solidarity – gut-level appeals to raw emotion – as the sole basis for economic policymaking. Public good, private bad. Collective good, individual bad. That’s as sophisticated as Chavonomic reasoning gets …

There is an undeniable whiff of improvisation in everything the government is doing.

Not only are the Caracas Chronicles guys freakishly intelligent, they’re also funny. I love this little critique of the lack of reason in the chavista Savage Discourse:

There is some sort of widely shared but never clearly stated understanding of what-causes-what in economic life that accounts for the baffling fact that people who blame inflation on “speculators” aren’t immediately laughed out of the room, out of their careers, and out of any possibility of holding a role in public life …

I’ve never really been able to get my mind around what exactly chavistas – and Venezuelans in general – have in mind when they blame inflation on speculators. It’s a view so primitive, so childish, so trivial to debunk, that you really have to pinch yourself to believe you still have to argue against it …

For speculation to account for inflation, it’s not one or two portus who have to be speculatively trying to see if they can make some extra cash – it’s every portu, marking up the price not just on one product, but on goods in general …

For reasons clear to exactly no one, though, the possibility of this form of “speculation” simply never enters the Venezuelan public sphere … In chavenomics, speculation only ever puts upward pressure on prices, never downward pressure.

“Speculators”, in the chavista formulation, are a very queer breed of “capitalist” indeed: one gripped by an obsessive, single-minded mania to raise prices at all places and all times, regardless of what the competition is doing. In other words, a speculator in the chavista mold is somebody willing to lose money to indulge his price-raising obsession, or at any rate someone unwilling to cut prices even when doing so would make him more money …

And then, as I’m sitting there tossing and turning at four in the morning, that lurking question just won’t go away. Is it really imaginable that the people who run our economy, people like Finance Minister Jorge Giordani and BCV chief Nelson Merentes, don’t understand the first-semester economics outlined in this post? Or is it that they do understand it, but have chosen to pretend not to in a bid to further their careers?

Francisco Toro and Diego Cristobal of Caracas Chronicles are economists, but they aren’t opposition nuts. They oppose Chavez, no doubt. But despite what you’ve read so far, they’re not as critical of Chavez as I’ve found the general gringo media to be. They’re critical of the opposition, and their critique helped me understand why chavismo will stay in power via Nicolas Maduro.

Also, contrary to the impression you get from gringo media regarding the power consolidation and propagandizing under Chavez, Toro and Cristobal argue in the book that Chavez is not a totalitarian:

To make a proper totalitarian leader, you have to balance off your willingness to mangle the truth with an equal dose of cruelty and violence – Chavez just can’t strike that balance, because he’s just not comfortable enough using violence to achieve political ends …

Chavez grasped all along that there was no point in jailing masses of people, censoring newspapers and generally playing the highly damaging role of repressive ogre when he had enough cash on hand to co-opt the coopt-able and bankrupt the rest. It’s a trick the Chavez regime has mastered with chilling speed, and one that has allowed it to avoid the reputation costs of repression without really having to compromise its increasingly tight grip on society …

[Totalitarianism's] aim is not just to silence all sources of political dissent. Its goal is to dominate the totality of each and every thought and activity of each and every citizen each and every day …

The Caracas Chronicles guys give us a different way to think of democracy in Venezuela:

Competition for electoral support has come to color just about everything that happens in the country. You see democratic dynamics playing out day in and out, in the thousand little ways that both chavismo and the opposition curry favor with voters, from the populist-goodie giveaways (not just by the national government), to the billboards trumpeting the name of every Podunk politician who ever filled in a pothole anywhere in the country, to the relentless endless propaganda … everywhere really. This is just not the way actors behave in a political system where what normal people think doesn’t matter.

In that sense, democracy is thriving in Venezuela …

It’s these contradictions that make the Venezuelan case so fascinating to watch at this point. Venezuela’s outlaw state is, today, more dependent on what its people think of it than at any time in the past. As the conditions of electoral competition grow more unfair, the competition intensifies rather than slackening. These are not normal-country dynamics – and really, I don’t think I know of any close parallel to this kind of system either in our history or elsewhere around the globe.

It’s really weird what’s happening in our country. Riveting, really.

A significant portion of the book contests the widely accepted theory of the 2002 coup against Chavez, which I had accepted without realizing it.

Watch the entire documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, on YouTube, which captures the narrative most people have adopted. It’s ridiculously sympathetic to Chavez, clearly and undeniably favorable, which isn’t really arguable given the Irish team was in Venezuela to do a bio on the guy at the time of the coup. But despite their bias, it’s undeniable fact that Bush administration officials met with the coup plotters beforehand. The CIA knew of a coup plot beforehand. Bush officials spoke to Chavez’s replacement on the day of his swearing in. And the worst was White House press secretary’s Ari Fleischer’s embarrassingly premature statement endorsing the coup. Despite all that, no evidence amounted to tangible US involvement. Approval, yes, but material support? No.

That’s been the adopted narrative. Our Venezuelan authors tell a version that would render The Revolution Will Not Be Televised to be a worse propaganda flick than Michael Moore himself could produce. In prefacing their detailed description of the 2002 coup events:

[W]ho ever heard of a Latin American coup where the coupsters “forget” to gain military control over the seat of government? One where they have no overall plan, no settled leadership, and end up improvising a strategy minute-by-minute as they go along? And who’s ever heard of a Latin American coup where the overthrown President had a specific, worked-out plan to provoke the crisis that eventually toppled him? …

To proceed, a background on Caracazo:

The effect of the 1989 riot – known as the Caracazo - had on Venezuela’s public life was in some ways analagous to 9/11 in the US, an event so deeply traumatizing it could be summoned just by its date: 27F. Until then, Venezuelans had seen themselves as different, more civilized, more democratic, better than their Latin American neighbors. Thirty-one years of unbroken, stable, petrostate-funded democracy had made us terribly cocky. In a sense, the riots marked Venezuela’s re-entry into Latin America. The country was no longer exceptional: just another hard-up Latin American country struggling to put its democracy on a stable footing.

The next passage explains how to recognize if an account of the 2002 Venezuelan coup is biased from the left – did they mention Plan Avila? If not, they didn’t mention Plan Avila and the top generals’ refusal to carry out Chavez’s orders to execute the plan, then your source is covering up an important part of the story:

At 10:30 am … Chavez personally ordered the activation of Plan Avila. Now, those two words will mean little to foreign readers, but they will send chills down the spine of any Venezuelan.

Plan Avila is an army-run contingency plan designed to quell serious disturbances in Caracas.

The plan had only ever been activated once before, during the massive looting that broke out on February 27th and 28th, 1989 … [T]he decision to deploy the army with orders to shoot looters on sight resulted in a bloodbath …

[T]he bulk of the evidence suggests that the decision to remove Chavez was made by the Venezuelan Army under quite unprecedented circumstances, and the decision to bring Chavez back was also made by the Venezuelan Army under quite unprecedented circumstances …

The real irony, considering the turn official rhetoric would take in the months and years to follow, is that only because April 11th wasn’t the product of a well-planned, carefully orchestrated conspiracy – that’s the main reason Chavez beat the coup.

Here’s a thorough account of events from the NY Times. It’s consistent with how the coup is described in Blogging the Revolution. The book contains a much more detailed account.

Blogging the Revolution covers much, much more than what I’ve highlighted in this post. It gives an on-the-ground look at Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela from the eyes of economist-trained Venezuelans who visit often and have lots of connections. You couldn’t get a better look.

Buy Blogging the Revolution by Francisco Toro and Diego Cristobal.
(Buying through that link supports Expat Chronicles)

My final thoughts on Hugo Chavez are … Spanish Legacy and Savage Discourse meets Petrostate. That’s it. And I have no expectation that things will change much in Venezuela.

Here are some more fun quotes from the book, that I couldn’t find a place in the post for:

Petrostate stuff:

For one thing, most Americans remain under the impression that Venezuela is, basically, a Latin American country. It isn’t. We are, first and foremost, a petrostate – a place where the government gets to pump massive amounts of money more or less directly out of the ground.

Nothing about Venezuela makes sense until you’ve worked out the deep implications of that one, basic fact. Deep down, Venezuela has much more in common with Algeria, Iran, or Russia than with Colombia, Brazil, or Cuba …

[T]he real issue wasn’t what oil dependence would do to our wallets; it was what it would do to our souls. Diversifying our economy was a means to an ened of inoculating our society’s moral fiber against the fecklessness and depravity that comes from unhinging consumption from hard work …

In a normal country, citizens are keenly aware that the wealth the state spends is wealth they created. The hackneyed gringo letter-to-the-editor writer’s catchphrase, “as a taxpayer, I …” captures it nicely. Citizens feel they own the state for the same reason they feel they own their toothbrush: they paid for it.

The petrostate turns this symbolic nexus on its head. The state doesn’t depend on the citizen for money; the citizen depends on the state for money … The citizen is perpetually placed in the role of supplicant, continually conscious that he needs the state much more than it needs him.

Chavista hypocrites, also known as the “robolución” (rob instead of rev):

This is a country where the people whose job it is to administer the Revolutionary Bolivarian Socialist state think nothing of plunking down a couple of thousand dollars for a plasma-screen TV before heading off for a bit of lunch in an LA-style sushi bar, where obscenely overpriced bits of fish flown in from the other side of the globe get washed down with $4 bottles of Corona.

It’s this oil-fueled spending boom that accounts for the popularity of the Chavez regime, and there’s nothing progressive about it.

Fun pre-Chavez bureaucracy quote:

In 1988, Venezuela had more public employees than Japan, but as the dark joke at the time went, “of course, in Japan they don’t get quality public services like we do here.”

On Chavez’s consolidation of power:

In the old system, the state had two fully independent institutions: A and Copei. It’s true, it’s regrettable that there were only two real institutions around, that the courts and the elections authorities and the nationalized companies and every other part of the state was subjugated to one party or the other. But at least there were two of them! …

In the chavista state, there is only one institution: Hugo Chavez. Note that I’m not talking about an abstraction – about “the presidency of the republic” – I’m talking about a man. When an important policy decision has to be made, the only deliberations that matter take place between his ears.

Why oil has risen to over 90% of national exports (overdependence):

In Parapara, agriculture is a bust. This is a direct consequence of government policies both at the macro and micro levels: unrealistic price controls, chaotic land grabs, and an over-valued exchange rate that makes it cheaper to import peppers and lemons than to grow them here.

Fun quote from Cristobal’s Chilean friend, talking about Chile (Spanish Legacy):

“In this country, GDP per capita could hit $20,000 per year, and people would still think like backwards Latin American assholes.”

On the over-factioned opposition to chavismo:

[E]ach would rather be a bigger fish in a small pond than a smaller fish in a bigger pond.

Savage Discourse:

Style is crucial. Chavez adopts a rhetorical pose of always speaking to his audience as their notional equal. He never pulls rank, never talks down to people, never condescends. Within the construct of his speech, he builds a sense of respecting his listener, of speaking to him on his level.

Impossible-to-understand description of the economic effect of the official, wildly overvalued Bolivar and government giveaways:

(Or, rather, they’re subsidizing the government’s access to the dollars that buy the yuan that denominate the swap for future oil shipments that buy the appliances – nothing is simple with these people!)

Buy Blogging the Revolution by Francisco Toro and Diego Cristobal.
(Buying through that link supports Expat Chronicles)

RIP: My Hugo Chavez Rant

Buy Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim.
(buying through that link supports Expat Chronicles)

Robert Beck was known by various nicknames throughout his career as a pimp, but his primary street name and pen name were Iceberg Slim.

After opting out of a lifelong career in pimping, Robert Beck cleaned up his act and worked a legit job with the dream of becoming a writer. Iceberg Slim is his memoir and pinnacle work. If you read Expat Chronicles for the raw, the ugly, the down and dirty, and the street shit, then you’ll love Pimp.

Beck didn’t want the book to become a guidance manual for ghetto youth to get into pimping, but it undoubtedly became that for some. From my point of view, he glamorized his job about as much as I glamorize the seedy side of Bogota. Which is to say, I try to report without promoting. If someone is excited by the pimping possibilities from the knowledge in Pimp, that person was probably already sold on attempting to become a pimp before reading the book.

In many ways Slim was born and bred to be a pimp. He was sexually abused by a woman when he was only 3 years old. His mother was left by his father when he was a baby, and she married a devout Christian with ample means. She left this guy, the only man Slim had loved as a father, for another man. The other man was abusive, a fling who took all her money. They were left on their own and Slim was alone to learn from the streets until 1 am every night.

These life experiences helped form the hatred of women necessary for pimping in Slim. Here he describes the recurring dream he had in prison, while waiting to get out and try his pimping hand:

I would be very tiny. A gargantuan Christ, in a sea of light, would be towering above me. In his anger his eyes would be blazing blue suns. His silky platinum hair would stand on end in his rage.

Like a crash of summer thunder he would command, ‘Punish this evil woman. Destroy the devil inside her. The Lord so directs thee.’

Eagerly I would grab the heavy whip in both hands. I would bring it down with all my force on the woman’s back. She would just stand there. The scarlet would drain down from her slashed back. She would be standing to her knees in a river of blood.

According to his mentor and top Chicago-area pimp for two decades, Sweet James Jones:

Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love. Any [pimp] who believes a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.

Slim, I hope you ain’t sexed that pretty bitch yet. Believe me, Slim, a pimp is really a whore who’s reversed the game on whores. Slim, be as sweet as the scratch. Don’t be no sweeter. Always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ‘em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.

To “Georgia” someone means to take advantage of them sexually with no financial compensation. To be a professional pimp, at least a street pimp in competitive market like Chicago, the working relationship must be clear from the beginning.

I was amazed at how Slim acquired his first full-time whore. He was fresh out of prison with only a couple dollars, but wearing a flashy suit he’d bought before being locked up. A girl at a club offered to buy him a drink. He’d been locked up for two years with no women, no sex, not even a whiff. Yet he had the self-control to keep an ice-cold facade. They went back to her apartment, a love nest with marijuana and Billy Holiday on the turntable. But despite his sexual drought, Slim stuck to his script. He demanded money upfront. The girl, who he refers to in the novel as “the runt” balked.

His reply:

You stinking black Bitch, you’re a fake. There’s no such thing as a lady in our world. You either got to be a bitch or a faggot in drag. Now Bitch, which is it? Bitch, I’m not a gentleman, I’m a pimp. I’ll kick your funky ass. You gave me first lick. Bitch, you’re creaming to eat me up. I’m not a come freak, you are. I’m a freak to scratch.

That’s how you’d have to play it to be a pimp. In this case, she still refused to give him money. She continued her bluff:

I thought, ‘I’m going to murder this runt black bitch if she don’t give me that scratch …’

She gritted … ‘I have changed my mind. Get your lid and benny and split.’ …

I could feel the tendons at my hip socket straining. My eyes sighted for a heart shot. My needle-toed eleven triple-A shoe rocketed toward her.

The lucky runt turned a fraction of a second in time. The leather bomb exploded into her left shoulder blade. It knocked her flat on her belly. She lay there groaning.

Then like in the dreams in the joint, I kicked her rear end until my leg cramped. Through it all she just moaned and sobbed. I was soaked in sweat. Panting, I lay on the bear-skin beside her. I thrust my mouth against her ear.

In an icy whisper I said, ‘Bitch, do I have to kill you to make you my whore? Get up and give me that scratch.’

She got up and gave him her stashed money. Then he fucked her brains out. Then she was his whore for several years, walking the streets of Chicago turning tricks and forwarding all the proceeds to him.

In Colombia prostitution is legal. In all my time there, including the management of the Bogota Brothel Tours business, I never met one pimp, or even heard of one. I’m sure they exist, but it’s no 1940s Chicago.

I occasionally imagined how to pimp in Colombia. The strategy would be to bring in extremely poor whores from out of town. You would have to teach them to try to imitate the northern Bogota accents so they don’t come off like regional ghetto trash, especially the ones from Medellin or the Coast. I thought out-of-towners would be easier to manage because they wouldn’t know anybody in Bogota. They wouldn’t have anybody to stay with, no options to strike out on their own.

You’d have to house them and feed them, so getting them to work immediately would be a top priority. Pimp by Iceberg Slim offers the groundwork for any angle you have with a potential whore. As I interpret it, the game goes: “We aren’t squares. You’re a whore. I’m a golden-dick. I didn’t get that way by being faithful. I’m going to fuck other people and you are too. Now let’s make money and live like kings. I’m the boss.”

The non-squares angle is of utmost importance. The idea of pimps “turning out” regular girls isn’t typical. It surely happens, especially in developing countries, but it doesn’t come up in Slim’s memoir. His whores were whores before meeting him. Spending time with squares is a waste of time. The few girls who he did “turn out” were already interested prostituting before meeting him, or already promiscuous enough to be whores anyway.

If you get where a girl understands that she’s a whore and you’re the boss, you’ll have to tell her what to do. Maybe the best way is to have her work in legal whorehouses. Or maybe you’d find your own ways online, going to clubs, meeting people, partying. An attractive girl would earn at least 100,000 pesos per lay. In North Bogota they charge 200,000. Two clients per week would provide a decent supplement income.

One key to pimping according to Slim is an extravagant lifestyle. A Chapinero apartment and almuerzos corrientes in the big city might work on the extreme poverty whores who have gang tattoos and incomprehensible Spanish, but in time even the least educated girl will get hip to a discrepancy in her lifestyle and how much money she brings in. So a luxury apartment and lifestyle would have to come in the picture at some point.

I could never attempt pimping for a plethora of reasons, not the least of which being it’s illegal. It’s also an ugly lifestyle. But most important, I didn’t have a hardcore upbringing that taught me to mistrust, disrespect, and hate women.

Slim was also attractive, which I was not. He was slaying significant trim by the age of 20, which I was not. I lost my virginity at 16. the last among all my friends, but it was more of a conquest for the girl than it was for me. She decided it was going to happen. In my formative years as a youth, I was generally passed over by women. That changed later. I’ve been “Georgia’d,” but it never occured to me to seek financial compensation because I hadn’t been spoiled with it from a young age, as Slim had. That experience developed a sexual power over women in his psyche, which we see in the first scene with “the runt.”

Once I was doing a tour in Santa Fe and a young, Afro-Colombian whore who knew me came over to sit down. There was a clear attraction aggravated by the fact that I never went upstairs with girls, I was never in play. I was unattainable. And like always, on this night my client was upstairs banging a whore. It was nearing 3 am, closing hour. She said, “¿Cuánto te cobro?” How much should I charge you? She was letting me set the price. With no intention to go upstairs, I answered “10 mil” – 10,000 pesos or $5. I didn’t think she’d go that low because the rooms alone cost 5,000. It would be a freebie. “Vamos,” she said. I smiled like an embarrassed jack-ass and made some stupid excuse. But this would be the situation a stone cold pimp would turn into a new employee. You have a whore, and you have genuine attraction. But as Sweet would tell Slim, it’s not a job for “smiling jack-asses.”

My imagining how Bogota-based pimping would be didn’t even start to cover the problems that would surely come up with the management of prostitutes. It’s not a job for nice guys.

Soon after starting, “the runt” takes a temporary leave from streetwalking, feigning illness. Slim feels she’s taking advantage. He turns to Sweets for advice:

Put your foot in her ass hard. If that don’t work, take a wire coat hanger and twist it into a whip. Ain’t no bitch, freak or not, can stand up to that hanger.

Slim implemented that advice as soon as he got home:

The runt was propped up in bed smoking a [joint]. Lady Day was tar brushing that mean, sweet man again. I saw the edge of a paper plate sticking out of the waste basket … Two navy beans were in a puddle of grease on the side of the plate. A pile of sucked, cleaned neck bones were heaped in the center of it. The runt had gone out to the greasy spoon and copped a hearty meal. She sure had a healthy appetite for a sick bitch …

I ripped the record off the turn table. I broke it in half and hurled the pieces into the waste basket … She played it cool … “Daddy, I’m feeling better. I felt good enough to go across the street for food. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll feel good enough to go in the street. Baby, I would’ve went out after I ate, but my legs were too weak.”

I said, “Bitch, I already passed the death sentence on you … Take off that gown and lie on your belly, bitch.”

I went to the closet. I took down a wire hanger. I straightened it into one long piece. I doubled and braided it. I wrapped a necktie around the handle end. I turned back to the bed. She was still propped in the bed. Her mouth was gaped open. She had both her hands clapped over her chest …

She rolled across the bed away from me. I raised my right arm up and back. I heard my shoulder socket creak … Her naked rear end had scrambled to the far edge of the bed. I  raced around the foot of the bed. She rolled to the middle. She was on her back. Her arms held her jack-knifed legs against her chest.

The whites of her eyes glowed like phosphorus. I brought the wire whip down. I heard it swich through the air. It struck across the shin bones. She cried out like she was celebrating New Year’s Eve.

She screamed, “Ooh-whee! Ooh-whee!”

She jerked flat, rigid on the bed then smalled her fists against her temples. She sucked her bottom lip into her jib. I slashed the air again …

She turned over on her belly. I tore the gown from her back. She was naked. She flailed her arms like a holy-roller. The whip whistled a deadly lyric as I brought it down again and again across her back and butt. I saw the awful welts puffing the black velvet skin.

I stopped and turned her over. The pillow stuck to her face. I snatched it away. There was a ripping sound. I saw feathers sticking to her tear wet face. She had chewed a hole in the pillow …

Her chest heaved in great sobs. She was staring at me and shaking her skull … Her lips were moving. I got on the bed. I stuck my ear near.

She whispered, “I don’t need any more whipping. I give, Daddy. You’re the boss. I was a dumb bitch. It looks like you got a whore now. Kiss me and help me up.”

Slim kisses her, helps her into a bath, and gives her a handful of speed pills. Then:

“Phyllis, why do you make your sweet daddy mean? Daddy’s gonna kill his little bitch if she don’t straighten up and whore like the star she is.

“Bitch, lie down in that water for a while. Then get in the street and get some real scratch for your man. You don’t have to stay in this block. Just walk and work until you get respectable scratch to bring in … Bitch, get down and star. You want your man, get him some real scratch.”

After the coat hanger whipping, “the runt” started streetwalking immediately after a bath. In the morning she came back with her best earnings since starting with Slim. And he learned, “The tougher a stud is the more a whore goes for him.”

Those kinds of scenes are rampant in Pimp. So be forewarned, it may not be the book for you.

Here’s more advice from Sweet Jones:

Slim, a pretty nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it. They’ll leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ‘em hump hard and fast. Stick ‘em for long scratch quick.

Slim used that advice when Kim, one of the most beautiful sex workers he ever had, threatened to leave. She made a big show in front of the other girls. Slim’s rebuttal:

Listen square-ass bitch, I have never had a whore I couldn’t do without. I celebrate, Bitch, when a whore leaves me. It gives some worthy bitch a chance to take her place and be a star. You scurvy Bitch, if I shit in your face, you gotta love it and open your mouth wide …

Bitch, you are nothing but a funky zero. Before me you had one chili chump with no rep. Nobody except his mother ever heard of the bastard. Yes, Bitch, I’ll be back this morning to put your phony ass on the train.

That was a bluff. But he was ready to carry it through. He drove her all the way to the train station, where she fell apart crying, begging him to take her back.

According to Sweet:

Never get friendly and confide in your whores. You got twenty whores, don’t forget your thoughts are secret. A good pimp is always really alone. You gotta always be a puzzle, a mystery to them. That’s how you hold a whore.

Sweet ultimately committed suicide. It’s not a happy job.

Slim never saw another route to making something of himself. Nothing else ever occured to him. In this American era, decades before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opportunities for African-Americans were near nil. The book goes into significant detail of the role of racism and socio-economic factors in pimping and prostitution.

Slim (then Robert Beck) published his book in 1969, at the height of black nationalist movements such as the Black Panther Party. Beck thought these movements were positive for black youth. However, the movements wanted nothing to do with Iceberg Slim. The black nationalist narrative focused on the abuses of the white man, and left no room for black pimps viciously beating black women. He was shunned by the movement.

The Kim scene in its entirety is wonderfully narrated in this video:

http://youtu.be/r1nklCtEpRw

1968 Iceberg Slim interview:

In the interview he talks about White Folks, on whom his second best selling book, Trick Baby, was based. If you like Pimp, you’ll like Trick Baby. They made a blaxploitation film based on it. Watch Trick Baby on YouTube.

Probably the most famous American pimp, Bishop Don Magic Juan, and his ridiculous flash. Maybe it looks ridiculous to anyone not in the poorest and grimiest of African-American culture, but inside that culture it must work. The point to remember is the need for flash:

Buy Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim.
(buying through that link supports Expat Chronicles)

Po Pimp by Do Or Die

Pimpology with Iceberg Slim

I smoked crack long before I ever snorted coke. Summer 1996 I was 17 and running wild. At that age I only cared about getting fucked up. I’d take anything anytime. Somebody got a hold of $10 worth of crack, I bought it, smoked it and that was it.

Then at 18 I had my first cocaine bender. I was working in lawncare full time, and my other friends had similar minimum-wage jobs, so I don’t know how we got a hold of it. But we did and snorted the stuff all night long around a table, talking till morning. It was interesting for the first time. But cocaine is prohibitively expensive in the United States and Europe, so I never got into it much.

Then I moved to South America. In five years of living in the top two cocaine-producing countries, I got into it. My first year in Peru, I never touched it. Out of habit I just drank, and maybe smoked weed if it was offered. And for almost my first year in Bogota, I wasn’t in the party scene at all.

But then I started drinking again. Despite being new to Bogota’s party scene, I wasn’t new to Bogota. I knew how cheap it was and where to get it. I took to snorting it on my weekend party nights. That’s how the lure of cocaine got me – you can keep going.  I was never the kind of guy who could drink until dawn – unless something magic was happening. Even though I’m a heavy drinker, I’m also a grown ass man. Around 2 or 3 am I’m going to sleep. And I’d get sleepy around that time too. Sometimes earlier, when things were still happening, I’d be sleepy.

Cocaine changes that. Right around that moment when you’re getting sleepy, take a bump … and … AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Awake, confident, up and at ‘em, another beer and another bottle!

That’s how it started.

Then I started scoring coke on a regular basis. It’s average price in Colombia is $5 / gram, and that’s for pure, high quality perico. You can get garbage for even less. I never got to the point where an entire gram wasn’t enough – unless sharing with a few others of course – so it wasn’t an expensive habit. Of course it can get to be, just as alcohol can be expensive for drunks in the US. But I never loved coke that much. I never took to doing it outside rumba nights.

Bazuco AKA Crack

Aside from the anamoly as a teen, the first time I smoked crack was an accident. I was drinking and snorting and walking around La Candelaria with The Mick well after midnight, when we passed two indigentes. They weren’t begging or bothering though. They were smoking what I thought was a joint. They passed it to me and I hit it hard. It wasn’t weed, and I recognized the chemical taste of the crack I smelled in the streets. I was so wired off powder and drunk off guaro I didn’t notice much difference that night. But I learned that bazuco – which is a little different than American crack in how it’s cooked, but it’s the same high, same shit – is not necessarily smoked in a pipe, melting away. It’s sold in rocky powder and usually rolled into a cigarrette. Only the dirtiest, most addicted “bazuceros” smoke it in pipes.

The next time I smoked it was with my paisa buddy Gustavo. We were on Calle 19, drinking and socializing. It was getting late. The women had disappeared. Only guys remained in the street. The sketchiness was setting in. He told me to sit tight and wait for him for a minute. He came back with a couple crack cigarrettes. We walked north of Calle 19 and smoked them in the street. I was flying.

That part of downtown (north of Cl 19 between Kr 13 and Septima) after 3 am isn’t the safest stroll in the city. And crack makes you paranoid. I was paranoid, but it’s not a fearful paranoia. It’s a I-wish-a-mother-fucker-would paranoia. Every corner I was wide-eyed and swivel-headed, wishing somebody would try us. That night I understood all the crack-related crime in a different way. You’re mad out of your head, but in a Superman way. High on confidence, high on paranoia, aggression is on tap.

That wasn’t the only time I smoked crack with Gustavo. In fact, it became out default activity when there were no chicks at the end of an evening’s partying. We called it “the finish.” It wasn’t always prowling downtown Bogota. It was usually sitting in my Chapinero apartment, lights out, passing bazuco cigarrettes back and forth in complete silence. No lights, no music, no street action. Just crack high and our minds racing in dark solitude. After the cigarrettes were smoked and the high passed, Gustavo would leave with a casual goodbye. See you next time.

I started picking bazuco up on my own, on those nights where time ran out. Non-brothel bars closed, non-prostitute women disappeared, friends gone home, streets all sketchy. If I’d been snorting and drinking and needed a finish, Avenida Caracas in Chapinero is the spot. All the way from Calle 57 up to 67, primarily on the west side of Caracas, but on both sides there are ample crack spots. Between about 57 and 59 at Caracas, on the west-side sidewalk, there’s a crack den. Crackheads make bonfires and hang out till around 2 am. Then those dirty, zombie head bazuceros make their way towards downtown. But the crack’s for sale all night around there.

It’s another section of Bogota that isn’t a pleasant stroll for working citizens. But after smoking a bazuco cigarrette or two, all hyped up and changed into fighting clothes (hoodie, sweatpants, sneakers), I’d prowl the area as if I grew up there. Mean-mugging people. They can sense you’re flying and, given my size, never had any takers on those leisurely walks.

It’s Dark and Hell is Hot; Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood; or And Then There Was X – listen to those albums non-stop and see how you feel. That’s smoking crack music.

Looking Back

Passing through Colombia last year, a good buddy asked how much I was using toward the end of my time there. How bad had it gotten?

To be completely honest, I was obviously getting sucked in a little. I wasn’t snorting on weekdays, but it was to the point where I was doing it every weekend. Often both Friday and Saturday nights. And I was starting to pick my scenes based on it. For example, I have gringo friends in Bogota who don’t snort coke, and they’d invite me to things. There are loads of gringos in Colombia who aren’t into drugs – CouchSurfing and corporate warriors who maybe drink heavy on weekends and that’s it. But I was getting to the point where I didn’t want to be in environments where people weren’t snorting. And I didn’t want to go to bars that didn’t allow it.

In a country with so much cocaine, there are clear lines drawn in where it’s accepted and where it’s not. The key tell is the bathrooms. Are they conducive to snorting? The most prohibitive place I ever found was Jaguar Club at Calle 60 and Septima. The men’s room has a horizontal window so bouncers can see the heads of all the guys at the urinal, so you can’t take a key bump. And their one bathroom stall has no lock on it. This place clearly discourages the coke scene.

At La Cascada, a sketchy amanecero (illegal after-hours bar) catering to la hampa clientele, you can cut up lines of coke on the table while the waiter sets you up with beer and aguardiente, and he won’t even flinch. My first time there, I took a bump off a guy’s knife. In Medellin, my spot was La Manzana. Shady clientele of wannabe mafiosos and low-level pushers, about 100% of the females are whores, and loads of scopolamine in the house most nights of the week. But for drinking and snorting after 3 am, that scene isn’t so bad. It’s actually enjoyable. You can let your hair down.

That’s how far I’d gotten into cocaine. It was only an accompaniment, a supplement if you will, to the booze. It wasn’t an everyday thing, not even close. But it was an every weekend thing. And it was starting to determine my scene. Then I got pseudo-deported.

Born Coke Freaks

Some people are born to dig the cocaine high more than others. These kind of people can do cocaine, alone and/or without drinking, and love it. I’m not one of those people. Yes, I’ve snorted coke without drinking, but I wouldn’t say it’s enjoyable. It’s actually obnoxious. Jittery. Creepy. Anyone who enjoys that high – coke without drinking – is the type that was born with a capacity to turn into a coke head.

And if they like that feeling – snorting coke without the accompaniment of alcohol – then it’s likely they’ll make the jump to smoking it. Usually it’s just a matter of time. The only ones who can toe the powder line would be the ones who can afford to, and have a prejudice against smoking it, as if snorting is less demeaning than the long demonized “smoking crack.”

Most born coke freaks will make that jump not because crack is cheaper, but because the high’s more intense. You can cut long, fat, wide lines and snort away until your nose bleeds, but you’ll never reach the intensity of smoking it. So the born coke freaks, the genetically predisposed to speed, in the long run become crackheads.

Cocaine Music

DMX is smokin’ crack music. This is snortin’ and drinkin’ party music:

Three 6 Mafia – Half on a Sack

Buckcherry – Lit Up

Dirt Nasty – 1980

Lynyrd Skynyrd – That Smell

And here’s one for Bogota, not drinkin’  and snortin’, but Bogota bazuco-smokin’ addict music:
(hat tip Hash)

Crack Family – Drogadicto en serie

Buy my book, Bogota Brothel Tours: A Brief Career in Colombia’s Sex Trade.

Layin’ the White Bitch

“Why do you blog under your real name?”

That is the #1 question I get regarding this blog. Actually, it’s #1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

The first year I blogged anonymously. I used a pseudonym so juvenile I can’t bear to repeat it. I put my picture up because I didn’t care about being identified after the fact. My concern was that somebody (a potential employer) would Google my name and find Expat Chronicles.

But then one day I read What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. The “New Publicness” chapter struck a chord:

If you’re not searchable, you won’t be found

Google defines what your web presence should be. Of course, you need a website. Who doesn’t? …

If you’re a manufacturer, customers should be able to find product details and support in an instant. If you’re a politician, voters want to know your stands and record. If you’re a food company, buyers want nutritional information. If you’re a clothing company, shoppers want you to give the information a good sales clerk would – does this run large? Where can I buy your product? How do I contact you? Your users are already telling you what they want to know. Have your web folks show you the searches people made in Google when they clicked on a link to come to you …

When I read this book, I’d just left corporate life and launched an independent career. I was looking for freelance work and business opportunities wherever I could. I realized: IF YOU’RE NOT SEARCHABLE, YOU WON’T BE FOUND.

By that time I had written about my irreputable behavior, including but not limited to snorting coke, banging whores, smoking crack, getting in fights, smuggling drugs, and more. I’m not saying everybody should put their indiscretions out there for the world. I’m different in that I’m trying to be a writer. But let’s say you did write about all your own misbehaviors.

What has it done for me? No doubt, it has closed some doors. I’ve lost opportunities. I even got fired, twice. However, I’ve also gotten offers I wouldn’t have otherwise.

One guy sold cell phones in the US, a sales whiz who ascended to the regional manager level. One of his bosses visited Bogota and was astounded by the development. He sent Sales Whiz down to set up a distributorship. The idea was to clean up on the Colombians by offering superior customer service, which doesn’t exist in Latin America. They had $100,000 behind the effort. So Sales Whiz came down to Bogota and set up near Park 93. He found my blog and immediately reached out. We started hanging out regularly. He once told me in so many words, “I don’t know where you’re going to fit into this business, but you’re going to be a part of it.”

He didn’t give a fuck about my extracurricular activities. You know why? Because most people are doing the same thing.

I’ve received e-marketing offers from others looking to enter the Colombian market, translation gigs, teaching requests, and more. It’s gotten to the point where I have to pick and choose my opportunities, which I never would’ve dreamed of in my anonymous days. So having a transparent web presence has been a net gain for me.

One more time – BLOGGING UNDER MY REAL NAME HAS BEEN A NET GAIN.

Put yourself in the position of those people who reached out. Imagine how they’d feel if I had that ridiculous pen name and no photo. They wouldn’t have taken me seriously. If someone can’t find your name, your resume, your LinkedIn, then you’re not just out of the game. You’re not even in the arena. You’re in the parking lot with all the other nobodys.

What about getting a Good Job?

Some of you are thinking, “Colin, you don’t understand. You’re a freelancer and I’m not. I’ll lose my job if I fail a drug test.”

If your employer will fire you for smoking a joint or snorting a line of coke, then YOU DON’T HAVE A GOOD JOB. If fact, that should tell you that you’re EXPENDABLE.

Think about it. Instead of dying, imagine Steve Jobs came out and said that he smokes weed and snorts coke every day. After all, he publicly stated that taking LSD was a life-forming experience. So imagine he announced that he smokes weed and snorts coke every single day. What do you think Apple’s board of directors would say? “Sorry Steve, you know our policy, no dope smokers in this company. We have to let you go.”

Steve Jobs was too important to fire. He could’ve come out as smoking meth and having orgies in his mansion, and nobody at Apple would give a shit.

On the other hand, let’s look at some of my friends who would lose their jobs if they smoked weed. I have a cousin who is a Marine, another cousin is a prison guard. One of my best friends is a letter carrier, and another is a clerical worker for the government. Law enforcement and military get a pass in my book. But government bureaucrats and public employees? Are those good jobs?

My letter carrier buddy just doesn’t give a shit. The clerical worker, on the other hand, complains about his job regularly. He emails our circle of friends with long rants about how inefficient government organizations are, how incompetent and apathetic the people are. He writes these emails while on the job. Beforehand he worked at a consultancy doing research reports for multi-million dollar projects. If he’d told those bosses that he gets wasted on the weekends, or whatever, I doubt they would’ve fired him. His work was too important. He wasn’t expendable there. But at his government office, different story.

From Seth Godin’s Linchpin:

If you want a job where you are treated as indispensable, given massive amounts of responsibility and freedom, expected to expend emotional labor, and rewarded for being human, not a cog in the machine, then please don’t work hard to fit into the square-peg job you found on Craigslist.

If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you’ll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job. This is the one and only decision you get to make. You get to choose. You can work for a company that wants indispensable people, or you can work for a company that works to avoid them.

Are you wearing a mask in public? For that kind of company / job? Why?

If you actually work for an organization that insists you be mediocre, that enforces conformity in all its employees, why stay? What are you building? The work can’t possibly be enjoyable or challenging, your skills aren’t increasing, and your value in the marketplace decreases each day you stay there. And if history is a guide, your job there isn’t as stable as you think, because average companies making average products for average people are under huge strain.

…

In most non-cog jobs, the boss’s biggest lament is that her people won’t step up and bring their authentic selves to work.

Are you a cog? It’s fine if you are, but admit it. And don’t ask me why I blog under my real name because I am not a fucking cog!

One day I was reading How to Survive Abroad by English Teacher X. I agreed with the vast majority of his advice, and I recommend it to anyone with expat aspirations. HOWEVER, I couldn’t help doing a double take at this passage:

BE MINDFUL OF YOUR INTERNET PRESENCE!

One word of advice however – don’t blog under your real name about your misadventures. And be mindful of writing about it in general, if you actually have a real job. Don’t post pictures of yourself with Thai whores on Facebook, if you ever have some plans about getting a real job somewhere.

…

Of course, some people go abroad with the intentions of posting all kinds of interesting stuff about themselves on the internet, and becoming internet celebrities, and making a profit. You rock on with that, rock star.

Now, pictures of Thai whores on Facebook obviously refers to steroid-and-sex-worker aficionado Tim “Sharky” Ward. But that next bit, about interesting stufff and intentions and celebrity, I couldn’t help thinking he was talking about me. Who else? Maybe Roosh V, but Rooh is a fake name. He’s anonymous. I don’t know of any other expat blogger publishing what I do under their real name. So I took that as a personal shot.

No worries, I actually dig English Teacher X. But I can respectfully disagree with him on this point. So let’s pick apart his argument “to be careful of your internet presence if you want a real job”:

Teaching English is a “real job?” I’ve taught English and I have friends who teach English, and many Expat Chronicles readers teach English. And I don’t think any of them would disagree that it’s menial labor, akin to waiting tables or bartending back home. Letter carrying. Prison guarding. Clericaling. The demand for English abroad is neverending. Would you call that a “real job”? Is letter-carrying, prison-guarding, or clericaling a “real job?”

I’d rather do something illegal and face jail time, but make good money, than teach English full-time. I couldn’t stand the boredom and impossibility of rising above the middle class in a Latin American country. Ask any expat (excluding The Mick) and they’ll tell you: teaching English is a stepping stone. A means to an end.

English Teacher X, who’s been in the game for a couple decades now, has gone for the highest salaries in the English teaching industry – the Middle East, Saudi Arabia I believe. Readers know I have little interest in many parts of the world (Asia, Africa) but there is one region that is at the BOTTOM of my list of disinterest: the Middle Fucking East. Alcohol is illegal and they burn American flags. Me, a muscular gringo with a bald, Nordic-shaped head with a cross tattooed on my right arm who guzzles beer and whiskey? Yeah, FUCK THAT. I’d rather be a gringo beggar in Bogota, smoking every peso up in crack as soon as I get it, than be a square-ass, timid English teacher in a Muslim country.

English teachers are expendable, the work sucks, and it’s not too profitable unless you’re willing to live in miserable parts of the world, like the Middle East.

My second point against English Teacher X’s position is how he’s cutting himself off from opportunities. Now given he’s been blogging for almost a decade, maybe he’s received offers for non-English-teaching work. But I doubt it. Use your own judgement. How many serious people like my Sales Whiz buddy, who are looking for help going into a new market, would hire this guy?

Hi, my name is English Teacher X.

I’m going to launch a wild guess – ZERO – and that’s why he’s still teaching English.

Moving on.

Public is valuable, Privacy is not

Given how much What Would Google Do? influenced my new publicness, of course I bought Jeff Jarvis’s next book Public Parts as soon as it published. I thought the book would take his earlier point (“If you’re not searchable, you won’t be found”) further. I thought it would extoll the virtues of publicness from cover to cover, so it wasn’t what I expected, but it did make some amazing points I hadn’t thought of.

My main takeaway can be found in the history of privacy and publicness, which Jarvis thoroughly researched and cited. Privacy was never something that needed to be protected. Privacy was for nobodys.

The word privacy … derives from a Latin word meaning deprived; deprived of public office; in other words, cut off from the full and appropriate functioning of a man … A nobody, in short … A man who lived only a private life, who like the slave was not permitted to enter the public realm, or like the barbarian had not chosen to establish such a realm, was not fully human.

If you were a private person, you had no status. In fact, the United States Bill of Rights protects publicness. With the exception of illegal search and seizure, the most important amendments were designed to protect your right to be who you are in public – through speech, assembly, religion, and trial. Historically, public has been more valuable than private.

Privacy was once free. Publicity was once ridiculously expensive … Now the opposite is true: You have to pay for privacy in the effort and hassle it takes to manage privacy settings. You also pay in the opportunity lost if you choose not to be public and social … [Y]ou can be rewarded – with attention, influence, information, deals – if you reveal yourself. This new economy tilts toward publicness.

Jarvis’s strong argument for publicness in personal life is the success of Howard Stern. Stern was the pioneer of putting his personal life on radio for everybody to hear, and he’s beloved and rich. The two are friends, and Stern’s movie inspired the title of Jarvis’s book.

Jarvis cites a 1960s book, Alan F. Westin’s Privacy and Freedom, which lists the threats to privacy that caused a public outrage: the microphone, telephone, recorder, camera. Kodak cameras were scandalous when they came out. That someone could have their image taken at any moment was an invasion of privacy. It was a matter taken to litigation and public debate. How silly does that sound now? What side of history are you on?

While not condemning privacy as much as I would have liked to see, Jarvis did attack anonymity:

[A]nonymity is often the cloak of cowards. Anonymous trolls – of the human race, not the Warcraft breed – attack people online, lobbing snark at Julia Allison, spreading rumors and lies about public figures, sabotaging a politician’s Wikipedia page, or saying stupid stuff in the comments on my blog. I tell commenters there that I will respect what they have to say more if they have the guts to stand behing their words with their names, as I do.

That’s another reason I couldn’t go on being anonymous. It’s weak. It’s fearful. It’s pussy. It’s bitch. It’s everything I’m not about. I walk tall. I look people in the eyes and tell it how it is. I’m about being b0ld, taking risks, living aggressive. Hiding behind a fake name – it was just too gay.

Jarvis on people trying to manage two online personas:

Those are the two identities we are trying to manage – not our work selves and our home selves, not our party selves and our serious selves, but our inner, real selves and outer, show selves. When our inner and outer selves get into conflict and confusion, we appear inauthentic and hypocritical. In all our spoken fears about privacy and publicness, I think this anxiety is the great unspoken fear: that we’re not who people think we are and we’ll be found out.

Being public really keeps you honest. Being public, I can’t brag about some professional boxing career, or that I’m earning $10,000 / month, or that my dick is 9 inches long, because of the people who know me and read this blog. Being public keeps you honest and consistent.

“Transparency keeps you honest,” [Mark Zuckerberg] says. “In the strictest definition of the word, integrity is basically saying one thing to everyone. That’s true for people, and I think that’s true for companies too.”

All the media crying about privacy, and all the people I went to high school with in the 90s, all you people against the Schmidts and Zuckerbergs and Hoffmans who are telling you that privacy is dead – you’re fossils. You’re on the wrong side of history.

My Own Transformation

As tough as I talk, I wasn’t always so upfront about who I am. In fact, I was a Super-Concealer for many important years of my life. Let’s back up to understand what I hid.

My old buddy George and I were partners in crime in high school. In 1997 we robbed a house and got caught. For various reasons (priors, afters, etc.), I got five years probation while he did a year and a half. When he got out I was halfway through university. He knocked up his girlfriend and married her.

Years later I was working for Anheuser-Busch and he was a district sales manager for a regional retail business. He was earning about three times my salary, having mastered the sales trade under the pressure of providing for a family. I successfully completed five years of supervised probation, and my felony charges were expunged – which means they’re cleared from my record. The only people who can find them are law enforcement or government agencies. George, on the other hand, did hard time and his felonies are on his permanent criminal record.

So I’m at AB and he’s the big shot salesman, and we’re have this conversation years after the fact. I had joined a college fraternity and hid my past from those “brothers.” I told none of them about what kinds of friends I used to have, and definitely not the felony conviction. A lot of the frat guys suspected, but I didn’t confirm anything nor did I tell them about my monthly appointments at the PO office where I faced random piss tests. I finished university and got hired at a blue chip American company. It was easy to keep that dirt under the rug, to keep the lie going.

In our conversation that night, George told me I was betraying myself. He had the opposite approach with his company, even when he was first hired as a floor sales rep hawking walk-ins. He said it’s important to disclose who you really are. As he rose in the company ranks, it became a friendly joke that he was an ex-con. It didn’t matter because his performance outweighed his past. He wasn’t expendable. He was unfirable. And he said being 100% honest with the people in your life is an important part of personal growth.

At the time I was still employed at Anheuser-Busch, which was considered an elite job before the InBev buyout. I kept quiet with George. I thought to myself, he doesn’t understand. He’s a killer salesman but he doesn’t understand how it is in the big leagues. As it turned out in “the big leagues”, I never got one promotion. If I hadn’t done my job at AB for an entire week, the bottom line of the company wouldn’t have changed a point. It might’ve even gone up.

Looking back years later, I’ve completely reversed my position. It is important to face others honestly, to own up and be honest about who you are. It’s really cliche, but if they don’t accept who you are, what would you have to do with them? Work? That’s a good formula to set yourself up in a job you hate. Sex? I’m guessing it’s not the best fucking of your life, nor love. Why lie? Why hide?

You set the terms of all your relationships. If you don’t actively create them, you actively permit them. So you set them. Find people you truly connect with, people you truly have something in common with. Faking it yields mismatches that aren’t worth it professionally, personally, or spiritually.

Come out the closet.

In an old post, my review of The Start-Up of You, I echo the importance of establishing an identity:

You don’t have to write about your vices, and you don’t have to write something every week, or even every month. But you have to put something out there. You have to demonstrate that you have a brain. You have to be public in the 21st century.

The Death of Privacy & The New Publicness

Para leer mi libro sobre mis experiencias con turismo sexual en Bogotá, Colombia, vea el PDF aquí.

I’ve just published Una carrera breve en la industria sexual colombiana in Spanish. It’s my way of giving back to Colombia.

In 2009 I wrote an article titled Latinos’ Awful Writing Skills. In it I lambasted, as the title suggests, Latinos’ writing ability. This isn’t just a poor people thing. As a gringo in Latin America, you’re inevitably going to rub shoulders with the highest economic level. I exchanged emails with some of the best educated Colombians and Peruvians out there, and they suck too. Unbelievably bad grammar, missing punctuation, everything. It resembles the English writing of my ex-con friends back in the States.

In the article I blamed their inability to write on the fact that they don’t read. And that lack of reading can’t be blamed on poverty, as most of the books in Spanish I’ve bought in used bookstores cost less than the price of lunch. I got Un relato de un naufrago for less than the cost of an empanada. It’s just not a part of Latin culture to read lots of books. Every time on a bus or the TransMilenio, I never saw someone reading a book. They’re either plugged into headphones or just staring into space.

Sidenote: By contrast, I was impressed by the Brits on “The Tube” (London’s subway). As soon as you get on the books and newspapers come flying out.

If Latin America is going to compete against other emerging regions like Asia and Eastern Europe, Latin reading habits are going to have to improve.

One day I thought, maybe it’s not that they don’t want to read. Maybe nobody’s giving them anything interesting to read. Copies of the blood-and-guts tabloids like Q’hubo seem to sell like ice cream in hell, so maybe it’s just that the Latin reader’s preferred subject matter isn’t being served. Bogota Brothel Tours en Español should serve that purpose.

It also takes advantage of a tactic Gabriel Garcia Marquez utilized. It may stem from a sharp understanding of his people that most of his works were novellas less than 200 pages. Or maybe it was coincidence. Either way, Bogota Brothel Tours en Español comes in at a mere 32 pages. So even Latinos with extreme cases of ADD should be able to get through it.

Here it is: Una carrera breve en la industria sexual colombiana

Buy the English version on Amazon: amzn.to/WOPCa4

At 32 pages, this is the longest translation I’ve ever done. Obviously it was gone over by a native speaker, but it’s a milestone in my bilingual career nonetheless.

Una carrera breve en la industria sexual colombiana