Marching Powder - Softcover

Rusty Young

Softcover

ISBN 10: 028307373X ISBN 13: 9780283073731

Publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

Marching Powder is the story of Thomas McFadden, a small-time English drug smuggler who was arrested in Bolivia and thrown inside the notorious San Pedro prison. He found himself in a bizarre world, the prison reflecting all that is wrong with South American society. Prisoners have to pay an entrance fee and buy their own cells (the alternative is to sleep outside and die of exposure), prisoners` wives and children often live inside too, high quality cocaine is manufactured and sold from the prison, and all the police from the governor downwards can be bribed. Under the surface is a frightening level of violence-Thomas`s life was often in danger and one of his friends was murdered by the police when he threatened to expose the corruption in the prison. Thomas ended up making a living by giving backpackers tours of the prison-he became a fixture on the backpacking circuit and was named in the Lonely Planet`s guide to Bolivia. When he was told that for a bribe of $5,000 his sentence could be overturned, it was the many backpackers who`d passed through who sent him the money. Sometimes shocking, sometimes funny, Marching Powder is an always riveting story of survival. Thomas McFadden is now a free man, teaching English in Colombia.

About this title

About the Author

Rusty Young currently lives in Colombia, where he teaches English.

Thomas McFadden was released from San Pedro and now lives in England.

From Publishers Weekly

This memoir of a British drug dealer's nearly five years inside a Bolivian prison provides a unique window on a bizarre and corrupt world. McFadden, a young black man from Liverpool arrested for smuggling cocaine, finds himself forced to pay for his accommodations in La Paz's San Pedro Prison, the first of many oddities in a place where some inmates keep pets and rich criminals can sustain a lavish lifestyle. The charismatic McFadden soon learns how to survive, and even thrive, in an atmosphere where crooked prison officials turn up at his private cell to snort lines of coke. By chance, he stumbles on an additional source of income when he begins giving tours of the prison to foreign tourists, a trade that leads to the mention in a Lonely Planet guidebook that attracts the attention of his coauthor, Young, who was backpacking in South America at the time. McFadden's unapologetic self-serving story will attract little pity as he freely admits to countless cocaine sales for which he was never held accountable. Once the authors chronicle the novel aspects of life in San Pedro, from which McFadden was released in 2000, the narrative loses momentum. The book would have benefited from some judicious editing and some objective perspective on the veracity of McFadden's story.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 028307373X
• ISBN 13: 9780283073731
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320