Marching Powder

This is a fascinating account of inside the La Paz jail (Bolivia) where the lack of money forces inmates to create their own economy. This incredible system allows prisoners to obtain most creature comforts, just as it creates inequalities, engendering a multi-tiered society with its rich and poor.
McFadden is quick to remind us, however, that this bought quasi-freedom is extremely precarious and prone to the whims of politicians and the guards who will not hesitate to take away privileges and even torture.
Finally, the description of the drug trade and the industry it creates is a sub-theme which is can be quite eye-opening.
McFadden comes across as an intelligent, if misguided, individual; not particularly likable but hopefully smart show more enough to have reformed his way. show less

True-life account of British drug smuggler, Thomas McFadden, who gets busted in Bolivia, and finds himself in the utterly weird San Pedro prison. A jail run largely by the prisoners, where you pay an entry and exit fee (poorer inmates find themselves stuck even after their release date) and where there's a whole micro economy. Wealthy prisoners buy a cell in the 'luxury' area of the jail; those with little means realise they need to generate an income to survive - prisoners open cafes, ply any trade they have or act as menials to earn a few coins from the Mr Bigs.
McFadden soon realises the packets of cocaine he swallowed won't garner him any money, since the prisoners are busily engaged in producing their own...always paying off the show more guards and police, some of whom actually bid for a posting here with its vast potential earnings.
Everything is available for a bribe...McFadden has a night on the town with a police minder; he finds a girl and has her to stay; he starts arranging prison tours for backpackers.
But life is not all sweet, as we read of dangerous areas full of crazed base smokers, the unpredictability of the authorities, who after happily allowing some activity for a bribe will just as suddenly turn on the prisoners. McFadden gets beaten up, witnesses 'prison justice' on a trio of gang rapists...and starts using cocaine himself. Even the prison cat is addicted. Even the sniffer dogs are kept eagerly at their job, not by treats but access to the subsances they find...
Probably not a book I'd have picked for myself - was given it- and it's an eye-opener, even if you have limited sympathy for the lead character. show less

Like other reviewers I am in two minds about "Marching Powder". There is the astonishing story of the notorious La Paz prison in Bolivia and how you need money to buy a cell or food but at the same time we have as the narrator a particularly unsympathetic character.

Thomas McFadden is a drug trafficker who gets caught when a corrupt Bolivian official decides to rat on him and finds himself in La Paz prison. At least we think the Bolivian official is corrupt, as for all we know, Thomas is an unreliable narrator. Anyway, Thomas finds he needs to hire a prison cell and buy his own food at the prison. He also manages to make prison stays a tourist attraction, which is how he meets his co-author Rusty.

It's probably not a huge spoiler to say show more Thomas eventually gets out of prison but I couldn't get overly excited about it for him. What was very good about "Marching Powder" was Thomas's very frank depictions of life in La Paz Prison, where convicted child sex offenders are quite openly killed in the prison yard, prisoners are just as openly taking drugs and the corruption of the prison officials. show less

While I did get to the end, I'd say that most people would be better off waiting for the movie... because the fictionalization in that format is likely to be more angaging than the fictionalizations (of which there seem obviously to be a few, even if they're just embellishments) were in the book. It's not masterfully written, but not horrible, and gives a look at just how bizarre a jail can be, when it's operating in a society where corruption seems to be the main path to economic survival. But the book itself is a bit like the cocaine discussed in the book: the excitement comes along occasionally in short bursts, only to peter out into exhausted pointlessness. There are bits that do grab one, but for me it wasn't as "captivating" as it show more seems to have been for some reviewers. show less

This is not a book that I would ever choose, but my book group picked it, so I read it.

As a prison memoir/biog it is a gripping and interesting read, but the bizarre and totally corrupt prison system that black Englishman Thomas ends up in, in South America hardly seemed like prison at all. For all its flashes of violence and occasional interventions by authority, it felt more like he was just living in a ghetto in the wrong part of town, certainly not a conventional prison by any means. Entrepreneurs reaped the rewards, and Thomas soon took advantage to be able to improve his situation there.

I didn't like Thomas at all - for him drug-trafficking was a business. The fact that there was no apparent repentance from Thomas, I can't show more forgive him for. show less

Marching Powder is the true account of Thomas McFadden, an English drug trafficker whose luck runs out whilst trying to pass through the airport in Bolivia with cocaine hidden in the spires of his suitcase. We follow his journey through his incarceration in one of the most unbelievable prisons to be found in all of South America, where most facilities are ridiculous in their own right. San Pedro is a place where children and wives live with their incarcerated fathers and husbands, where the best drugs on the continent are manufactured and smuggled out through the same women and children, and where capitalism and wealth rule daily life and their ability to survive.
This is a disturbing yet wildly captivating story of a world that doesn't show more seem plausible when you compare it to the prison systems that can be found in North America, or Europe even. I look forward to the movie that will be coming out in 2010 with Don Cheadle as Thomas. This is sure to be as big if not bigger a hit as Midnight Express was in the '70s. show less

I first heard about this book a couple years ago and was interested straight away. A book set in the San Pedro prison in Bolivia. Full of corruption, crime and drugs.

What I got was full of corruption, crime and drugs. But also a fair bit of boredom and self-pity. No matter how nice he was he was still a convicted drug smuggler and dealer and I can't have any sympathy for him at all. If he'd been innocent I would have felt differently. But he was there because he deserved to be. So for me that really took away from the book. He was trying to sound innocent and garner sympathy but I just didn't buy it.

I wish there had been more on the actual culture in the prison, not just Thomas getting drunk and high. I wanted a hard hitting expose with show more the facts to back it up, not the whining of a convicted criminal.

This book could have been a lot better. It wasn't bad and once past the really whiny part about 1/3 the way through it moved quicker and was more interesting. But there was a lot left out that could have vastly improved it. show less