Behind bars: Families try to stay together in prison
By Jaime Dunaway
SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia – Daniel Yanez is a typical college student. In his fourth year of studying electromechanics at the Universidad Autonoma Gabriel Rene Moreno in Santa Cruz, he makes good grades – without going to class – and paints in his free time.
Growing up, he never imagined the life that awaited him – considering he lived in the Palmasola maximum-security prison for four years with his incarcerated father.
Yanez isn’t the only child who grew up behind bars. Across Bolivia, more than 1,500 children live in prison with their parents, alongside thieves, rapists and drug traffickers. Bolivian law allows children under the age of 6 to live with imprisoned parents, but most children stay much longer.
Yanez moved in with his father at Palmasola when he was 4 years old. Yanez’s father sold clothes commercially and was sent to prison after a supplier from Brazil smuggled illegal drugs into an order of clothes he purchased. Police caught Yanez’s father as he crossed the border from Brazil into Bolivia, and he was sent to Palmasola for 10 years, accompanied by his two sons.
“In those days when I was a child, I just lived normally as if it were my house in a normal neighborhood,” Yanez said through an interpreter.
On an overcast morning, a light drizzle turned the dirt roads leading to Palmasola prison into mud. But the rain did not deter dozens of visitors who stood in lines on either side of the prison door, waiting to be admitted. Car horns beeped and engines revved as buses, taxis and motorcycles sloshed through the muddy streets filled with potholes to drop off more visitors who took their place at the end of the line.
While visitors talked quietly among themselves or bought fresh fruit from a nearby street vendor, Yanez sat at a cafe across the street from the prison he used to call home. He returned to Palmasola to talk about life inside what Bolivian media has dubbed the most dangerous prison in the country.
“I didn’t have any problems living in the prison because I knew all of my father’s friends, and they knew me,” he said. “The only thing my father didn’t allow me to do was to go to specific places inside the prison where the prisoners would drink in the evening because it was dangerous for me.”
Living with children in prison is the only financially viable option for some parents. Bolivia is South America’s poorest country, and it can be difficult for parents to find family members who can afford to pay for their child’s needs. After Bolivian media released several reports of child abuse in orphanages last year, many parents feared sending their children to those facilities.
Yanez and his brother lived in the prison because their mother thought it would solve the family’s financial problems. She lived and worked outside Palmasola to save money to buy food and pay rent.
Yanez (front left), his parents and his three siblings pose for a photo two years after moving into Palmasola. Yanez now studies electromechanics at a local university in Santa Cruz.
The living conditions in the prison remained poor and uncomfortable. When he first arrived at Palmasola, Yanez lived with his brother and father in a cramped 11- by 13-foot cell in a dilapidated two-story building. Despite living in such close quarters, Yanez’s family was lucky. Those who could not afford to rent a room had to sleep on the streets or in the soccer field inside the prison.
While Yanez had a roof over his head to protect him from the weather, there was no escaping the heat during the Bolivian summers. At night, street lamps shone through the window, and Yanez would toss and turn, unable to sleep because of the heat. During the rainy season, the room was constantly damp, and the air, thick with moisture, left most belongings in the room slightly moist.
For those who could afford it, inmates purchased personal kitchens, and the smell of milanesa or majadito wafted through the prison wards as families prepared meals. Elsewhere in the compound, the smell of cigarette smoke mixed with chlorine from the swimming pool.
Inside the prison’s tall red brick walls topped with barbed wire, Yanez learned how to fight and play soccer with the other children. A church inside the prison provided donated toys for the children to play with and organized activities that made prison life more enjoyable. While some children stayed only a day or a weekend, Yanez said he had close relationships with those who stayed on a regular basis.
“I had many close friends inside the prison, and we shared each other’s lives and lifestyle,” he said.
Children like Yanez may have viewed prison life as normal, safe and even fun, but despite police patrols through the overcrowded cell blocks, many youths were placed in life-threatening situations.
“Palmasola is a school where a criminal prepares to become a better criminal,” said Beatriz Aualos, an editor who works on security and societal issues at the El Deber newspaper in Santa Cruz.
Just a half hour from the city of Santa Cruz, Palmasola is Bolivia’s largest prison. As the government cracks down on drug trafficking, the prison population continues to grow, causing fights among inmates because of overcrowding and poor living conditions.
More than 5,000 prisoners are incarcerated in Palmasola, which is more than double the intended capacity, Aualos said. However, Palmasola isn’t just crowded with adults. Eight percent of the prison population is children, and some become collateral damage in crimes committed by other inmates.
In August 2013, a riot erupted between two rival gangs inside Palmasola and left 30 people dead, including an 18-month-old baby. Additionally, a 12-year-old girl was raped by several men in San Pedro prison in La Paz last year, according to media reports.
Inmates in Palmasola and San Pedro are mainly self-regulated by leaders of rival gangs, and gang bosses, instead of prison officials, are the ones who administer punishments for child abuse, Aualos said.
Prior to the riot, the government had no information about the number or ages of children living in Palmasola, but the deaths prompted a census that revealed more about the demographics of the inmates, Aualos said.
Nearly 400 children live in Palmasola, and 35 percent of those children are older than 6, according to the census.
After the Palmasola riot, the government acted against the wishes of parents and began removing the older children. Of the inmates who chose alternative housing options, 59 parents sent their children to live with extended family members, compared to four parents who placed their children in state custody, according to the census.
However, because of a lack of control by prison officials, many children managed to re-enter the penitentiary. During visiting hours, children enter the prison and don’t leave. Additionally, parents bribe corrupt guards with cell phones, alcohol, money, drugs, prostitutes and other commodities in exchange for letting their children stay in prison, Aualos said.
The U.N. and other organizations have criticized the presence of children in Bolivia’s prisons, but many Bolivians think it is best not to break familial bonds. Family ties are emphasized and reinforced through holidays like Mother's Day and Father’s Day, which are celebrated in the prison to give families extended time together.
Yanez’s family did not have enough money to buy gifts for family members during the holidays, but he said he preferred quality time with his parents over receiving expensive gifts.
“I just cared about spending time with my father and knowing more about him,” Yanez said. “My father couldn’t give me the same things that the other children received, but that was not a problem for me.”
However, one year for Mother’s Day, Yanez got a part-time job in the prison to buy a special gift for his mom. Yanez delivered Mother’s Day cards from inmates to postal carriers, earning 3 cents for each letter. He gained $2 (U.S.) that he used to buy a cake for his mom when she came to visit.
“That was the greatest day for me,” he said.
Keeping children in prison with incarcerated parents may prevent the deterioration of the family, but there is no evidence that it is the best option for children, Aualos said. Neither the Bolivian government, nor any internal organization, has conducted studies on how living in prison affects a child’s development.
“Absolutely I would choose to live again with my father, but there were many years that affected my childhood,” Yanez said. “I didn’t have a good childhood because my father was in prison, and my mother had to work. My mother had to leave me in an apartment, so there were many times when I couldn’t see my mother or my father. It was a terrible childhood.”
Furthermore, there is no research that indicates how prison time affects a child’s education. More than 50 percent of the children in Palmasola do not go to school, although some children included in that percentage may not be old enough to attend, according to the census.
At San Pedro in La Paz, children can go to school inside the prison, but in Palmasola, children must leave to receive an education.
Yanez and his brother finish homework in the room his father purchased for the family in Palmasola. More than 50 percent of children in Palmasola do not go to school, according to a census.
Yanez left the prison daily with the other children to attend a Catholic school in a nearby town. While prison children throughout Bolivia face isolation from their peers at school, the nuns ensured that children who lived in the prison were not ostracized by their classmates, he said.
“The treatment of all of us was the same,” Yanez said. “The nuns taught us that all of us were the same person, and we were just human beings. I would say, thanks to the nuns, students didn’t care that I was living in the prison.”
While living in prison can be harmful for children, their presence can have positive effects on convict parents. Inmates with children may be encouraged to reform their actions, rehabilitate and integrate back into society, according to Bolivian studies.
However, prisoner rehabilitation is not a priority in Bolivia, and therefore, many former inmates return to their life of crime and are sent back to prison, Aualos said.
The same can be said of Yanez’s father. After he was released from prison, he remained under close scrutiny and was caught selling clothes that the government had not authorized for sale. When Yanez was 11, he went back to Palmasola and stayed with his father for six more months.
The government has taken steps to make prison safer for children, but officials have no plans to remove all the children from the country’s penitentiaries.
“It won’t be done until there is another murder, so it could be continuing for a while,” Aualos said. “Only when there is a tragedy do the people ask why the children are still in the prisons. That’s when the people and the government want to make changes and take the children out of the prisons.”
Bolivian student Johan Diry Orosco Terceros and University of Arkansas student Lauren Robinson contributed to this report.
This story is part of the 2014 Lemke Abroad program for the Walter J. Lemke Department of Journalism at the University of Arkansas.