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Versión en español
Grasping For Justice in Bolivia
Text and photos by Mike Ceaser
When Elvira Alvarez was jailed in 1989 on false charges of selling
past-dated medicines, she spent seven months locked up in a prison in La
Paz, Bolivia, because she had no one to help do the paperwork to secure her
release.
Today, Alvarez spends many of her days back in La Paz prisons, doing for
others the kind of work that no one did for her: helping them accelerate
their processes through Bolivia's slow and corrupt judicial system.
"I see the inmates as people, not as threats," said Alvarez, 45, a tall
woman whose sombre clothes contrast with a warm smile.
Since childhood, Alvarez has had a compassion for the powerless. She
spent her first years on her father's rice, cocoa and sugar cane farm, in
the tropical Franz Tamayo Province, north of La Paz.
There, in the late 1950s, her father and other farmowners treated their
workers like slaves. A land-redistribution program had ended this system in
most parts of Bolivia in 1952. But her father's hacienda had been missed
because of its remoteness, and he continued abusing farm workers and
chasing them down when they fled.
Once, as a six-year-old, she watched a worker being whipped because he had
attempted to flee. "There was a tremendous door through which I could
see," she recalled.
"I spied, and afterwards I found the key and set him free." Though pursued
with dogs, the man managed to escape, to an unknown fate in the jungle.
Though she never told her father that she had set the man free, Alvarez
protested the abuses, only to hear her father insist that his
workers "deserved it and had to obey him."
Two years after that incident Alvarez was sent to live with her
grandfather in La Paz. Her father still lives in La Paz, but they do not communicate beyond an
occasional greeting, Alvarez said.
A Compassion for the Powerless
The young girl's act of compassion was an early indication of the adult
woman's character. "Whenever people are treated badly I always try to stop
it," she said. "I consider that a very natural act."
From La Paz, Alvarez and her mother moved to Santa Cruz, in the east, in
1973. There Alvarez met and married her husband, Orlando. He worked as a
mechanic and she made and sold clothing.
Alvarez's journey to her work in La Paz prisons began in 1982 in the
Yungas, a low-elevation semitropical region east of La Paz. She had first
traveled there to sell clothing, when she also saw the gold miners'
tremendous health problems. Doctors charged the poor mining families about
60 grams of gold – several months' income – for helping with a birth. And
if the family could not pay, "the birth wasn't attended," says Alvarez.
"And not everyone could pay."
She and her husband took a first aid course in La Paz and began
providing vaccinations for the miners, later expanding the program with
international assistance from an organization called Pan Para el Mundo (Bread
for the World). During the next seven years the couple established a
network of 46 health clinics that provided treatments and inexpensive medicines to
the miners and their families.
Angered by losing profitable business, the local doctors accused the
Alvarezes of illegally selling past-date medicine and of being political
organizers.
"Because we were committed to the people, some doctors concerned about
preserving their incomes charged us," Alvarez recalled. "It was a way of
making us leave town."
Caught in Bolivia's Prison Snare
In November 1989 the couple was arrested and imprisoned in La Paz.
After one month, they became eligible for provisional liberty, but that
required depositing bail and doing paperwork – and they had no one outside to
assist them. As a result, the couple had to spend another seven months in
prison – until they were absolved of all charges and freed.
Alvarez walked out the door with a determination to save others from
such delays. "It was because of all that that I began with the prison
issue, through a life experience," she said.
Bolivia's legal system offers various forms of liberty under bail after
initial paperwork is done. As in the U.S., the amount of bail depends on the
gravity of the crime and the judge can deny bail for the most serious
cases. A judge makes an initial decision about whether the evidence is sufficient to hold the accused. That decision is supposed to be made in 20 days but usually takes three to four months, according to
Alvarez. After that comes the trial and sentencing. But the whole process
is extremely slow.
"Sometimes, by the time the sentence is given the person has
already served more time than the sentence required," Alvarez said.
For the first six years Alvarez worked alone, helping expedite
prisoners' processes, supporting herself through the sale of inmate-made
porcelain handiwork. At first she worked just with thieves, then
moved on to assist those convicted of more serious crimes.
Word of her work spread among inmates. "When they saw that the support
was effective, they started coming on their own to request help," she said.
In 1995 she received one grant to support her work, and the next year a
second one, from Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, to do the work full
time. She is now assisted by four law school graduates.
One of Alvarez's primary functions is informing judges about the special
circumstances of inmates' cases that might otherwise be lost in the system.
She recalled a man unjustly accused of selling mine shares he did not
own. His accuser published a newspaper notice of the case, but because the
defendant lived in a remote rural area, he did not see it. He was convicted
in absentia and the first he heard about the case was when police arrested
him. "We tried several times to have his case reviewed," said Alvarez,
"but since more than a year passed, it was no longer subject to review."
Uncle Made Nephew the Fall-Guy
Another case involved a 16-year-old boy whose uncle took him on a trip
on the pretext of buying electrical equipment. On the way back, the uncle
handed the boy the package to carry. When police stopped them, they found
eight kilograms of cocaine inside. Both were arrested, but after a year in
jail, the boy was absolved and freed.
"He suffered a lot of depression," said Alvarez. "He always told me,
'Get me out of here, lady. I feel bad.'"
Other cases get hung up on procedural details, like not having anyone to
offer property or money as bail guarantee. And then there's the paperwork.
Although Bolivia is planning to switch to an oral trial system somewhat
similar to the United States', trials now are carried out in writing. That
means lots of photocopies delivered here and there, resolutions, notifications and reports. Each provides an opportunity for delay. Alvarez spends a good deal of her time visiting judges' offices, checking whether
paperwork is progressing.
"If nobody pleads for them, the inmates' cases don't advance," she said.
"Some inmates don't know their own sentences because at the sentencing,
only the lawyer was there."
One of Alvarez's goals is obtaining the "conditional liberty" for
which inmates are eligible after completing two-thirds of their sentences.
Hang-ups often delay releases for months.
"I've never seen anyone freed under conditional liberty just like
that," she said.
As well as working in the four prisons in La Paz (two each for men
and women), Alvarez also goes to the courts and judges' offices. It is work that could
be done by public
defenders. But the 18 public defenders each juggle between 60 and 80 cases.
"They don't do a thorough defense," Alvarez said, an opinion shared by
many inmates, like Julio Akasaga, who has been convicted of terrorism, who
said: "They just come to justify their salaries. The people do not have
confidence in them."
In Bolivian Prisons Also, Money Talks
The corruption of the legal system is reflected in the bribes: small ones
to the guards from prostitutes, drug dealers and tourists who enter San Pedro prison, and
large ones to the judges, who accept bribes from wealthy defendants.
"If you don't have money, nothing moves," Alvarez said. Last year Bolivia
was near the top of Transparency International's corruption ranking, though
the situation HAD improved from the year before. Transparency
International is a German organization which makes annual surveys of perceived corruption in
many nations.
On a Saturday morning in February, Alvarez made her regular visit to San
Pedro prison, a massive adobe building in the center of La Paz. The prison,
built 130 years ago for 250 prisoners, houses 1,400. In the chapel,
prisoners crowded around Alvarez to ask about their cases and tell their
stories. She stood listening intently, making occasional notes to talk to
this judge or that lawyer.
"I'll follow the case, but don't think that I make judgments," she
told one man who said he had been unfairly accused of a knifing. She urged
another to attend his court hearings. "I think that when one is present,
the judge has more interest," she explained.
The Innocent Languish with the Guilty
Alvarez also talked with the inmates about prison conditions.
(During her stay in the women's prison, Alvarez said, 60 women slept on
narrow cots pushed one against another in a dormitory, and the food was "terrible".
During the day inmates learned trades such as porcelain-making and weaving.
While there were murderers and others convicted of serious crimes inside,
Alvarez said the environment wasn't violent.)
Although San Pedro inmates are fortunate compared to some others, in that
university courses are offered and there is a carpentry workshop, those provide places
for only a tiny percentage of the 1,400 inmates. Alvarez sympathized with
the prisoners' situation.
"The authorities have never provided alternatives," she said. "How
can they evaluate people's rehabilitation without alternatives? Each of you
does what you can." (During her stay in the women's prison, Alvarez said, 60 women
slept on narrow cots pushed one against another in a dormitory, and the food was "terrible".
During the day inmates learned trades such as porcelain-making and weaving.
While there were murderers and others convicted of serious crimes inside,
Alvarez said the environment wasn't violent.)
After nearly an hour, in which Alvarez talked to some 20 prisoners, she
sat down with Esteban Cokarico Colquehuanca, 42, who was sentenced to 15
years for assault. The charges stem from a 1995 incident in which a group
of peasants fought police in a rural community north of La Paz. Cokarico
says others implicated him under torture, but that he was not involved and
that he was only accused because he is a leader in his community.
"We had no one to care for our health and educational needs," he said.
"We were forgotten."
While Alvarez believes most prisoners are guilty of the crimes they are
convicted of, she agrees that Cokarico is innocent. She said that his
public attorney did not do a good job, and that she would ask that his case
be reconsidered. But she made no promises, and Cokarico was not very hopeful.
"The justice here has always been against the oppressed peoples," he
said.
Forgoing Confrontation, Alvarez Works with Judges
Alvarez said that when inmates approach her, she first finds out what
their needs are and whether relatives are supporting them. If she believes
she can help, Alvarez visits the prisoner's lawyer and then the judge, to
whom she explains special circumstances and requests "provisional
liberty," which is offered to inmates not yet convicted. Alvarez also
provides emotional support, encouraging the prisoner and communicating his
situation to his family.
The work of Alvarez's team complements that of the public defenders, who
concentrate what time they have on prisoners' defense. Alvarez works on the
legal procedures that follow the trial. Also, while the public defenders have
a confrontational relationship to judges, Alvarez works with judges.
"She takes such interest that many inmates have gotten out with
provisional liberty," said Judge Mario Endora.
Alvarez believes that being a woman has made it easier for her to work
with prison authorities who, in general, support her work. She also prefers
working with male prisoners than with female.
In her nine years of prison work, Alvarez estimates that she has helped
500 to 600 prisoners leave prison earlier than they would have otherwise.
Of those, only one has returned to prison, she said.
"We try showing the prisoner's human aspect," she said, "what his
motives were for committing this crime. I always try giving them a second
chance."
Prison Scars Inmates as Well as Families
Since last year Alvarez has also operated a program called New Life,
which trains ex-inmates to make and sell handicrafts as a way of
reintegrating into society. That is often difficult, because many inmates
are rejected by their families, Alvarez said. In other cases, the ex-inmate
returns to his family and becomes a burden.
Imprisonment "leaves a mark on the life of every inmate," Alvarez said.
Until now she has worked with Pastoral Social, a Catholic Church
organization. But she wants more freedom and independence and is setting up
her own foundation, Siglo 21 (Century 21) to undertake legal assistance for
prisoners and their reinsertion into society.
She would like to see many changes in Bolivia's prisons, including more
rehabilitation, faster case resolution and separation of children and
adults in the general prison population. Hundreds of children live
unofficially with their parents in the prison, meaning they may have
rapists and murderers as neighbors.
Alvarez would also like to like to add a preventative program to her work.
"I'd like to work with young people," she said, "to cure the wound
before they are hurt, by showing them the consequences of crime."
Needs:
Ms. Alvarez would like a computer with internet capability, as well as
other,older, computers to use for inmate work training, and a printer;
equipment for weaving and making ceramics for her program, New Life, to
assist ex-inmates in their re-entry into society.
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