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Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail | 
 enlarge | Authors: Thomas Mcfadden, Rusty Young
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy Used: $7.99
You Save: $7.96 (50%)
New (31) Used (17) from $7.99
Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 62642
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312330340
Dewey Decimal Number: 365.98412092
EAN: 9780312330347
ASIN: 0312330340
Publication Date: May 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Good Plus or better: VG but for slightly slanted spine. Exactly as pictured. Fast shipper.
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Product Description
Rusty Young was backpacking in South America when he heard about Thomas McFadden, a convicted English drug trafficker who ran tours inside Bolivia's notorious San Pedro prison. Intrigued, the young Australian journalisted went to La Paz and joined one of Thomas's illegal tours. They formed an instant friendship and then became partners in an attempt to record Thomas's experiences in the jail. Rusty bribed the guards to allow him to stay and for the next three months he lived inside the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas and recording one of the strangest and most compelling prison stories of all time. The result is Marching Powder.
This book establishes that San Pedro is not your average prison. Inmates are expected to buy their cells from real estate agents. Others run shops and restaurants. Women and children live with imprisoned family members. It is a place where corrupt politicians and drug lords live in luxury apartments, while the poorest prisoners are subjected to squalor and deprivation. Violence is a constant threat, and sections of San Pedro that echo with the sound of children by day house some of Bolivia's busiest cocaine laboratories by night. In San Pedro, cocaine--"Bolivian marching powder"--makes life bearable. Even the prison cat is addicted.
Yet Marching Powder is also the tale of friendship, a place where horror is countered by humor and cruelty and compassion can inhabit the same cell. This is cutting-edge travel-writing and a fascinating account of infiltration into the South American drug culture.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Surreal and true! July 20, 2004
L. Rephann (Brooklyn, New York United States)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
I picked this book up based on the cover design, then read the back jacket and decided it was a book for me! I love "true life" stories and this is one of the more bizarre ones you will ever read.
This is the story of a prisoner as told by a man who came to befriend him over repeated visits to the prison. The plot centers around the man's 4+ year stint in Bolivian prison, but tells so much more than this story. "Marching Powder" delves into the rampant corruption inside the prison, the bizarre, surreal microcosm of the prison, and one man's odyssey to be released from prison and continue with his life. If you have seen the film "Midnight Express," this book is reminiscent of it.
The story takes place almost entirely inside a Bolivian prison. Life inside this prison has its own set of rules and regulations, and is unlike anything you could imagine. The prison has its own economy, its own neighborhoods, and a cast of characters (including a crack-addicted cat) that could have come out of a movie.
The book moves quickly, the writing is fluid and vivid, the characters are larger than life, and some of the details can be jaw-dropping.
 Truth is stranger than fiction January 21, 2005
K. Maxwell (Perth, Australia)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
In 1995, Thomas McFadden was arrested at El Alto airport in La Paz in Bolivia for drug smuggling in a sting operation set up by a local policeman. Thomas was then sent to the local San Pedro prison after almost being starved to death by the local police because he didn't have any cash on him to pay for food in their holding pens.
San Pedro prison turned out to be the strangest place Thomas had ever been in his life. It was a microcosm of the entire Bolivian economy. People ran shops, made and traded drugs, bribed all the police and guards on a daily basis and had their wives and children live with them in jail.
Thomas is honest and straightforward in stating that before his arrest he was a professional drug smuggler and after his introduction to prison a regular cocaine taker as well. He's not an angel, but this is a fascinating story of good times and bad times and the friends and enemies of life in the strangest prison you'll ever read about. The moral of this story is - if you have to go to prison in South America make sure its San Pedro and that you are rich and any of other nationality aside from USA. "Gringos" can survive these prisons but they can also be brutal to people that they hate and this book shows you both the light and dark sides of San Pedro prison and a place that was at one point one of South America's strangest tourist attractions.
Quite a remarkable book May 14, 2006
Glenn Martin (ACT Australia)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Thomas McFadden is a drug trafficker. Oh don't worry, he freely admits to it in this book and he was actually caught trying to smuggle drugs out of South America when he was double crossed by a customs official.
What I found in this book was a surprisingly funny, yet also dark account of life in Bolivia's San Pedro prison. Basically if you don't have any money to bribe the guards you don't even get food to eat let alone a cell to call your own. That's right, you have to pay for your own cell like it was real estate!
The book is written by Rusty Young, an Australian backpacking in South America who had heard of a guy in San Pedro who was giving tours and overnight stays in the prison, for a price. Three months later Rusty emerged with Thomas' story of mob justice, violence, bribery, drugs, women, love and even a night out on the town.
Thomas never really apologises for anything he has done, and if anything he gives us quite an insight into the global drug trafficking business. But most of the book focuses on Thomas' time in San Pedro and his often fight to stay alive. I'm not normally a non-fiction fan, but I have to admit this book was VERY interesting!
Brill book especially if you are planning to visit Bolivia August 20, 2005
James Wood (Travelling the World)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Didn`t know what to expect and having just visited Bolivia really enjoyed this book.
Real page turner, sex, drugs, violence and thouroughly fascinating.
Two minor criticisms though. Firstly Thomas does play the victim a bit - let`s get real, he was a drug trafficker and no matter how unfair his treatment, if you break the law in another country you should be prepared to accept the consequences, not that Thomas hides the fact he is guilty, but he does unwittingly gain sympathy.
Secondly, it is a bit hippy, traveller, everybody loves everybody, which I guess is no criticism but if you are a cynic like me...I would find it hard not to take the piss more out of the people that came on his tours having met several crusty niaive travellers myself, but this would not stop me recomending this as a must for anyone visiting Bolivia!
A good read, but ... March 23, 2006
I Love NY (New York City)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Having travelled throughout Latin America, I can report that the way in which the jail is run is not so strange, and is actually common throughout the poorer countries of the continent. The need for outside assistance and money is required in order to have any chance of long-term survivorbility. In countries where public funds are scarce, it makes common sense to the population that inmates should fund their own incarceration.
A good read, nonetheless. One thing that I wondered after having read the boom was what happened to McFadden after his release. I can't find anything about him online. It left me with the impression that he had gone back into the business of drug smuggling. Iw wrote to the author about this and I was assred that McFadden was living a drug-free life in Colombia. I have my doubts, being that McFadden continued to use and deal drugs throughout his prison sentence.
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