Member-only story
The Jail from Hell in Caracas
An undercover visit finds an abundance of human rights violations.
Raw sewage. The stench hits me like a belt across the face. It grows stronger as we walk the two blocks from the Metro station to the four-story concrete jail pockmarked with peeling paint and crumbling corners. I switch to breathing through my mouth.
The pounding sun of early morning in the tropics bounces off the razor wire coils on the flat roof, making me squint. A drab collection of grey rags — I make out trouser legs, shirt sleeves, the odd sheet or towel — hangs from a narrow strip of wire-meshed windows along the top of each floor in a shroud of squalor.
Jesus, I think. Jesus.
I trail my escort, Sister Concepción, onto the end of the Saturday visitors’ queue for El Retén de Catia, located in a sprawling slum on the west side of Caracas, Venezuela. The visitors’ line is mostly women, as at any men’s prison, but many of them teeter on high-heeled sandals, wear shorts and skirts revealing melon slices of buttocks and rib-tight T-shirts that put swells of dusky skin on mercantile display. Prostitutes.
I catch one of them staring at me. Having lived five years in Latin America, I’m used to being stared at since I look different than most people here. I’m tall, fair-skinned, with long russet hair and green eyes. I know…
