I have no doubt that people are not supposed to know some of the stuff I know. And if I could not have gone to some of the places I’ve been, I would have had to give serious consideration to becoming someone other than who I now am. (Sort of a time machine thing, I guess.)
“Prison” is such a small word to fit such a vast variety of places into.
1970, Hermosillo, Mexico, and I’m locked up in a place with the official title “Escuela de Readaptacion”. For anyone, then, now, or ever, who thinks that that was any kind of a school please allow me to quickly disabuse you of that notion. A hundred years prior to my visit, and the “politics” of which I’ve never really tried to sort out, Germany sent some “experts” there and built what was a 100% state of the art prison at that time. Building walls six foot thick adobe block, outer walls twenty foot tall with watchtowers, and walkways on top for patrolling the perimeter. Three floors to hold everyone, men (which, naturally included juveniles, though down to what age I never did learn), women, and crazies.
But lets talk about “crazies” because, truth be told, mental illness will get you locked up in our country faster, in more places, and for more reasons than, quite possibly, everything else put together. And so it was, in my experience, in Mexico of that day. But, shit, that place managed to make what even we do look humane by comparison.
And I only know what went on on Floor One, one floor below me, because the guy that everyone in the place considered to be the #1 Gringo took a shot at an escape, got caught, got beat to shit, and finally got put in with the crazies. Man, he sent desperate messages up through the cracks in security begging to have his life saved, and, fortunately, the forty or so of us in there at that time were able to raise enough cash to get what was left of him back up for us to take care of.
But the stories. The stories. They left me with no answers, but they clearly left me knowing, then, and only amplified now, that mental illness really should stop being a death sentence. All of them had a space, not necessarily small, but still. And they received food and water, and nothing more (unless it came from family on (and I use the term euphemistically) the twice weekly “visits”. In between, they lived in a mass cave, food was thrown in, and “shower time” was a large diameter hose through the metal grate entrance way that was used to keep them in.
God, how I hate even having this memory in me.