Where prisoners can do anything, except leave

Inmates at Venezuela’s San Antonio prison do time amid a mix of hedonism and force

On the outside, the San Antonio prison on Margarita Island looks like any other Venezuelan penitentiary. Soldiers in green fatigues stand at its gates. Sharpshooters squint from watchtowers. Guards cast menacing glances at visitors before searching them at the entrance.
But once inside, the prison for more than 2,000 Venezuelans and foreigners held largely for drug trafficking looks more like a Hugh Hefner-inspired fleshpot than a stockade for toughened smugglers.
Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air. Reggaetón booms from a club filled with grinding couples. Paintings of the Playboy logo adorn the pool hall. Inmates and their guests jostle to place bets at the prison’s raucous cockfighting arena.
“The Venezuelan prisoners here run the show, and that makes life inside a bit easier for us all,” said Fernando Acosta, 58, a Mexican pilot jailed since 2007. His cellmate, a Congolese businessman, had hired him to fly a Gulfstream jet that prosecutors accuse them of planning to use for smuggling two tons of cocaine to West Africa.
It is not uncommon for armed inmates to exercise a certain degree of autonomy in Venezuela’s penitentiaries. Prisoners with BlackBerries and laptops have arranged drug deals, abductions and murders from their cells, the police say, a legacy of decades of overcrowding, corruption and insufficient guards.
But San Antonio prison, renowned on Margarita Island as a relatively tranquil place where even visitors can go for sinful weekend partying, is in a class of its own.
The island itself is a departure point for drug shipments into the Caribbean and the United States, and the traffickers arrested here often end up in this prison, effectively overseeing life behind its walls with a surreal mix of hedonism and force. Some inmates walk the prison grounds grasping assault rifles.

“I was in the army for 10 years, I’ve played with guns all my life,” said Paul Makin, 33, a Briton arrested here in Porlamar for cocaine smuggling in 2009. “I’ve seen some guns in here that I’ve never seen before. AK-47s, AR-15s, M-16s, Magnums, Colts, Uzis, Ingrams. You name them, it’s in here.”
The Rabbit
Inmates say they owe their unusual privileges to a fellow prisoner, Teófilo Rodríguez, 40, a convicted drug trafficker who controls the arsenal that awes Mr. Makin. Mr. Rodríguez is the inmates’ top leader — a “pran” as alpha prisoners are called.
Mr. Rodríguez also goes by the moniker “El Conejo” (The Rabbit), which explains the proliferation of the pran’s trademark throughout the prison: paintings of the Playboy logo. Inside, opportunities flourish for inmates to make money. Visitors from the island, a palm-fringed getaway destination, line up on weekends to place bets at the prison’s cockfighting arena, generating gambling revenue.
Other visitors, aware that guards search upon entering but not exiting, go inside to buy drugs. Prisoners and visitors alike make use of an alley between cells to smoke marijuana and crack cocaine.

Venezuela’s government recognizes the problems within its prisons, where fighting between gangs controlled by prans like Mr. Rodríguez contributes to a high number of killings. Human rights researchers found that 476 prisoners — about one percent of the nation’s entire prison population of 44,520 — were killed last year alone.
Hoping to tackle the violence, overcrowding and other systemic issues, the government announced plans to create a new ministry of prisons. President Hugo Chávez singled out San Antonio prison for special attention on his Sunday television program in December 2009, celebrating the construction of a new 54-unit women’s annex here.
But human rights groups say corruption and institutional disarray have stymied efforts to improve conditions in many prisons. The nation’s Institute for Penitentiary Studies has had about 1,200 graduates since the 1990s, but fewer than 30 of them work in prisons, depriving the system of professional guidance and expertise.
A series of inmate takeovers in recent weeks has underscored the troubles. In April, inmates outside Caracas took 22 officials hostage, including the warden, protesting a tuberculosis outbreak. The weeklong standoff ended when authorities agreed to replace the warden. In May, inmates at another prison took its warden and 14 employees hostage for 24 hours to protest what they called mistreatment.
“The state has lost control of the prisons in Venezuela,” said Carlos Nieto, director of Window to Freedom, which documents rights violations in Venezuelan prisons.

'A model institution'
Luis Gutiérrez, the warden at San Antonio, refused to discuss the prison he nominally oversees. On weekends, the ambience inside, bursting with spouses, romantic partners and some who simply show up looking for diversion, almost resembles the island’s beach resorts.
Prisoners barbecue meat while sipping whisky poolside. In some cells, equipped with air-conditioning and DirecTV satellite dishes, inmates relax with wives or girlfriends. (Venezuela, like other Latin American countries, allows conjugal visits.) The children of some inmates swim in one of the prison’s four pools.

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