An innocent childhood is more valuable than all the knowledge and pleasures of the world.

 

I took my seat at the front. The other visitors carefully walked by me. Everyone seemed to take on a slower pace, as did any conversation, especially among the first-timers. The dusty, summer heat had sunk into us all. The white school bus, with “Mocrete Federal Prison” written in bold lettering along its sides, began to lethargically pull away from the visitors parking lot. 

   Mocrete is a Federal Correctional Complex comprised of two separate security level facilities: FCI Mocrete, a federal low security correctional institution, and USP Mocrete, a medium security US penitentiary. They have a combined inmate population of nearly three thousand. I got off at the second stop. 

   This would be my second time visiting Juan. My first time ever visiting a correctional institution was over twenty-five years ago, when, as a little girl, I went to visit my father. He was in prison for the rest of my childhood.

   We walked down a large hallway with a floor so clean, a mother wouldn't mind her kids eating off it. My reflection honored my grandmother's counsel—a pretty figure dressed the right way commands not just attention but deference. Everyone obeyed the command to keep walking until a correctional officer (CO) at the entrance of the visiting area motioned us inside. Visitors spread out among the stainless-steel tables and COs. Everything was pristine, the sterile environment was maintained by an ever-ready supply of labor with all the time in the world.

   The activation of heavy gate doors echoed from inside the belly of USP Mocrete. Inmates in rumpled orange jumpsuits soon began to enter. While I sat waiting for Juan, I looked over my research from my investigative travels throughout his homeland. Three months prior to my first visit to Mocrete, I journeyed into the heart of South America. I thought of the helicopter ride, which provided an aerial view of the tropical region. It is a world away from the dry, dusty heat of the Great Central Valley, where Mocrete is located. 

   When I saw Juan enter the visiting area, his lean frame suddenly paused, and a smile lit up his face when he saw me. His angular frame sliced through the air; he walked not so much with a strong step but an agile energy. Before he even reached the prison table, I saw what would always surprise me coming from a young man in a very hostile prison, the glint in his brown eyes. 

   Juan slowly sat down across from me and folded his hands on the steel table. I turned on the recorder. He looked at it for a few seconds, then smiled. We started at the beginning, his childhood in Northern Bolivia.

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Through interspersed misty low clouds protrude lush, green mountains. A spectrum of green projects abundant life in all its countless forms and capacities amidst abounding tropical trees, flora, and fauna. At the far base of these mountains runs a gently coiled river, buffered on both sides with green banks that extend into idyllic, moss-colored fields. It is on these fields that Juan, along with his brother and their friends, played soccer, fouled each other, argued, and wrestled—they had the time of their lives. . .