The Best in Travel Reading
Marching Powder is One of the Most Gripping Travel Books Available
Sep 1, 2009
Marching Powder is a fascinating story about The San Pedro Prison in the Bolivian capital of La Paz. It is a gripping piece of literature and important travel reading for anyone travelling around South America. Written in the first person, it documents the life of an inmate called Thomas (co-writer of the book itself) and unfolds a world which is almost impossible to believe exists.
As far as travel reading goes, this book undoubtedly finds its way into the top ten of all time. The travelling reader is introduced to a real place of tourist interest, brought closer to the strange workings of the Bolivian judicial system and offered a very well written piece of literature to go along with it.
Marching Powder – The Story
Marching Powder is about the San Pedro Prison. This prison is run by the inmates. Cocaine factories exist within its very walls. Inmates must raise the cash to buy their cells and sign a lease, going through official processes. Restaurants serve food, shops sell everything anyone could ever need and wives and children move into the grounds to live with their convicted husbands as a matter of course.
Thomas McFadden, co-writer and 6 year-long inmate of San Pedro, gradually finds himself to be the prison's tour guide. Travellers from far and wide gradually hear of his prison tours and begin turning up by the hundred. Thomas gives tours, supplies lines of coke and organises it so that tourists who are game enough can even spend the night inside the prison walls if they so wish. Travel reading has never been this good.
The Bolivian guards earn a commission and Thomas continues to use all the money he can save on bribing the various high court judges presiding over his case to let him go free ahead of time. Bribery is the name of the game in Marching Powder and makes for riveting storyline throughout.
When Travel Reading Becomes a Real Tourist Attraction
Continuing to run as a tourist attraction today (although without the guided help of Thomas since his release in 2000), Marching Powder markets The San Pedro Prison is still featured in copies of The Lonely Planet as a top thing to do when visiting Bolivia's dizzying capital, La Paz; the highest capital city in the world. After reading this novel as part of a South American travel, the prison will be high on the list of priorities.
If packing the backpack and wondering what travel reading to take on the adventure, Marching Powder should definitely be the first book to go in the bag.
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