Prison Life

I showed Mark (my brother) a little of La Paz yesterday. We visited one of the plazas near the center of the city. On one side of the plaza is a prison, on another side is a school, on a third side is a hotel and the fourth side had businesses with people living above them. In the center of the square is the garden area where people sit on benches and talk or walk around or buy newspapers or candy from little news stands. Mark found the multi-use nature of the plaza interesting because in most American cities you have separate areas for businesses and for residences, and there's no way a prison would be in the center of town. The guidebook described the prison as a town within a town because there are no guards inside the prison. The prisoners themselves organize their social structure and living arrangements. The book also said you used to be able to tour the prison. I've seen the inside of enough Latin American prisons. I guess I should clarify that. When I worked in Honduras, I occasionally had to visit Amercians being held in Honduran jails, so I saw 3 or 4 different prisons there.