MARCHING POWDER is the story of Thomas Mc Fadden, a small-time English drug smuggler who was arrested in Bolivia & thrown inside the notorious San Pedro prison. He found himself in a bizarre world, the prison reflecting all that is wrong with South American society. Prisoners have to pay an entrance fee & buy their own cells (the alternative is to sleep outside & die of exposure), prisoners` wives & children often live inside too, high quality cocaine is manufactured & sold from the prison. Thomas ended up making a living by giving backpackers tours of the prison
- he became a fixture on the backpacking circuit & was named in the Lonely Planet guide to Bolivia. When he was told that for a bribe of $5000 his sentence could be overturned, it was the many backpackers who`d passed through who sent him the money. Sometimes shocking, sometimes funny, MARCHING POWDER is an always riveting story of survival. ` All the staples of the prison memoir are here: sadistic guards, an attempted break-out, the terrors of solitary confinement, the joys of freedom.. . The result is a truly gripping piece of testimony` Sunday Telegraph ` This exotic, cautionary yarn opens the abyss beneath our wealthy world` Uncut