The American Jail and The Mexican Annex

I just drank a strong black coffee and it’s 2:30 AM and I thought I’d get to writing. Maybe nobody gives a shit, if it is that way so be it, I heard once you should write like no one is watching you because no one is watching you, and anyway the act of writing in and off itself is a source of great joy for me although I must admit I have sinned in the fact of liking my own voice a little, no rather a lottle too much.

I write this journalistic article to give insight into two experiences of unwanted confinement in two different countries that pride themselves both on not being the other when in reality they are in some way not too dissimilar. I will talk about the American Jail, Chatam County Jail to be more precise and the Mexican Annex (for those who don’t know what an annex is it’s a rehabilitation center if it can be called that often illegal in which the living conditions are beyond terrible not too much unlike a jail).

I think my reputation is already fucked at this point in the wrong and in the right circles because of my own irrational, prideful, lustful and at some points altogether crazy actions (I did lose my mind at multiple points there, chasing ghosts with golf clubs in Texas neighborhoods and hiding in Artz Pedregal thinking a billionaire was planning to kill me. The first one because of drug addiction the second one because of an incorrect dose of medication when I was already in recovery and you know I do have a mind prone to the occasional hallucination and manic episode. Just the way I was born I guess).

One girl at my second Uni, an incredibly beautiful blue eyed white skinned beauty told me I should be more humble. She was right my pride led to my destruction and I had to be humiliated constantly to understand that lesson. Humility, Faith, and Charity which is love for everyone whether they are deserving of it or not are the three values I try to live my life by today. It wasn’t always that way.

My point is I got no one to impress and no reason to lie, so you can take my word when I tell you the truth about both these two experiences, I do sure hope so you don’t get curious and try to experience them yourself and my account is satisfying enough. If not well I can give you a few tips.

I chose this subject because it’s something people constantly ask about. So here goes: Which experience was worse?

I’d have to go with Jail so I’ll begin with that.

Being driven towards a jail, cuffed looking out the window of a patrol car at the outside world not knowing if it’s something you’d be able to do again is very frightening, and you can’t even roll down the window to feel the air.

Jail is interesting and the exact opposite of the annex in the fact that is industrialized, economized, mechanized. People make a lot of money off you being in jail, the whole criminal justice system economy in America is so big I think it incentives injustices as a source of income, as a friend told me inside Chatam County Jail, it’s privatized so they make money off every inmate. Whether Chatam county was privatized or not I don’t know.

The annex on the other hand at least the one I was on was very rural in a very poor area of Mexico and was only inescapable because it was in the middle of nowhere and getting to society would be very dangerous so your only option was to try your luck at the annex, but we’ll get to that.

So yeah jail feels like a big fucking machine from the moment you walk in and it swallows you up, even the police men seem swallowed up by the architecture, lighting and structure of the jail. As I said, industrialized. Americans are physically big people so both inmate and cops are very imposing.

I think with the history of enslavement in Georgia it was a particularly bad state to be jailed in as some inmates told me and later a friend at a diner in Memphis also told me, locking up people like cattle systematically based on not fitting certain criteria is the norm in Georgia, or so he said, inside Jail there is a feeling of you the little guy fighting injustice (in my case although I do admit responsibility for bad choices) and the big American machine. Like a movie. But not a fun one because it is very fucking real.

Jail etiquette is flush as you shit, annex etiquette is throw and pull up forty buckets of shit stained water from the drain at 8:00 AM in the morning to start the day.

The oppression in jail is clear and concise, there is no way in fucking hell you’ll ever get out of this place if we don’t let you, every corridor is exactly the same and it links at the end in a four way intersection to the same architecture, the demeaning in the Annex is be free to roam about, try to escape, where will you go?

The Annex is demeaning in a terrible way, unlike in a rehab clinic where professionals usually compassionate professionals seek to help the spiritual broken addicts towards recovery the annex staff are resentful horrible people who delight in mistreating and humiliating the addict at his worst moment when abstinence has him always in the brink of emotion, you are constantly provoked so as to be punished and humiliated.

I was hated in the annex, I say this with honesty not hate or a sense of superiority, everyone in the annex was brown and poor I was white and rich, they hated me for it, and in their abstinence which makes you always uncomfortable angry and unhappy they banded against the white man.

In jail I was also the black sheep, or rather the white one because most of the inmates were black. Georgia’s racist past could be felt through the jail walls, In jail you are in more danger of being raped. Plain and simple.

In jail you are idle always inside a cell except an hour a day, in the annex you are never idle, you are always working, for example carrying rocks from one side of a field to another for no particular reason, cleaning, mopping, cleaning the drain with the shit bucket, burning the trash etc….

The food in jail is awful but at least it is varied, in the annex we ate soy and soy and soy and then soy and more soy. Fuck soy.

Both as you can reasonably guess are filled to the brim with drug addicts. (Kids don’t use drugs)

I even encountered Tusi and marihuana in jail, one actually being smuggled by a cop! Can you imagine that! In the U.S.A?!

In the Annex you see extreme poverty, which I am very thankful for because it gave me incredible perspective as to my luck and grace. I met three kids two 12 years old and one 13. They were addicted to crystal meth, cocaine, alcohol, marihuana etc and their father was a low level drug lord. They never had a shot.

I had a black friend in jail whose use of drugs had turned him into a crazy person and although he was very funny and genuinely good his insanity had brought him to shoot at his girl. Lotta guys in jail cuz of girls, because of lies and also because of shit they did.

Homosexuality is also rampant in jail and in the annex, although in the annex it feels more like a distorted choice and in the jail it is imposed on unsuspecting victims.

Religion is in both places as a small beacon of light. Religion is good in jail and in the annex, although in the annex it was distorted and weaponized by the abusive management, which consisted in the big amount of three persons meanwhile in the jail hundred were employed.

I have thought about it and I don’t know which is more demeaning, one treats you like a dangerous animal at the zoo, the other like a plague, there is more respect in jail, as if you were meaningful enough to have so much security around to keep you submissive, in the annex you are just repeated to constantly that you are a worthless piece of shit.

Showers in the annex were cold and lasted three minutes, showers in jail could last as much as thirty minutes but you had to constantly click two buttons hot and cold simultaneously every five seconds.

Liberty of movement didn’t exist outside a cell in jail for more than one hour a day whilst in the Annex you could when not being worked like a slave walk across the desserted nature into nowhere.

Is it better to be alone or to be surrounded but hated. I can’t say.

In both you don’t know how long you’ll be there, there are many people that stay up to three years against their wills illegally in the annexes of Mexico.

I was threatened at some point with the annex’s affiliate annex which was just the second floor of a run down house in which in a cage there was six bunkbeds and nothing more, and no space, those guys, I was one of them for a small time couldn’t move and they peed and showered with a bucket, it smelled like cigarette and sweat and it’s not a place I’d like to ever see the inside of again unless in a police raid, to arrest the people managing it. but there you are safeish.

Jail, alone in a cell with a repressed gay huge man. That’s danger.

For recreation people in jail played chess, poker and basketball, in the annex we just smoke shitty cheap Chinese cigarettes, both places you wake up and you hate reality and yourself for making that your reality, but places scream of the devil but are where many people attest to finding God.

I did.

In both.

In many ways and I hope I can visit both places one day again in the future as an outside and a helping hand to those who have lost their way.

Humility.
Charity.
Faith.

Signed
Jeronimo del Toro