I removed my jewelry, put it in my purse, and gave it to my mother. I grabbed my cell phone and somehow had the clarity of mind to write a Facebook post. I knew it was the only tool I had to let the world know what these people were doing to me. The post read: “I am on my way to Santa Teresita courtesy of Mayora & Mayora’s legal strategy against Roberto Montano [my husband]. Pray for me. Take care of my children.”
My friend Melly immediately called and asked, “What is going on?” I told her I was being taken to El Centro de Detención Preventiva para Mujeres Santa Teresa. She was as flabbergasted as we all were and quickly replied, “Make your post public so that we can all share it.” I did and less than thirty minutes later, I added one last post: “Friends—I need you to tell my story to those who will listen. Many of you are friends, clients, and you can exercise some form of pressure at Mayora. Thank you for believing in me.” And that is how the people who knew me, loved me, and believed in me began an incredible sixty-five-day quest and movement to free me from prison.
Prison. I was going to prison. I couldn’t completely wrap my head around this predicament, but had no choice but to be strong. My parents and I stayed in that little adjacent office with the friendly court worker for a couple of hours. We tried to get me some more appropriate prison clothes (there are no uniforms for inmates in Guatemalan prisons), but there was not enough time. Eventually, I was handcuffed and taken down to the carceleta one more time. However, this time I was to go straight to jail. No going home, no saying goodbye to my children or having the chance to explain my sudden absence to them, nothing. A single sentence from a judge who had examined no evidence against me and I went from being a free woman to a prison inmate.
I spent the rest of the day and well into the night in that holding cell waiting for the last of the inmates to finish their legal proceedings, so we could all be herded into the prison truck and hauled off to jail. By then, my world had reached unfathomable depths, and my life as I knew it was being deleted from my mind, seemingly making room for whatever I was to confront next. I focused on this new reality, on this new circumstance. Little Miss Planner was now being forced to improvise. Only time would tell how successful I would be.
Chapter 6
El Centro de Detención Preventiva para Mujeres Santa Teresa
Week One
I arrived at Santa Teresa Women’s Correctional Facility in Guatemala City on Wednesday, January 6, 2016, slightly past midnight. After less than twenty-four hours in jail, I had already accumulated a wealth of new experiences that I was anxious to share with the outside world, but my brain was a wreck and my heart so broken that I sometimes felt like I couldn’t even breathe. Every time I thought of my two lovely, innocent children, I broke down and cried.
The road from the courthouse’s carceleta in Guatemala City to Santa Teresa was dark and unknown to me, and the prison was darker still. A dim light bulb here and there made my eyes struggle to see. Handcuffed and guarded, we stepped out of the gray pickup truck and descended many steps toward the prison. My first memory will probably always be the terrible stench from cat urine overpowering my senses as soon as we entered the warden’s office area. I felt like I was being buried alive.
The check-in process is still a blur to me. I was asked about my academic background, about the reason for my imprisonment, and was assigned to Cellblock One. The word was that I was lucky to have been placed in that cellblock, but I couldn’t fathom it. I was registered as inmate number 104, in a block originally designed for an estimated sixty-four women, with thirty-two bunk beds. Needless to say, this situation forced us to sleep in unconventional ways. At 1:30 a.m., I walked into a dark cellblock, lit only by a colorful Christmas tree and the traditional Guatemalan crèche.
After the guards locked the gates behind me, I was welcomed by Mimi, whom I would soon learn was the cellblock’s voice. It is common for new inmates to arrive at the prison late at night, so Mimi was used to this situation. When I say Mimi welcomed me, I literally mean she welcomed me to share her twin bed. I was overcome by such exhaustion after spending twelve hours in the carceleta, that I didn’t think twice about my newfound situation and simply crawled into bed next to this big woman, who generously let me have one-third of the space on her sleeping bunk and even lent me a blanket. Before long, I fell asleep.
I did wake up several times during the night, a bit disoriented, but fully aware of my circumstances; having no watch, and therefore no way of knowing what time it was, I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. At 4 a.m., I was startled awake by a bell, like the ones you may hear in schools or firehouses. However, this was no school recess or fire emergency. This is what they call an inmate count or head count. I quickly learned this was to be part of my new daily prison routine. When that bell rang at 4 a.m., every last one of us had to get out of our beds, line up in a predetermined manner in the main cellblock hall, and wait for the prison warden and her lieutenants to complete the 104-inmate head count. After the officers locked the gates behind them and were on their way to count inmates in the other cellblocks, we were finally allowed to go back to bed. I also learned that on Saturdays and Sundays our head count was mercifully moved to 6 a.m., giving us two extra hours before we were rattled awake to have our presence confirmed.
Inmates must be up by 9 a.m. and taking a shower is mandatory. The queue is long and the water cold. One shower curtain covers two showers with no showerheads, but most inmates shower one at a time. Some inmates shower in pairs to save time, but that is optional. Since showering there was not a pleasant ordeal, few inmates took their time. There is also a pila (a basin) where you can wash yourself in the open, but as I found out throughout the day, the pila is also used to wash hands, brush teeth, and scrub dishes and clothes.
Since I had nothing but the clothes I had chosen for my court hearing the day before and my father’s jacket, I thought I’d have to skip my shower that morning, but several women came to my rescue. One lent me a small towel and a packet of shampoo and conditioner, but I did not have to use them because Mimi lent me a larger towel and her dandruff shampoo. I was not ready to wash my hair in that cold water, so I used the shampoo to wash my body. I was a champion at my two first traumatic events: sleeping and bathing.
I spent the rest of the day learning the ropes. There were six toilet stalls in my cellblock and, per Mimi’s orders, I was to use toilet stall number three. The toilet handles did not work, so one had to pour water from a huge bucket into the toilet bowl to flush it. To my surprise, the system worked well. No doors were allowed, so curtains were used for privacy. Curtains were also used to mark each separate bunk area. They were all uniform curtains, paid for by the inmates, and were changed every three to four months. The ones hanging during my stay were satiny and pink, which made the cellblock look like a cheap brothel. Regardless of looks, the privacy they brought was greatly appreciated.
Even though my first day in prison was not officially a visitor’s day, my father managed to stop by to check on me and see how I was holding up. In addition to giving me his love and words of wisdom, he also told me to find an apparently well-known inmate named Lili. Later, while searching for her to introduce myself, I learned that the stories about her power were legendary, and many inmates even feared her. Our meeting was brief, but I accomplished the mission my dad had given me.
Before he left, my father also made sure to give me some money. The prison system provides inmates with nothing, and you can’t survive your prison sentence without money, no matter how long or short it may be. I had to pay Mimi seven dollars for some sort of cellblock entrance fee, seventy cents per week for a so-called communal account, and fourteen cents for weekly bathroom cleanup. There was a well-established prison economy and rules for just about everything; if you broke them, you got a punishment referred to as plancha (same word used for our concrete beds) where you had to clean the entire cellblock for a full day. This included sweeping and mopping before dawn, at noon, and at 5 p.m., and buying all the needed cleaning supplies
