Marching Powder

The true story of an English drug-smuggler, a notorious Bolivian prison and enough cocaine to cover the Andes . . .

Rusty Young was on a backpacking holiday in South America when he heard about Thomas McFadden, an English drug smuggler giving guided tours of his Bolivian prison, San Pedro. Intrigued, the twenty-something Australian lawyer travelled to La Paz and joined one of Thomas's illegal tours.

What followed took both men by surprise: a friendship formed and Rusty bribed the prison guards to allow him to stay. Over the next three months he shared a cell with Thomas, experiencing life in San Pedro first-hand, and recording one of the most shocking and compelling prison stories of all time.

In the tradition of 'The Damage Done', this is an insider's account of the struggle to survive in a Third World prison. But San Pedro is unique: inmates must buy their cells from real estate agents; others own shops and restaurants, and women and children are allowed to live with their incarcerated family members.

But not far beneath the orderly façade of the prison community, San Pedro reveals itself to be a place of incredible violence and despair - some of the busiest cocaine laboratories in South America are located there, and most of the inmates are drug addicts. In San Pedro, the hierarchy is based on money and major crime, and everything is available at a price.

An adrenalin-charged account of corruption, violence and survival, 'Marching Powder' is also the tale of an unlikely friendship, forged in the oddest of circumstances, between a drug smuggler and a lawyer. It is the story of one of the strangest places on earth, where horror is leavened by humour and the greatest cruelty lives side by side with the greatest humanity.