title: Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail
author: Thomas McFadden
description: This memoir of a British drug dealer's nearly five years inside a Bolivian prison provides a unique window on a bizarre and corrupt world. McFadden, a young black man from Liverpool arrested for smuggling cocaine, finds himself forced to pay for his accommodations in La Paz's San Pedro Prison, the first of many oddities in a place where some inmates keep pets and rich criminals can sustain a lavish lifestyle. The charismatic McFadden soon learns how to survive, and even thrive, in an atmosphere where crooked prison officials turn up at his private cell to snort lines of coke. By chance, he stumbles on an additional source of income when he begins giving tours of the prison to foreign tourists, a trade that leads to the mention in a Lonely Planet guidebook that attracts the attention of his coauthor, Young, who was backpacking in South America at the time. McFadden's unapologetic self-serving story will attract little pity as he freely admits to countless cocaine sales for which he was never held accountable. Once the authors chronicle the novel aspects of life in San Pedro, from which McFadden was released in 2000, the narrative loses momentum. The book would have benefited from some judicious editing and some objective perspective on the veracity of McFadden's story. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rusty Young grew up in Sydney, Australia. He studied Finance and Law at the
  University of New South Wales and currently lives in Colombia, where he
  teaches English.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![image](Images/073291180X-titlepage.gif)
  
  
  A true story  
  of friendship,  
  cocaine and  
  South America’s  
  strangest jail
  
  
  RUSTY YOUNG
  
  
  ![image](Images/073291180X-publisherlogo.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _To Sylvia, Simone and the backpackers_
  
  
  
  
  
    
    
  
  
  First published 2003 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited 1
  Market Street, Sydney
  
  
  Reprinted 2003 (five times), 2004 (four times), 2005 (three times), 2006
  (twice)
  
  
  Copyright © Rusty Young 2003
  
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
  any Reprinted form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including
  photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system,
  without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
  
  
  Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of material
  