Thursday, January 7, 2016. On the Margarita Island, you can find the prison of San Antonio “paradise made prison”; locals prefer to spend their time in jail on weekends without any envy to a resort hotel or upscale club. Prisoners paying their sentence and feel safer there; have a better time inside than anywhere else on the island.
This prison is located in Venezuela, and has become a place to relax and disconnect from the outside; prisoners behave in an exceptional way, their families are able to live with them, they all coexist harmoniously.
The reason, for which many of the prisoners have refused to go free, is that in jail they have everything they’ve ever wanted and can´t get in the streets; and they enjoy without fear, far from their pasts full of assaults, killings and abuses. San Antonio offers multiple recreation as a family pool, boxing ring, barbecues, live music, dance floor, internet, a baseball team, among other activities for daily enjoyment; inmates live in a never-ending party.
Paul Makin, an inmate of British nationality, currently serving a sentence for drug trafficking said that “this is the best prison in the world, with what I’ve seen in prisons, with what I have experienced, there is no place like this across the planet”. Furthermore, freedom has been so complete that the use of illicit drugs within San Antonio is authorized; prisoners walk freely there smoking a joint of marijuana or consuming crack, cocaine and any other type of forbidden substances outside the walls.
But it was not always so, everything changed with the arrival of mobster Teofilo Rodriguez, better known as “The rabbit”; who has become the head of the entire criminal ward, having absolute power, marking the walls with his symbol that resemblances the Playboy company bunny, not content with that; prisoners must have a tattoo on their necks identifying them as property of “El Conejo (The rabbit)”.
Although getting in is not easy, the only way to enjoy the amazing attractions of “paradise made prison”; is committing a crime, either stealing a car or being a very renown drug dealer.
The big difference between San Antonio and other prisons in Venezuela, is that inmates of this enclosure are the ones making the rules; ignoring armed officers, who play the role of bodyguards inside the prison, surrounding the jail, and in the watch towers, over the gigantic walls with barbed wire, making it seem like a high security prison.
ALFA