Outlaws had pool halls, brothels, guns - Soldiers take back prison in Guat.

[Opusnone]

Strangest story I've read in a long time.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-hguatprison18nov18,0,5183574.story?coll=sfla-news-nationworld

PAVON, Guatemala · Smack dab in the middle of this tiny country was a barbed-wire-ringed, upside-down place of about a dozen or so acres where wrong was right.

some tidbits:

"The Independent Republic of Pavon, as Guatemalans came to call it, was, in reality, a prison. But there were no guards controlling it. Every last person on the troubled piece of real estate about a half hour outside the capital, Guatemala City, was an outlaw -- from the ruling elite to the grunts who carried out their orders. Those who dared cross the most notorious convicts were sent off to a grim punishment chamber nicknamed the North Pole."

"But Pavon's independent status came to a screeching halt at the end of September, when the government, after many months of planning, decided to take back the prison. On Sept. 25, thousands of soldiers and police officers poured through its gates in an early-morning raid. What the authorities discovered shocked them: pool halls, brothels, isolation chambers, and computer centers, run by some of Guatemala's most feared convicts.

Crime has surged throughout Central America in recent years. In Guatemala, Pavon was a major center of criminal operations, where drugs were manufactured, women trafficked from other countries were abused, and guns and stolen cars amassed."

"Seven prisoners were killed in the raid, including Luis Alfonso Zepeda, a convicted murderer who was the leader of the Order and Discipline Committee at Pavon. Officials said that Zepeda earned as much as $25,000 a month running the prison, including renting out plots of land to other inmates to build houses. It was a family operation: Zepeda's son pitched in though he was not an inmate."

[TAPat]

1. We lived in Guatemala for a few years

in the mid 1990s and this does not surprise me at all!

I'm not sure I remember anything specifically about Pavon, but our own local jail was kind of a mini version of that - oh, and the local police department was a lot like that too...

Beautiful, beautiful country. We wouldn't trade our time there for anything