Prison tales
The prison tales reaching our shores serve as a warning that the Philippines must, at all costs, be prevented from becoming a narco-state.
We can readily admit that the Philippines' penal system, being run by the Bureau of Corrections, leaves much to be desired in a world of convicted criminals plagued by congestion, and the all-too-familiar pitfalls of penitentiaries worldwide.
The sobering reality, however, is that BuCor's chief, Director General Gregorio Pio Catapang Jr., could be facing a far grimmer scenario, as had been written in the dark annals of Colombia and Venezuela.
Conjure up this image: A pact between the devil and the authorities, a deal forged in the crucible of crime by the infamous Pablo Escobar before he was shot dead on the roof of his safe house.
A titan of the drug trade who inspired Mexico's Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Escobar cobbled up a macabre deal with the Colombian government back in 1991 that allowed him to lord it over his own prison facility, if one could even call it that.
Escobar, who had a penchant for the high life, gave his bizarre haven the name La Catedral, where he was given a maximum sentence of five years inside the confines of a Medellin mountaintop resort of his own design.
La Catedral was not an ordinary prison, as it boasted a soccer field, a discotheque (dance floor to non-boomers), a huge jacuzzi, and armed guards of Escobar's own picking.
In essence, the Colombian government had unwittingly anointed him the ruler of a kingdom built on crime, drug money, and the blood of rival drug lords, as well as of police and government officials who dared try to stop him.
Escobar's reign within La Catedral was, however, short-lived, as a scandalized world exerted great pressure on the Colombian government to transfer him to a real prison.
The Colombian drug lord would escape, and a year later, in 1993, would meet his demise at the hands of Colombian law enforcement backed by United States Drug Enforcement Agency operatives.
If we may appropriate Yogi Berra's "It's déjà vu all over again," we see this week a parallelism with events in Venezuela, where the Tren de Aragua gang reigned supreme within the Tocoron prison.