ACCIDENTS

ACCIDENTS


In the middle of October one of the dairy project's drivers had an accident on his way to Santa Cruz to make a delivery.  He had set out about 3:30a.m. and at Entre Ríos, some 70 Kms. away (It was dark, naturally),  a drunk cyclist came out of a "night-club".  A bus and a van were following close behind the lorry so he could not brake or they would have run into him.  He swerved into the ditch but still did not avoid the cyclist who was thrown up on to the bonnet, hit the windscreen which broke, and then fell into the ditch.  The serious part is that the driver did not stop - he drove on to Santa Cruz. When he called from there he was not sure whether the cyclist was dead or not.

When Robert heard this he was furious, and when the fellow came back from Santa Cruz he was dismisssed immediately.  René, the manager of the dairy, and Wilfredo, the production manager, went on a recce to Entre Ríos to find out exactly what the situation was.  They went to the police with the pretext that a person from the place had been contracted to do an inventory at the dairy and had absconded with the key to the cold store, which is why they were trying to track him down.  Did the police know of anyone of that name (an invented one, of course).  No, they did not.  Had there been any accidents recently - maybe that is why he had not come back to work.  Yes, there had been.  Last night.  A fellow on a bicycle had been hit and was in the hospital.  His boss was paying the medical bill.  Lucky that it must have been a small car because if it had been a truck he would be dead!  (Just goes to show how alcohol relaxes the muscles making drunks less prone to breaking bones).

Reprehensible behaviour to run off like that after an accident.  And it is.  However, things are not so clear-cut as they appear in the context of the first world.  If he had stopped, the police would have put him straight in jail and he would have stayed there for an age until (if ever) his case came up for trial.  Meanwhile the police would be trying to extract bribes from him.

The lawyer who came to do some work for the UN (the nephew of the President) told us that standard practice among lorry drivers is to carry a crowbar or some similar implement.  If they have a serious accident, they get out and kill the victim, because it is better to have a dead person than one maimed for life.  If the person is dead the company can go to the family and pay them US$1,000 or so compensation and that keeps them happy.  However, if the person is injured and maimed the problem is not the victim or even the family.  It is the police.  They keep coming back demanding more and more money to keep quiet or else they will concoct evidence and have the person in jail for the rest of his life.  This minimum jail term is likely to be around 10 years for an accident.  


And jail conditions are not like they are in even the worst and most over-crowded jail in Europe.  According to a Human Rights report just out, overcrowding in the Cochabamba jail is of the ratio of 100:1.  There are 100 people in the space designed a hundred years or more ago for one person.  There are only two latrines and no showers for all the inmates and there are no kitchen facilities: the prisoner's family must bring food every day or bring parcels of ingredients which the prisoners cook for themselves in any corner they can find. If he has no family then he must buy food from the other prisoners so long as he has money to do so.  If not, then he dies of hunger and that, according to the report, is not such an uncommon occurrence.  The worst of it all is that 93% of the prisoners in the jail are still waiting for their cases to come up for trial and they have mostly been there for a minimum of 5 years.  

In the case of prisoners detained under Law 1008 (the US-inspired anti-drug law) no bail is admitted.   The director of the jail himself gave the researchers examples of people who were totally innocent – their innocence had been proved on up to two occasions at the local court and at the Cochabamba High Court, - but they had to wait till their case came up before the Supreme Court at Sucre before they were released.  In most cases the evidence was cooked up by the UMOPAR or they had forced people to sign or put their thumbmark on "confessions" when they were under torture - burned with cigarette ends, electric shocks on the genitals, being hung upside down for days, etc.  One man had the powder used in tear gas bombs blown into his eyes with the result that he is now totally blind: he was a carpenter here in Chimoré. The director of the prison allows him to set up a little stand at the door of the prison and sell knick-knacks to people in order to be able to eat.

How´s that for justice?

No wonder the guy just kept going!