Mavi Marcos has returned home. The Lanzarote native, who spent 25 months in an Ecuadorian prison, sentenced to eight years in prison for drug trafficking, achieved her first permit this Saturday and was able to leave Tahíche, where she is now serving her sentence. At her home, in Arrecife, her mother, Toñi, was waiting for her with a plate of liver and onions, her favorite food. Over the weekend, she visited her family, her siblings, in-laws, and nephews and nieces, and, of course, the San José Obrero handball team, where she played before leaving for Ecuador.
On Wednesday, she will return to the Lanzarote prison, where she feels almost at home, after the nightmare she experienced in Quito, where "assaults and beatings were almost a daily occurrence" and where she entered weighing 97 kilos and came to weigh 40. "Now I'm on cloud nine," she tells La Voz, less than a day before losing her freedom again.
Mavi's drama began on November 25, 2008. "I went on vacation to Ecuador. When I was already in the boarding line to return to Spain, three guys approached me, asked me my name, and told me I was under arrest," she recounts, while continuing to defend her innocence. "I didn't even see the drugs that they supposedly found in my suitcase. No evidence was presented at the trial, other than my documentation and the camera," she argues. "I know I have the label, and that many won't believe me, but I don't care, because I know that's how it was," she indicates.
After being arrested at the Quito airport, accused of carrying six kilos of cocaine in her suitcase, she was handcuffed and taken to the Interpol cells, where she remained until December 6. "They wouldn't let me make calls, and I had to let my mother know that I was arrested. I started kicking the doors, and a policeman came down to tell me to shut up. He asked me how much money I had, I gave him what I had, and he let me call. It was early morning in Lanzarote, and that's how my mother found out why I hadn't come home," she recounts.
Even before setting foot in the Ecuadorian prison, Mavi thought her days were numbered. "I was sure they were going to kill me. I prayed to God, but I was sure I wouldn't make it, that I wouldn't get out of there."
And when she entered the prison, the world came crashing down on her. "You go in, they search you, and they ask you how much money you have. Depending on the money and not the crime, they put you in one area of the prison or another, because you have to pay for the cell. It doesn't cost the same to sleep in Chinatown, where the most troubled people are and there are plenty of drugs, as it does in the intermodular, which is a bit more expensive, or where the peluconas are, the richest in the prison, usually drug traffickers," says this Lanzarote native.
"I thought about taking my own life"
Mavi came to share a cell with six inmates, in a prison that had a capacity for 350 prisoners and housed up to 800. This room had neither a bathroom nor a shower. "The cell was four steps wide by four and a half steps long. I, on tiptoes, changed the light bulbs, so the height was minimal. The first year I hardly left the cell, everything scared me," she points out. And it was no wonder. "I was sure I wasn't going to get out of there, that I was going to die. The conditions were inhumane, without healthcare, without hygiene, and exposed to being beaten up. I had a cellmate, who was older and suffered from diabetes, and since she had no money, she ended up dying next to me."
This Lanzarote native feared for her life many times, as she says that in the Quito prison there are no officials, but penitentiary guides, who are former prisoners who have earned a job for their good behavior. "I don't even know how many beatings I've been given, I have marks all over the place. One of the times they broke my ribs, and I didn't have anyone's help, because without money you are nothing. I thought about dying, about taking my own life, but then I remembered my mother, her struggle, and I said to myself: Mavi, you can't give her this disappointment, you have to go back to Lanzarote. I was strong and managed to get out of there," she says with satisfaction.
Money in prison
Despite the conditions in which Mavi lived in the Quito prison, she even had the strength to rebel against the prison guards. Although, precisely for that reason, she spent four days in the cells. "The director gathered us all to tell us that the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, was going to visit us to get the prisoners' vote a few days before the elections. He asked us for two dollars each to paint the prison. I and other prisoners refused, because with that money we paid for the gas cylinder for a month, because of course they don't feed you there like in the Tahíche prison, you cook in the cell."
Mavi's conditions improved when she was able to pay 500 dollars to "rent" a cell for herself for a year. "You gave the money to the director, that's how everything works. There was a girl, who was in prison because her father, a politician, had stolen money from the State Fund. She even had a satellite dish in her cell, her 21-inch plasma TV, her refrigerator. She even bought two cells, tore down the wall that separated them, and expanded the room. She could talk on her cell phone. If they caught me, they would beat me up," says the Lanzarote native.
What's more, in order to talk to her mother, Toñi, who was waiting for her call from Arrecife, Mavi paid an inmate to let her use her cell phone. "My cellmate stood at the door of the cell to warn me if a prison guard was coming. When he came, she would say to me: "let's go to the patio". And I had a password with my mother, so as not to hang up the phone quickly and worry her, which was "my head hurts". With that, she knew she had to hang up," she recounts.
From this terrible experience, Mavi has learned to value the people who really love her and have fought for her through thick and thin. "I didn't know they loved me so much and that I had so much support. My family and my friends have been my salvation. I am very happy. God, next to my mother, falls short," she thanks."I got out of there because of the struggle carried out by my mother, many friends and also politicians and, obviously, because of the money, because I had to pay a fine of 2,000 dollars to leave Ecuador," she explains, without forgetting her three companions from the Quito prison, María, Yadira and Sandra. "Here is their home".
"Tahíche is not a prison for me"
The concept of prison has changed a lot for Mavi. For her, Tahíche "is not a prison". "I have my little job inside the prison, where I am a monitor in the gym. Also, here there are courses, activities, well, it can't be compared to Ecuador," she says. "Here you sleep warm, you have three meals, work, studies, laundry service once a week... When I entered, I didn't kiss the ground like the Pope by miracle," she assures.
"When I entered Tahíche, both the Treatment Board and the director of the center behaved in an impressive way with me. I am really delighted. Here people come in with drug problems and leave detoxified. In Ecuador, they give the drug addict drugs to keep him quiet," she explains.
The comparison with Ecuador is so extreme that Mavi sometimes thinks she lives in a student flat. "My cellmate is Colombian, she supports me in everything, we are like flatmates. On Thursday we go to the commissary to buy some whim, like a coca-cola or some cookies. It's like going to high school. You go, you study, you buy, you do activities, you play parcheesi or football and you go to your rented flat," she says with a huge smile on her face.
Her next dream is to eat the grapes this year with her family. For this, she hopes to get a six-day permit. And, in addition, she trusts to "achieve parole" from February. "According to Ecuadorian law, I should serve four years in prison and I have already served three. But, for this, we are still waiting for the Ecuadorian embassy to send the papers. But I, with patience, here, in Tahíche, am very well and have my family very close," she says.
