The Dogs of Deng Xiao Ping

I met Father Hubert Lanssiers in Picsi Prison, in Chiclayo, on the north west coast of Peru, one day in May 1999. Although designed for 300 pris oners, Picsi housed 974 convicted offenders, 252 of these serving sentences for Treason to the Fatherland, a legal concept that included acts of ter rorism. For me, at that moment, the Shining Path was past history. We had gone through seven years without bombs, there were no blackouts any more, and the leader Abimael Guzman was in prison. Period. Aside from that, I knew very little about the history of the movement and never, until that time, had I personally seen a terrorist. It was also the first time I had entered a maximum-security prison. During the search at the gate, a policeman removed my camera. And two steps beyond that point, the air was twice as heavy as it was outside. Two walls stood between Picsi's inmates and freedom. Eight meters in height and topped by barbed wire, the walls were separated by a so-called Land, a gray and arid zone ten meters wide that was only to be crossed when going into or leaving the prison blocks. For anyone entering the prison, Nobody's Land was the first foreshad owing of hell. The policemen playing cards and drying the sweat off their necks with the chevrons on their sleeves knew that Picsi was not the best