Bolivia: I Am a Taxi by Deborah Ellis

Diego, a 12-year-old boy, lives as an “honorary” prisoner with his mom and Corina, his 3-year-old sister, in San Sebastian women’s prison in Cochabamba.  His father is a prisoner in the men’s counterpart to Diego’s dwelling.  Unlike Corina, Diego was not born in captivity. He reminisce about the days when he enjoyed the contentment of domestic life in the coca plantation their parents worked until the day they were framed for possession of coca paste and were imprisoned.

Prison in Cochabamba is a sui generis institution. The women in San Sebastian can keep their kids with them during their confinement, they are to provide for their families and themselves while imprisoned, and they must rent a cell if they do not want to sleep in the prison’s courtyard. In order to earn a few Bolivianos that would keep his family fed, Diego did homework for his classmates and worked tirelessly as a courier for the women in the prison. Diego had to hurdle rude guards, gangs, and glue sniffers in order to carry his work as a taxi: a burden too heavy to carry with 12-year-old muscles.

Diego’s fenced environment resembles Bolivia’s lack of access to the sea. Once Diego realizes the impossibilities of breaking out of his reality and the unbearable length of his parents’ sentence, he decides to leave with his friend, Mondo, under the promise of a large amount of money. Instead of the way to riches, Mondo encounters a terrible death and Diego finds even more horrors working for cocaleros.

Deborah Ellis succeeds at showing us the anguish of child labor, the dreadful conditions of Diego’s life in San Sebastian women’s prison and his feelings of emptiness for not being able to share a life with both of his parents. Something I missed, however, was being able to appreciate Diego’s environment from a child’s point of view. Ellis’s Diego is too mature; it might be that the intention of the author was to eliminate childhood from his voice in the same way that childhood had been erased from his life. A Diego that could see the world through his 12-year-old eyes in spite of his maturity, or even supported by it, would have provided a fascinating narrative. I could see traces of this in Diego’s relationship with his sister Corina, and I was longing for an extension to the other realms of Diego’s subsistence. 

The book does not have an ending per se. After all Diego had gone through I needed closure, resolution. Especially because the author makes you feel Diego deserves it, as do all the Diegos and Mondos of Bolivia who have stepped on coca leaves, hazardous chemicals, and their own childhood while making coca paste.   

Book available at Amazon/Kindle