The Paradise In San Antonio Prison

In the Margarita Island of Venezuela lies the San Antonio Prison, a not so typical kind of prison for it features a paradise inside. The armed guards make rules in a typical prison but in this unusual prison, the prisoners are the ones who make the rules. The prisoners have this freedom to do what they want to do like watching TV, surfing the internet on their laptops, cooking their own food, and they can even manage a business on their cellphones. But there is only one thing that they cannot do and that is to escape the prison because this can lead to their instant death since there are sharpshooters in the prison towers.

 

Prisoners received a lot of privileges like having jobs and earn money while inside the prison. Some of them are barbers, and some operate a cock fight club that generates a revenue for them. Even their wives and girlfriends are allowed to come and go as they please. Their children can also enjoy having a great swim in one of the prison’s four pools.

The prisoners at San Antonio owe all their privileges to one Teófilo Rodrigues, also known as “El Conejo” (The Rabbit) because of his reported addiction to carrots. Rodrigues, a convicted drug trafficker, is the prison’s “pran” – the inmates’ top leader. His trademark, the Playboy logo, appears on numerous prison walls as well as tattooed on some inmates’ bodies as a sign of allegiance and loyalty to him. He has established himself as the true leader of this place by improving living conditions and making San Antonio weirdly safer than other prisons. Along with his bodyguards, El Conejo also imposes some rules of conduct and those who disobey are allegedly severely punished.