This is a 10-minute teaser of my full conversation with Oscar Castro, released as this month's bonus episode. Subscribe here for £3 ($3.85) to listen to the full conversation and all monthly bonus episodes.
Oscar Castro was on his third trip to Latin America to smuggle heroin back to America when he was caught at a hotel in Ecuador. He subsequently served 7 years in prison there. What's it like to spend time in a prison where you have to buy your cell and can get access to almost anything, as long as you pay the guards enough money? Is this still punishment? And how does Oscar feel for his part in contributing to the devastating impact drugs have?
Oscar Castro's links
YouTube: @globalockdownoscarcastro
Instagram: @globallockdown
TikTok: @globalockdown
Evolving Prisons links
Website: evolvingprisons.com
Instagram: @evolvingprisons
LinkedIn: kaigancarrie
[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Evolving Prisons with me, King Carrie. This is a 10-minute teaser of my conversation with Oscar Castro, which is this month's bonus episode. To listen to the full conversation, sign up to monthly bonus episodes of Evolving Prisons for only £3 per month by hitting the link in the show notes. Oscar was on his third trip to Latin America to smuggle heroin back to America when he was caught at a hotel in Ecuador. He subsequently spent seven years in prison there. Oscar tells us about what prison in Ecuador is like, where prisoners have to buy their cells and can get access to almost anything, as long as they pay the guards enough money. He tells us about why the guards are corrupt there and how, despite living in a place where you can order a takeout fit on tap, you're still in prison, and a violent one at that. I ask him whether he thinks a prison like this can ever be a deterrent and how he feels about his part in contributing to the devastating impact that drugs have on people's lives. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Oscar, it's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. It's great to have somebody who has spent time in a different prison in the world because Ecuador, it's among the prisons like Bolivia and things that are very different to how we experience them in the US and the UK. So thanks so much for sharing your experiences with us. Yes, first of all, I'd like to thank you for the invitation to the show. Also, thanks to social media that we're able to contact different people around the world, which is something I love. And yes, we're here to push out the stories, let everyone know what it's like to be inside of a prison in Ecuador or basically Latino America because they're all the same. There's a lot of corruption, a lot of things going on that people are not aware of. And we're just here to let everybody know what's going on. So tell me a little bit about you, first of all, because when you speak to people, a lot of people I speak to about their experiences of crime and going to prison, a lot of them have the same narrative where they maybe didn't have the best upbringing. But for you, you're very different where I've heard you say before, you actually had a very nice upbringing. You weren't involved in that kind of life at all. You got everything you wanted from your family, but you still went down that path because you wanted to make easy money. So tell me a little bit about how do we deter people from committing crime if they have the mindset that you had? So yeah, great question, very difficult to answer because everybody's different. Now, yes, I had a great childhood, I had great parents and great examples. They were hardworking and just always wanted the best for me. Now, what I believe happened is, in the '90s, '80s and '90s here in the United States, the narrative was pushed so much with the mafia movies, the mobsters, gangster rap music, and I was a big fan of it. And as a young teenager, I would listen or watch these movies or listen to the music and would be fascinated by it. And I would watch it on TV and they would become my favorite movies like Scarface, Goodfellas, Heat. Anything to do with mafia like movies. Obviously, at that young age, you don't really know the difference between real life and the movies. Now, I just felt I wanted to do that. Now, there's some people that want to go to school. I didn't want to go to school. I didn't like going to school. I didn't like studying. I didn't like homework. I just really wanted to make money. Like, I used to hustle in school. I would sell baseball cards, basketball cards. I would maybe loan money in the lunchroom. Just things that I was doing at that age, nobody else did. I remember once I got caught with about $400 cash in school and I was 14. They took me to the principal's office and they were like, "What are you doing with all this money?" And I told them, "I'm selling cards. I got basketball, baseball, football. I got autograph plaques." And this is what I do. And they didn't believe me. They called my parents. My mother had to come to the school and she was like, "Yeah. That's what he does. He buys and sells. He resells. He trades. I mean, he's a hustler. And that's where it just started for me. I like getting money quickly. And also, I like the attention of like, "Oh, Oscar's the one with the cards. He's one with the autograph plaques. I was the one to go see." And it was just creating a lot of attention for me, which I love. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned about the hustling, the making money, because I find quite a pattern with a lot of people who go to prison where they have that entrepreneurial mindset and they're highly intelligent and they're good at making money, but they just channel it into a legal activity rather than legal activity. Yes. Unfortunately, that is what happened in my case. And if I would have taken it a different route, who knows where I would be now. But, you know, it's too late for that. And I don't regret anything I did. And anything that happened because it made me the man I am today. And I'm happy with it. So tell me then how you got involved in crime. So you got caught smuggling drugs. How did you get into this life? Where did you meet these people? So as you know, I dropped out of high school. And my father told me you have to get a job. You're not just going to be lazy staying around the house. So that's what I did. I was going to work in a warehouse in a van full of illegal immigrants. And I was working right at a very young age. Now at this job, I met a Colombian kid. We'll call him G met him and became friendly, you know, at lunchtime. We on the break time, maybe smoked a cigarette together and, you know, just conversate. One day he invited me to his house. When we get there, his cousins there. And he introduces me and then they later on invite me to a party. Now at this party, I noticed there's, you know, a lot of Colombians, a lot of beautiful women, people with, you know, a lot of jewelry on. It looks like a scene out of a movie, right? One of the guys comes up up to me and his name is Julia. He's the uncle of this guy I met at G's house. And he just flat out says, have you ever been to Colombia? I said, no, never. He said, how would you like to make a trip and make a quick 20,000? And I was just in shock. I was like, yeah, what do we have to do? So at a young age, you know, I guess they see you're young and vulnerable. And this gentleman was probably in this early 40s, you know, has lived life and knows how to convince a young kid, which I was, right? So basically I was convinced, you know, I was all in and I was excited to do it. And made this trip to Colombia, took the trip, got down there, met his brother, which was the person, I guess that's the buyer down in Colombia. He would buy the drugs and then get it packaged in the shoes, which I would bring back. So when you said about the convincing, did it take much convincing for you? Because for me, I've always been so scared of committing crime. I've always been so scared of getting on to the wrong side of law. So for me, I really don't think there's anything somebody could say to me to make me do that, because my first thought is, well, first of all, it's illegal, but secondly, I will absolutely get caught. And I don't know, I always think about the negatives, but for you, did you think about that? Or was it very much just like, no, I want to do this? Yeah, obviously I thought about the good and bad that could happen, right? But at that age, you're just young and dumb. And I really was scared of nothing. So I was all in from day one. And I was excited to do it, to tell you the truth. I really wanted to travel to Colombia. I felt like a mini kingping at the age of 16 traveling to go pick up drugs. You know, sad to say, but that was what was in my head at the time. No convincing needed. I was all in from day one. And the first trip went well. And you said that you made around about $20,000 from the first trip. And what was it like? Because this was pre-9/11. And I've heard you say before that airport security wasn't like what it is now. So talk us through that day. What was the experience like for you? And were you worried about getting caught? Or was that not on your mind? Yeah. So I would say pretty much in a euphoric state from the moment that you get the drugs handed to you, right? So they sent me down there, like, right here, the shoes. This is what's going to go in the suitcase. And from that moment on, I believe, you know, you're floating on a cloud. I had, back in the days, it was a disc man, which was a CD player. I had my headphones on like you did and just was like a normal passenger. Although inside my head, the wheels are turning a million miles an hour, right? Thinking about what could happen, what's going on, who's watching me, but just trying to keep my calm, which I've always had an easy time doing in moments of super like tense moments. I've learned to handle my emotions, and I guess that's what helped me out walking through that airport, because once you get back from an Avianca flight that's coming directly from Columbia here, there's DEA agents waiting at the exit of the tunnel, scanning all the passengers visually. So as soon as I walked out, that was like my first, my heartbeat just dumped really quick. And I was like, oh, no, but just kept the cool, kept walking. And yes, once her called me over and asked me, where did you go? I told him, you know, I went to go visit my grandmother. It was a town right next to Pareda. So there was an earthquake and that was the excuse. I was going to visit my grandmother and take her some money so she could rebuild her house. Now I tell this gentleman that he just looks at me, strain the eyes, looks at the passport, scans me up and down, gives it back and says, have a nice day. There I walk onto the customs line where I was told to look for a woman. He said, look for a woman. If it's an elderly woman, it's better. She's going to look at you like you're her grandson. They're going to not suspect anything of you. You're a young white kid with green eyes, and you have the story that you just came back from seeing the grandmother. So just look for a woman and go straight there. And that's what I did. I scanned all the lanes. I saw an elderly woman. I went and got in her line and walked up to her and she said, oh, where have you been? What did you go to do? I explained to her and she was like, oh, welcome back to the state, stamped the passport, handed it back. And there was nothing. There was no checking. There was no questions. And right there, I was just like on cloud nine. I couldn't believe it. Now I'm walking through the airport. I know I made it. I get outside. The guys are waiting. And that's it. You know, trip number one is in the books. And the third trip. So that's when it all went wrong. So tell me a little bit about what happened that day. Yeah. So trip number three, it was bad from the from the door, right? It just I had bad feeling going down. When I got there, my luggage never arrived. No one was waiting for me. I had to catch a taxi to the to the hotel. And no one communicated with me for about two or three days. So it was just all wrong from the from the gate. This was the teaser of the Phil conversation I had with Oscar Castro, which has been released as this month's bonus episode. To listen to the Phil conversation, subscribe to monthly bonus episodes for only £3 per month by clicking the link in the show notes. [BLANK_AUDIO]
