Chapter 2: Lupe's Journey

I was very nervous when the two gringos arrived. I knew what kind of danger I was in, but I was determined to protect others from what had been done to me.

The woman didn't speak Spanish so Tyler, who had asked me to meet with her, was there to translate. After a few standard questions the lady, Morgan, asked me to tell my story as I wanted. She said she'd ask more questions if she needed to when I was finished.

I looked at Tyler. I trusted him, I was still alive and by this time I could read men. I took a deep breath and tried to remember the innocent girl I'd been when this journey to hell began. I had been so unworldly back then.

"I'm from a small village in Peru. When I finished my school I didn't have anyone I wanted to marry so my girlfriend and I went to Lima to look for work. It didn't take long for one of the drug men to approach us to be mules. The pay was fabulous, two thousand American dollars, enough to buy a nice house back in my village. We weren't hard to convince.

"They sent us by plane, the first one I'd ever been on, to Caracas, Venezuela. Since Caracas is an oil center, there are a lot of people working on temporary assignments at oil company headquarters in Houston. Unaccompanied children flying to Houston to meet parents don't draw as much suspicion from US custom agents as do adults on flights from Peru or Columbia.

"From the time I agreed to smuggle drugs, they had me practice swallowing large grapes and small figs whole. There is a trick to doing that, but once you learn it's not hard, and it's a skill that I needed later. After we landed in Caracas they took us to an apartment were we watched the pellets being prepared for us. They used two condoms to seal each pellet, then dipped them in a sweet sauce that had something in it to give us constipation. The whole process was timed. We were given a marker pellet first and then we waited ten hours before we began swallowing real ones. That was horrible-- for the next twelve hours we drank nothing, ate nothing but pellets. Our stomachs would bloat and one of the men would massage us to help the pellet move into our intestines. I swallowed 114 pellets before I passed my marker, which was the signal I was ready to leave.

"I was cramping when I boarded the plane at 9:00 AM for a flight scheduled to land a little after 1:00 PM in Houston, Texas. I can't tell you how miserable I was. When the airplane started to take off, I was terrified. I swear as I was pushed back in my seat, I could feel every one of those pellets inside me. They hurt like nothing I've felt before or since.

"I knew there were other mules on the plane, but I've never felt so alone or so scared. Because I was supposed to be fifteen, I had a tag announcing that I was to be met at Houston by a relative. I didn't know it, but the stewardess in charge of me worked for the gang. She kept a constant eye on me. She made sure I didn't eat my in-flight meal and only gave me glasses of ice to quiet my hunger. I thought I was just lucky, but I was carrying a cargo worth many thousands of dollars and I was well guarded.

"About an hour before we were due to land, I began to feel the need to go to the bathroom. We had been warned that if that happened we were to use the toothpaste we'd been given to clean the pellet and to re-swallow whatever we passed.

"I was terrified. Each pellet we swallowed had been carefully weighed and counted. We were warned that if we didn't deliver the full weight, not only would we be killed but our families would be killed too.

"When I could stand the pressure no longer, I took my travel bag containing my toothpaste and went to the airplane's bathroom. As I'd been instructed, I kept my panties on as I strained to pass the pellet. When it came out, I washed my waste from it and my panties as I'd been taught in Caracas. It was only when I checked before I started to swallow it that I noticed that the condoms had opened.

"I'd been scared before, but now I couldn't control my water. Although nothing had been said, everyone knew what happened if the condoms broke. The mule would die even if they were rushed to the hospital. I had overheard one of the men making the pellets talking about a mule who died in the United States. The team at the other end had gutted him like a fish to get the heroin then dumped his body in the trash. He hadn't received last rites or even a Christian burial. His soul had gone straight to hell.

I didn't know what to do; I did know that I couldn't just dump the pellet in the airplane toilet. It might be found and US Customs would know to look for me.

"I seriously thought about swallowing it. Even though I knew it would kill me, at least my family would be safe. I've often wished I had, but I was too scared of going to hell. Not only would I die un-shriven, but to swallow it knowing it would kill me would be suicide, a mortal sin.

"I'm not ashamed to say I prayed until the voice of the pilot told me I had to return to my seat. I had taken a vomit bag to the little restroom and I carefully wrapped the pellet and took it back to my seat. I was so scared, but I washed as well as I could. I was so afraid that some of the powder had gotten on me and one of the drug dogs would smell it.

"As soon as I left the plane, I told the stewardess escorting me that I had to go to the bathroom. In the stall I flushed the pellet. When I came out I told the stewardess that I had been a bit sick to my stomach. It was only when she offered me the spray that deadens the nerves in your throat to help swallow, that I knew she'd been watching me.

"I broke down and cried. She was almost as scared as I when she understood that I'd flushed the pellet Part of her job was to make sure I brought all the pellets to my contact. She was also scared because she said if we delayed too much getting to customs it would make them suspicious. She gave me a crushed pill to calm my nerves and watched as I carefully washed my hands and arms to remove any trace of the powder. She did not walk me all the way to customs, but had alerted my contact somehow as I retrieved my luggage.

"I cleared customs without any sort of search and in public my contact looked like the lonely, loving father he was pretending to be. As soon as we reached the motel, he became a monster. He slapped me very hard several time and called me all sorts of names. He made me strip, the first time I'd ever done that in front of a man, and he stuck his finger into me to see if I was trying to hide the pellet.

"Once he was convinced that I wasn't hiding it, he stopped hitting me but he never stopped berating me. However, by that point his words had little effect. I needed to pass the first pellet. I expected to be given a honey pot to pass it into. Instead, the man watching me forced me to squat, naked, in the bathtub. He closed the drain and watched me grunt out pellet after pellet. My waste mingled with my "cargo." He wore a swimmer's nose plug to block the fetid smell of my waste coating each pellet. I was not offered one. When I had passed all I could, I was forced to wash my waste from each pellet, I was not offered plastic gloves. Then, still naked, I went back to the bedroom and lay uncovered on the bed while I watched the pellets being weighed and tallied. As I lay there waiting for the next pellets to pass, the men would leer at me and make comments on my body. I tried to relax so my body would be ready to pass more soon."

I looked over at Morgan and when I saw her expression, I broke down and wept in shame, my head bowed, my hands hiding my face.

Tyler spoke smoothing words, and he said something that made me feel better. "Aren't you glad that after all you've been through you can react like a normal woman and not what they tried to make you?"

I nodded my head and continued telling my story

"The process in the bathtub was repeated over and over for twelve hours until I had passed all of the pellets. Seeing them as they came out, covered in my waste, I could not imagine that sane people would actually snort the cocaine or inject the heroin I had dumped into that bathtub. As great as my fear, I still pitied those so addicted to the white powders.

"When the last pellet had been cleaned and weighed, my real nightmare began. The man who picked me up at the airport announced that I had cost the gang almost fifteen thousand dollars for the pellet I had flushed. I was responsible and if I didn't pay they would kill me and all my family.