EULOGY FOR AN OUTLAW PRISON (IT WAS A JUNGLE IN THERE)

PAVON, Guatemala - Smack dab in the middle of this tiny country was a
barbed-wire-ringed, upside-down place of about a dozen or so acres
where wrong was right.

The Independent Republic of Pavon, as Guatemalans came to call it,
was, in reality, a prison. But there were no guards controlling it.
Every last person on the troubled piece of real estate about a
half-hour outside the capital, Guatemala City, was an outlaw -- from
the ruling elite to the grunts who carried out their orders. Those who
dared cross the most notorious convicts were sent off to a grim
punishment chamber nicknamed the North Pole.

Pavon came to its unusual status a decade ago, after government
officials set up a committee of inmates to help control the prison.
The lockup, built for 800 but housing double that number, only grew
worse -- and soon the guards would not step inside Pavon at all.

"The government abdicated its responsibility a long time ago," said a
Western diplomat who has monitored developments here. "The place
became hell on earth."

But Pavon's independent status came to a screeching halt at the end of
September, when the government, after many months of planning, decided
to take back the prison. On Sept. 25, thousands of soldiers and police
officers poured through its gates in an early-morning raid. What the
authorities discovered shocked them: pool halls, brothels, isolation
chambers and computer centers, all run by some of Guatemala's most
feared convicts.

Crime has surged throughout Central America in recent years, some of
it gang related, some linked to narcotics trafficking, kidnapping and
other criminal enterprises. In Guatemala, Pavon was a major center of
criminal operations, where drugs were manufactured, women trafficked
from other countries were abused, and guns and stolen cars were amassed.

The inmates did not cede their turf willingly on Sept. 25, firing back
at the invading officers, but within a few hours, the men who had
ruled themselves for so long became prisoners again.

"Now we feel confined," one of the inmates said.

He glared at a visitor who suggested that that was the
point.

"It was a state within a state," said Interior Minister Carlos
Vielmann Montes, who helped direct the raid. "People ask why we waited
so long. We wanted to do it right."

There had been other, failed attempts to retake Pavon over the years.
Several years ago, a police officer was killed during an offensive
that was successfully rebuffed by the inmates. This time, Alejandro
Giammatei, the country's new prison director, vowed to get it right.

He and other officials laid the groundwork for months. First, they had
to find a place to move Pavon's population once the government took
control of the site, since it would need to be renovated. The
authorities slowly emptied out a nearby prison in preparation for the
raid.

On the day of the offensive, the Pavon prison was ringed by police
officers and soldiers, and armored cars and helicopters were at hand.
But astute prisoners sounded an alarm and inmates took up defensive
positions.

The authorities did not immediately go charging in, deciding instead
to try psychological warfare. Over megaphones, they threatened to kill
any inmate who did not surrender; many did. Those who dug in were the
hard-liners who ran the prison and who extorted taxes from other
prisoners and doled out brutal punishments to those who crossed them.

"It is degrading, inhuman and a mess here -- totally without
authority," President Oscar Berger said at the scene.

Seven prisoners were killed in the raid, including Luis Alfonso
Zepeda, a convicted murderer who led the Order and Discipline
Committee at Pavon. Officials said Mr. Zepeda earned as much as
$25,000 a month running the prison, including renting out plots of
land to other inmates to build houses. It was a family operation: Mr.
Zepeda's son pitched in though he was not an inmate.

Pavon grew into a society of sorts, with its own skewed way of
operating. Elected leaders charged prisoners for everything from cable
television to high-speed Internet service to trysts with prostitutes.
Punishment included being left in isolation for weeks at a time, or
death. Forensic anthropologists have begun a search for remains of
prisoners who were subjected to the death penalty by their peers.

"It looks more like a neighborhood than a prison," said Jose Samuel
Suasnavar, assistant director of the Guatemala Foundation for Forensic
Anthropology. "I didn't see any bars. They were living like they could
never live on the outside."

The elite ones, that is.

Conditions at Pavon were grim for most prisoners, but the bosses had
their own chalets, some outfitted with refrigerators, televisions,
Jacuzzis and home gyms. The fact that all that merchandise got into
the prison suggests the cooperation of corrupt guards stationed at the
entrances.

Many former inmates who are now serving out their sentences in a
nearby jail say they miss Pavon. Scams continue in their new quarters,
but gone are the many occupations, from bartender to cocaine mixer to
cobbler. Vanished is the prison bar, the prison disco and the prison
video arcade.

"It almost wasn't like prison before," said a former soldier serving
hard time for robbery. "Now it is.