Locked Up In La Mesa

In the freewheeling ’70s, La Mesa Penitentiary was a prison unlike any other, a colorful little pueblo on the east side of Tijuana that was home to the worst criminals imaginable-and their entire families. Everything was controlled by the inmates, and the world they created was a bizarre reflection of the one they’d left behind: There was a bustling business district complete with stores and restaurants, a prison laundry staffed by transvestite hookers and a babysitting service run by a schizophrenic murderer. Weekend fiestas brought drunken partiers to the prison, along with masked wrestlers and strolling mariachis. It was a temple of vice where the inmates had better guns than the guards, a place so out of control that people from the outside would actually visit the prison to score drugs. And at the very top of the food chain were the capos, an elite class of drug lords and gang bosses. While the average inmate lived in a makeshift shanty made of scrap lumber and cardboard, the capos had two-story casas complete with offices, harems, and Jacuzzis on the balcony. La Mesa at the time was both a deadly powderkeg and a nonstop party. “Locked Up In La Mesa” is the true story of Steve Peterson, a young California surfer dude caught smuggling pot in the hills outside Tijuana. In thirty-four short stories of black humor and bittersweet humanity, Steve, together with writer Eldon Asp, recalls his hilarious adventures and scary close calls inside the most notorious prison in Mexico…