COLUMN ONE : This Prison Is a Pueblo of Families : In Tijuana, many inmates live with loved ones. Free enterprise and corruption reign--but U.S. prisons might have something to learn.

A densely populated, self-contained village--known to many residents as el pueblito de La Mesa --thrives behind four whitewashed concrete walls amid a busy residential neighborhood in this border city.

In the dusty central plaza, as in the zocalo of almost any Mexican town, the frenetic midday tableau bespeaks stability and initiative: Tradesmen peddle tacos and fruit-flavored ice drinks from carts and nearby stalls; teen-agers engage in energetic matches of soccer; mothers haggle with merchants and an entrepreneur gives rides to children on his bicycle cart, hand-painted in a splash of tropical colors.

But the benign panorama cloaks an undercurrent of violence and tension.

“This place is ready to explode,” said Valentin Tapia Aguilar, a 37-year-old peasant leader from the state of Veracruz.

Tapia is here because he allegedly trafficked in Mayan artifacts. The young man from Los Angeles who is shooting hoops on the basketball court across the plaza is a convicted murderer. The grocery store clerk down the road is an alien-smuggler. The butcher is a thief, the baker used to sell pot, the shoemaker stole a car and the four women washing clothes in an adjoining alley were busted for transporting drugs.

And the children? Most are the offspring of the convicts and accused felons who call this peculiar place home.

This two-block-square hamlet is the Baja California State Penitentiary in Tijuana, four acres of jumbled reality that is one of the world’s most singular penal institutions. Inside its walls is a kind of microcosm of modern-day Mexico, a place where injustice, corruption and economic inequities flourish but people’s ingenuity and indomitable will to survive seem somehow capable of surmounting whatever obstacles.

And, despite its obvious shortcomings--severe overcrowding, rampant corruption, a lack of facilities and the wide disparities in the treatment of the rich and poor--many familiar with life in the penal village say it is in some ways more humane than U.S. prisons, where inmates are usually closely scrutinized, restricted to sterile cells and permitted only fleeting contact with loved ones. (The Tijuana facility, like other Mexican jails, allows regular conjugal visits.)

“Anyone would rather be in a place that was crowded and be close to the ones they love than be separated from them,” said Sister Antonia Brenner, an American nun who has lived among the inmates for 13 years and is widely respected here. “We never take a baby away from its mother. If they tried a little bit of this system on the other side, they could learn so much.”

Here, in a teeming space meant for perhaps 600 prisoners, about 4,000 people live in a community that defies simple description and mocks generalization about prison life. Among the residents are about 2,500 inmates (including 168 women), and roughly 1,500 family members, almost all women and children, who reside quasi-permanently inside the prison walls. (Relatives have been allowed to reside inside the 34-year-old facility for more than a dozen years, although no one seems to know exactly when the curious practice began.) About 40 U.S. citizens are among those imprisoned, mostly for drug and weapons-related crimes.

At the penitentiary, only the chronic troublemakers and those deemed in need of protection are confined to the 20 or so cells. Most inmates--including murderers, rapists and other violent convicts--are free to travel almost anywhere amid the sprawling warren that is the complex. There is relatively little evidence of the metal bars and barbed wire that are ubiquitous in U.S. prisons.

Inside the facility, a thriving penal ecosystem has evolved, nourished by institutionalized corruption that is acknowledged by everyone, including the reform-minded warden. Principles of capitalism and the free market reign supreme, the benefits accruing to entrepreneurial inmates and to cooperative guards and prison administrators.

Shopkeepers pocket decent earnings, selling their businesses when their time is done. Prisoners buy and sell residences, which may range from luxurious suites in the two-story garden apartment-type dwellings that surround the central plaza to cramped spaces inside sweltering boxes of cardboard and plywood at less-desirable addresses. Unlike U.S. prisons, there are no guaranteed cells. Transactions are completed in cash between inmates; an honor system, enforced with the threat of violence, appears to prevail.

There are shoemakers to mend boots, electricians to fix the circuits; exterminators to clear out the roaches, plumbers to clean out the pipes. There are bakeries and restaurants, a seafood supplier and a butcher, fresh-fruit purveyors and a money-changer. There are several factories, a cinema and five churches.

On the black market, inmates say, drugs, alcohol and sexual favors are easily available. There used to be a casino and liquor store on site, but federal authorities shut down those establishments a few years ago.

“The penitentiary here is sui generis, “ said the warden, Miguel Perez Boulirat, using a Latin term that translates roughly as one of a kind.

Although Latin-American prisons are often less rigidly structured than their U.S. counterparts, Mexican authorities say the freewheeling system that has evolved in Tijuana is unique in the nation--particularly in light of the presence of family members and the prevalence of private enterprise. And many say the system is not all bad, particularly in a Third World nation where austerity is the rule and overcrowded urban prisons are as common as in the United States.

Even Perez, the warden, acknowledges that the flourishing private commerce and the family presence provide some comfort and rehabilitative outlets for inmates who would otherwise have nothing to do. And some enterprises--notably the sale of residences--help supplement his meager prison budget; the management imposes a 20% tithe on all such sales, using the cash for prison upkeep, the warden said.

“There are practices here that I don’t think should occur in a penitentiary, but I tolerate them because they serve a purpose,” said Perez, a 55-year-old retired major in the Mexican Army who was picked for the job in November largely because of his reputation for honesty.

Currently, several dozen prisoners are engaged in a hunger strike, but their complaints are with Mexican police and parole authorities. Many say they were wrongly incarcerated, often after being tortured and “confessing” to trumped-up charges stemming from Mexico’s much-vaunted war on drugs. Fully half of the prisoners are here on drug-related allegations.

Although hunger-strikers predict an imminent “explosion” at the overflowing facility, the warden said he expects that tensions will be reduced once the population is brought down. He points hopefully to anticipated paroles for some inmates and the planned opening next year of a new penitentiary in neighboring Tecate. Actually, overpopulation has been a constant problem at the Tijuana prison for the last decade, but the facility has not suffered a convulsive uprising or riot.

In fact, a number of inmates who have spent time in U.S. prisons agree that the Tijuana facility--often referred to as La Pinta, short for la penitenciaria-- is a more pleasant place to do time than its counterparts north of the border. Convicts say violence, although a problem, is less prevalent than in U.S. institutions. All agree that the presence of spouses and the frequency of visits make it more livable and help suppress the inevitable stress of prison life.

“In the United States, you got all these different races and gangs and everyone’s always fighting a lot,” said Carlos Armenta Rivera, 30, who is serving time for assault but has previously spent time in the Los Angeles County Jail for various offenses. “Here, everyone’s pretty much the same,” said Armenta, one of whose tattoo-splashed arms is emblazoned with the motto, “Remember Los Angeles.”

Nonetheless, the threat of violence is always present. Many inmates are armed with knives, which are widely available. Last month, an inmate fatally stabbed a fellow prisoner a dozen times, apparently seeking revenge for some undetermined slight. It was the only murder this year, authorities say.

Since November, authorities say, there have been three escapes--all through the busy front gates. That is perhaps not surprising considering the constant traffic into and out of the penitentiary.

Each day, relatives and friends of those imprisoned gather outside the entrance, seeking to send messages inside. An ingenious message system has evolved, centering on a corps of convicts who specialize in memorizing the often-complicated missives shouted by relatives outside the gates; the messengers relay the dispatches to other couriers, who are entrusted with delivering the communications to the intended recipients in their residences deep inside the village.

For prisoners like Carlos Armenta, who have little money, dwellings here are usually little more than a slot on the floor or a space in coffin-sized boxes--sometimes called tumbas, or tombs--that are crafted from cardboard or plywood. Many sleep in corridors and on the ground outdoors. Inmates say they must pay for anything beyond a spot on the floor, although authorities say everyone is assigned at least a space in a tanque, or tank, as the cramped communal holding areas are known.

One step up from Armenta’s sleeping arrangements are the accommodations of inmates such as Javier Martinez, a former Tijuana neighborhood political leader doing time on fraud charges. He lives just down a crowded corridor from Armenta, in a massive communal area beneath a tin roof that absorbs heat and leaves the entire place sweltering. Women and children reside here along with men.

But Martinez has paid a former inmate a one-time fee of about $130 for a private space of cardboard, measuring perhaps 6 feet long, 4 feet wide and 4 feet high. There is a slight breeze from gaps in the concrete blocks that constitute the adjoining wall. (Privately purchased dwellings, ranging from such boxes to the more luxurious, are known as carracas. )

“It’s the fault of corrupt judges that I’m here,” said an angry Martinez, 39, taking time out from reading a novel, “The Trojan Horse,” to express his grievances. “I’d say only 30% of the people in here are really guilty as charged.”

The social ladder ascends higher to the level of enterprising prisoners such as David, a 21-year-old Los Angeles native, who is serving a 10-year-term for the murder of a Tijuana bartender last year. David, who asked that his last name not be used to avoid problems with prison authorities, resides in a carpeted one-room cell, purchased for about $5,000. It includes a television set and his greatest pride--a 30-gallon fish tank.

“You can get whatever you want here, if you can afford it,” said David, who has harsh memories of a short stint that he once experienced in County Jail in Los Angeles. “Time doesn’t hurt as much here.”

David’s girlfriend, Natalie, was visiting recently.

“I feel safer here than I feel in some places in L.A.,” the fair-haired Natalie, 20, said as she placed some newly purchased guppies into the aquarium, squeezing them from a water-filled plastic bag. “I was nervous at first. But everyone is pretty cool here.”

Like David, Natalie also asked that her last name not be used. “My parents would die if they knew where I was,” she said.

David is considering the purchase of an adjoining cell, a transaction that would enable him to knock down the walls and create a two-room suite. Some such multiroom cells--one was rumored to have been equipped with a Jacuzzi--are said to sell for as much as $20,000, mostly to well-heeled drug traffickers. Television antennas are de riguer roof adornments for the better addresses.

Cash, particularly U.S. dollars, can buy almost anything. Inmates have long been accustomed to paying prison officials for a range of benefits, including the right to have off-hours visitors, the introduction of contraband drugs and liquor, and the purchase of medicines, food and other amenities.

One example: Although it is technically required that everyone show up for the 6 a.m. daily census, prisoners say guards will obligingly come to residences and mark inmates present for a monthly payment of $5. “It’s great,” said one prisoner. “You can sleep all day.”

Likewise, a mandatory three-month work stint--usually spent cleaning latrines and performing other unpleasant tasks--can generally be avoided with a payment of about $35, inmates say.

As part of his anti-corruption campaign, the warden, Perez, said he has fired dozens of guards and other staffers--including crooked doctors who used to charge for medicine. But he acknowledged that the institution is still rife with deeply embedded corruption.

“It’s difficult to fight against a system that is so entrenched,” said Perez, a fast-talking native of Mexico City who said he was forced out of a former position with the municipal police in metropolitan Guadalajara because of his efforts to clean up law enforcement practices there. “A lot of people have prospered because of the corruption here.”

Despite the huge volume of cash that changes hands in the prison each day, the warden said he hardly has sufficient resources to provide for the prison’s basic needs; he relies on donations of food, medicine and other necessities from institutions on both sides of the border. The prison’s annual government-provided budget, the warden said, is about $1.4 million--the equivalent of $571 per inmate each year, or $1.56 per inmate per day.

By contrast, state authorities in California estimate annual incarceration costs at $20,562 per inmate, or $56 a day. Correctional officers in California typically earn weekly salaries of about $600--seven times that of their Tijuana counterparts, who are paid about $86 a week.

The Tijuana prison’s most pressing problem is the intense overcrowding--a dilemma that is clearly exacerbated by the large number of family members, mostly wives and children, who reside here. Fearing a riot, the warden says he cannot force the family members out, although he has prohibited new relatives from moving in.

Although it swells the prison population, the presence of families at the penitentiary also helps to muffle the tension. Many women say having their children with them has provided them with their only joy. Nonetheless, all fear for the future of youths reared in the cramped prison environment.

“There was no one else to take care of my little ones,” said Maria Castaneda Gonzalez, a 40-year-old mother of nine who said her husband abandoned her and now lives in the United States with another woman.

Castaneda resides in the penitentiary’s female section, sleeping in a concrete barracks along with her three youngest children and four other women. The women’s section, which is separated by locked gates from the more expansive men’s area, consists of a block-long corridor, fast against the prison’s north wall. Drying wash is inevitably hanging from the clotheslines that bisect the area; many women earn money from doing laundry for others.

One of the current warden’s reforms: He broke an enterprise that for years controlled the hot-water supply in the women’s section. There used to be a fee of about $1 for onetime use of hot water; now it is free.

Castaneda, a strong-willed woman from the interior state of Michoacan, admits that she commited a crime: In exchange for a promised payment of $535, she carried a pound of heroin to Tijuana, where she was to give it to a contact. Caught at a traffic checkpoint two years ago, she was given an eight-year sentence, a not-unusual penalty in Mexico, where even first-time drug offenders may face lengthy jail terms--a fact that many U.S. citizens learn only when it is too late.

“I know that I made a mistake, but I did it out of necessity,” Castaneda said as she washed clothes in a concrete washbasin shared by the women. “I did it for my children.”