FernFolio

I am a Taxi is the story of Diego Juárez, a thirteen-year old boy who lives with his mother and young sister in the women’s prison of San Sebastián. He struggles to support his family by running errands for inmates housed in both the women’s prison and the men’s prison next to it. His parents, poor coca farmers, are serving seventeen-year sentences for trafficking in coca paste, the illegal substance made from coca leaves and used to produce cocaine. Located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the prisons of San Sebastián are filled to overcrowding with unfortunates who have been caught carrying coca paste, and, worse, innocents, such as Diego’s parents, who were simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the right time.
Diego dreams of returning to the family farm and the simple, happy life of his early childhood. He works hard in school, and tries to help his mother with his young sister, Carina. He regularly visits his father in the men’s prison, and strives to ensure that both his parents and his young sister have enough to eat. He worries that his mother, who knits baby coats and sleepers, which Diego sells in the market square, will not be able to earn enough to pay the rent on their tiny cell and that they will have to return to the spot in the prison yard which they occupied for their first two years in the prison.
Preoccupied, one evening, by a schoolmate’s homework assignment he is completing to earn a few bolivianos, Diego fails to notice when Carina wanders off. Though she is found safe and sound, Diego and his mother are called before a prison committee and assessed a hefty fine. But worse, Diego is told that he can no longer work as a taxi. When his friend Mando whispers that he has met some men who are prepared to offer the boys some real money in exchange for a couple of weeks’ work, Diego ignores the warning bells in his head and grabs at the chance to improve his family’s financial situation.
Diego and Mando find themselves working in the illegal coca paste industry. As the dangers mount, Diego begins to wonder whether the two friends will ever escape the coca pits.
I am a Taxi is the tale of coca, a plant that the indigenous peoples of Bolivia believe is a gift to them from Pachamama, Mother Earth, and one they have used for millennia for food and medicine. Diego and the other inhabitants of San Sebastián, as well as many other poor Bolivians, are victims of the war on drugs, caught between poverty and affluent nations’ insatiable appetite for cocaine.
Detailed, evocative and beautifully written, Deborah Ellis’ book will grab you from the first chapter. I am a Taxi is a must read for readers in grades 7 and up.
FernFolio Editor