Update here, all subsidy phones, and that is pretty much any phone bought from a carrier, is locked down. BUT here is the key, after one year, by law they must unlock it. I did that with my iphone, wanted to switch to PepePhone (not as cheap as they say) so I called Movistar, got it unlocked, but when I tried to put the new SIM in it didn't work. I called Movistar in English and they told me what I was doing wrong. Pretty impressive considering they were losing me as a customer. Anyways long story short, I simply needed to sync it with itunes.

Now that I'm on pepephone I'm giving serious thought going back to Movistar.