Planting Apples

Hello friends and family,

Again it has been a rather long pause and there is so much that happens here in each of my days that deserves to be documented and shared, but as always I get so caught up in living here that I never find the time to get to my friends house to steal her computer and update blog entries taking advantage of the fact that she has internet.

As usual there are unbelievable levels of violence in this country, more so because it is December and there’s always a spike in crime. There are 12 homicides a day on average in this country smaller than most states in the US. On Tuesday night I got home from our end of the year holiday dinner only to find out that there had been a shootout right in front of my house between the police and a man that was running from them for having been caught robbing. Ironically, this happened when the mayor, prospective mayor, and all of their friends were around because they were inaugurating a monument in the roundabout in front of my community. There were hundreds of children outside to see the fireworks for the inauguration, as well. Luckily no one was injured but everyone ran for cover and needless to say, the mayor and prospective neighbor didn’t stick around for long.

Since he has been incapable of providing anything but continued repression and criminalization of youth, it is no wonder these things happen all over his district. For once he got a taste of it out side of his sheltered politician’s life. Ironically enough, the inauguration was at the site of another one of his great failures, where Walmart has butchered one of the only remaining forests in the district in order to construct a huge shopping center that will put all local vendors out of work and greatly increase flooding in the region when rainy seasons come. However, since Walmart representatives made sure to paint a few schools and appease the masses with Christmas toys this season, the population is largely accepting of their arrival because a divided and ignorant people are always in the best interest of these huge multinational businesses that will soon be profiting off of their heightened poverty.

While this violence exists all around me, it is my time spent in prisons that has really allowed me to come face to face with this reality and sit in wonder at its complexity. Several weeks ago Maria (fellow Crispaz volunteer) and I did our first pilot project of art therapy in a male minor’s prison and I was brought face to face with 20 youth with an overwhelming capacity for sincerity, beauty, destruction, and cruelty. It would take me a lifetime to write about all of the lessons they taught me in just a week’s time, but I will try to reflect on a few of them.

When we passed the military revision and entered the prison, I was greeted by all of the stereotypical images… men covered in tattoos all over their bodies, reaching out to us through the bars to talk to us and proceeding to bark and whistle at us once we had passed. Despite this reception I didn’t feel nervous at all, just excited, about beginning to work with this population, because after working with incarcerated young women for a year I know that I can never, ever judge a book by its cover.

We worked with 20 youth between the ages of 16 and 22 throughout the week doing icebreakers and ridiculous games, meditations, yoga, paintings, and trying to provide a space where they could wake up their creativity. They were able to get out of the mindset that art has to be perfect, and into a realm of self-expression through the process of art’s creation that was really amazing to witness. We painted with background music, with our eyes closed, with our left hands, silently in groups…. and opened up a safe space in the middle of an otherwise empty and harsh environment. Every day the youth thanked us profusely for coming to spend time with them, and for accepting them as they are without judging them and fearing them.

As I sat with these youth I couldn’t help but think that so many of them will likely be killed when they get out. This isn’t the work where you can promise people that everything will be ok, that God will provide. If these youth are able to change while being locked up (unlikely given that they are not “recapacitated” in any way, as the center’s name insinuates, rather they are kept out of sight and out of mind of a society that, on average, would rather they cease to exist) they still get out to a context that has not changed. They will not be able to find work because of their tattoos, they will always be feared and discriminated against and their gangs will likely pull them back into the only space that still accepts them, active gang membership. When I spoke with one youth that told me he would certainly get out and continue being an active member, he explained to me that if he does not, he won’ t know what’s going on and he’ll likely be killed even more quickly. But if he’s in the “jugada” (game), he can at least know when to look out, so as not to leave his 2 year old daughter orphaned.

Many of these youth regret having made certain decisions as 5, 8,11, 12 year olds that have now affected their whole lives. These decisions were more often than not made out of spaces of neglect and violence, though not every youth in these circumstances decides to join the gang. Rather than continuing to ramble, I will close with a little excerpt from one of the youth in our workshop, “Jose.”




“I know what awaits me, death or the jail cell. I have sinned far too much. If I have planted lemons my whole life, how can I expect to harvest apples? If I want to harvest apples, I have to plant them. Honestly, this has to be a secret, do you want me to tell you what the gang has brought me? Nothing. They offer me nothing. When you’re outside you think your homeboys are everything, but once you’re locked up you realize family is all we have. Yet when we get out we can’t live with them again because others will kill them to make us hurt. And we do hurt. People see our tattoos and think that we’re the shit, that we don’t feel. If you pinch me, it will hurt me just like it’ll hurt you if I pinch you. People see us as assassins, delinquents, troubled youth. Most people would have liked to see me dead by now. But we feel, we have hearts that hurt and long to love freely. Some days I wish I had never been born. Or I think that when I’ll get out I’ll just lift up my shirt for the contrary gang to kill me and get it over with. But you, I promise that I will care for you from above, so that no harm ever comes your way.”

2 weeks later

I have 8 missed calls on my phone and I know it must be him.

I bet my brother 10 bucks that it’s him and call the number back.

“Jenny! I got out this morning! I’m on the bus with my mom going to court so that they can give me my restrictions. Please take care.”

I couldn’t congratulate him enough. Just before my phone minutes ran out I made sure to remind him to start planting apples.

When he doesn’t call, I wonder anxiously if he’s still here, or if he’s already watching me from above. I have no way of ever knowing.