Following up on the story of “Jose,” I was able to go visit he and another young man who was also released in their hometown. Maria and I rode out to visit them on a particularly hot and prolonged busride, that was certainly worth it to see these young men and let them know that we care for them and want to be supports for them in this transition.

We got off the bus and saw both of them walking towards us, dressed in their Sunday’s best and grinning from ear to ear. It is also so amazing to finally see inmates outside of jail, to see them walking freely and looking like they’ve put on a tiny bit of the weight they always loose because of the conditions in the centers.

We embraced them both and they told us that they couldn’t believe we’d actually come to visit them, that even as we’d been in touch on the way there they hadn’t believed us. We walked to the center of the town where there is an old colonial church and they gave us a tour (it was the first time they had ever been inside of it) and we then sat and caught up with them on the park benches in front of the church eating snow cones.

I had wanted to read Jose a poem that one of the incarcerated woman I work with had written, because it resonates with much of what Jose had expressed to me, so as we caught up on this sunny day I began to read her poem to him so that he would know he was not alone in his feelings of exclusion and his hopes for a changed life

I read:

Advice
By a 17 year old incarcerated youth

For society:

That they will stop seeing us for our errors and for the crimes we have committed, and that they will stop discriminating us because we deserve the chance to show them that we have changed.

Instead of only criticizing us, that they will offer us solutions and support to be able to change our way of living.

That people will not see us merely for the bad we have done but for the good that we have achieved and for the better people we want to become in the future.

For the police:

That they stop being such assholes.

That they will not focus only on what we do to justify beating us savagely.

That they will realize that their own children could turn out to be even worse then us and that they might reflect on this before beating us so brutishly.

For the president:

That he change the law that can lock up minors for 15 years because rather than helping us this brings us many more problems.

For all adolescents:

That you will think things through before acting and think about the consequences that your actions can bring, because every error we commit in this life we will pay at face value.

That you will know how to listen to your family’s advice because they are the only ones who are with you when you are in the hospital or in jail.

For God:

That you will have just a bit more mercy on us…



As the cruel irony of life would have it, just as I spoke these words an undercover cop dressed as a soccer dad grabbed both of these youth and told them to lift up their shirts, he took them out of earshot and told them that they weren’t allowed in the park, that he had orders from his superior not to let any gang members in the park. He recognized them both and asked when they had gotten out of jail, and told them that had they not been with us they would have been kicked out of the park “a vergazos” (by beating the shit out of them) and likely sent to a holding center to be possibly sent to Santa Ana, the adult male prison. He told them he never wanted to see them there again and that they should leave immediately.

I never did finish her poem (which goes on to address abusive men, nature, her deceased father brother and father, and me), and if God does indeed show a bit more mercy, it certainly is not reflected in us, God’s hands on this earth, because the law enforcement bodies and this whole society in general has created a hell on earth where one is never included, not even allowed to eat snowcones on a park bench in front of God’s supposed house.

I was infuriated and the boys just dropped their heads and said that we’d leave. They were so embarrassed and just kept repeating to us, now do you understand? We’ll never belong. They have been ordered by the court to go back to school, but the school is right by this park so they will likely be picked up on the way to school and charged with any crime the police desire (resistance to authority, etc.) in order to be sent back to jail. As Jose put it, it’s their word against ours and ours values nothing.

If this is the welcome we give to youth who have spent 3 years in a living hell and genuinely want to “calmarse” and give up gang activity, we are pushing them right back into the only group that has ever accepted them, that of violent crime and street brotherhood. What else can we expect from them? To what extent are we all accountable for these crimes that they spend their whole lives serving time for? The punitive system has no space for community culpability, but most of these youth have never been integrated, much less reintegrated into this dysfunctional society.