He was sleeping when I first laid eyes on
him again. It had been a year and a half since we had spent every day together
in Uganda during his time in the rehabilitation home for boys raised by the
streets. I woke him up. He looked up at me, and his beautiful eyes (one now
white and cloudy) filled with tears. We sat and cried together as he relayed to
me how the security guards had beaten him simply for being out walking at night
with his dog, shortly after I left.
“It was as if they wanted to beat me to death,
and I wish they would have done so. They left my eye so swollen and bleeding from
their sticks and put me in jail where it kept bleeding for days.”
Joseph is so full of life and love, but
he’s been hardened by so many who treat him with scorn. He’s quick to lash out
and act out, yet he is an incredibly loyal and loving friend. When I’d run
errands, I would come back and find that he had washed all of my clothes and
even taken several of them to the tailor to be patched up. He hardly left my side
for the two weeks I was back in Uganda.
At 17, he is again living on the streets
with all the strength, willpower, pain, risks, and heartache that entails. His
self-esteem has taken a turn for the worse as he is ashamed of his white,
cloudy eye that causes him constant pain. We went to the clinic to see if
anything could be done and were told that the pain is from the pressure in his
eye that remains high from the beating. The guards scratched his cornea with
their sticks and his vision can only be restored by a cornea transplant; an
operation which is not available in Uganda. (**If
you know of organizations that donate this type of surgery, please let me
know!!**)
I was so enraged by the brutality that so
many young people endure world-over when systems are still entrenched in the
idea that punitive justice will someone how “straighten out” today’s youth. As
we walked to the internet café, I walked with one eye closed, realizing how
Joseph’s vision would be for the rest of his life unless he is able to get a
transplant.
I logged into my facebook account as Joseph
waited patiently beside me, and the first message I saw was from a friend in El
Salvador in the community where I lived and worked for four years. He’d written
to tell me that a 14-year old had been killed in front of the school, and that
the soldiers had stormed the community and beaten and carted off a whole group
of young people as they went door-to-door collecting money for the funeral
expenses for their friend. One had sustained a severe head injury from the
beatings.
More punitive justice. More abuse by the
“authorities.” More guilty until proven innocent. I scrolled down the newsfeed
hoping for a picture of someone’s baby with a “2 months old!” sign to bring me
back to a happy place and my heart skipped a beat. I saw the black ribbon that
all too often takes up my newsfeed, and this time it was accompanied by “Rest
in peace Alejandra.” Beneath the post were a host of messages; one of them from
my dear friend Jonathan read: “See you soon.” I looked up at Joseph's cloudy eye and crooked smile and gazed back down at the dreaded black ribbon next to Alejandra's smiling photo. Beneath the remnants of brutality and the black ribbons there are endless dreams and untold stories that I've been blessed to be close enough to hold. If only the whole world could hear them.
 |
| Alejandra and her beloved grandmother |
Alejandra and Jonathan were two young
people I had known for years in El Salvador, who had struggled together to
leave behind the street life they’d grown up in. While Jonathan managed to
leave the gang life, Alejandra could never quite cut her ties. I met Alejandra
while doing creative writing workshops in the juvenile detention center. I will
never forget her zest for life and her child-like zeal over her accomplishments.
She loved writing and expressing her frustrations and aspirations through
whatever came to her mind. She wrote a beautiful piece for her mother one day
after being moved to tears in her cell by a song on the radio, and I’ll never
forget the eagerness with which she awaited my affirmation the day she showed
me the poem.
She was a natural leader. When she got out
of detention she began recruiting youth from her neighborhood to join a project
for youth wishing to leave the street life. She couldn’t quite leave that life
herself, and a few mistakes in, she was kicked out of the program and sent back
to the detention center by her parole officer. The streets offer family, quick
money, mobility, and a sense of belonging, while the “peacebuilding” community
offers short-lived programs with no follow up and/or detention. Which would you
choose?
Alejandra got out and soon had a beautiful
son who won’t have a single memory of her. She was killed when he was only 2
years old… by whom? We’ll likely never know, since the deaths of
gang-affiliated youth are rarely if ever investigated. It could have been the
police, her “rivals” or her own friends. We’ll never know.
 |
| Alejandra and her son |
I showed Joseph her photo on the screen and
he shook his head with sadness. “She’s so beautiful,” he said. Young people a
world away… united by their desire to belong, to live and to thrive, and by their
experiences of violence and brutality. Joseph now lived with half of his vision
and a mound of trauma, but at least he was still alive…
I wrote to Jonathan, letting him know I was
so sorry for the loss of his friend. I logged out of my account and re-focused
my attention on the sounds of Uganda surrounding me. Cars passed outside,
honking incessantly. Joseph chatted with a friend. The generator made a buzzing
noise. I walked outside and Joseph grabbed my hand to cross the street. I
crossed with caution, still in a state of disbelief, all too aware of the
fragility of this life, especially for the billions of young people struggling
to find their place in this world.
Jonathan responded to my message several
days later, by which time I’d started my internship in LA with a group doing
gang violence intervention. The stories here in LA are the same stories as
those told by youth world-over… police brutality, corruption, detention,
criminalization, uncertainty… Amidst so
much tragedy, Jonathan gave me great hope. Two friends of mine had interviewed
him with me in January and we would soon be publishing his story on their
historical memory blog.
Jonathan was a living, breathing miracle.
He’d escaped death more times than I could count on my fingers and toes. He had
survived the Ilobasco prison fire in 2009 that killed 27 of his cellmates and
long-time friends (in which guards left the young inmates to burn alive for 35
minutes before unlocking their cell). He’d literally risen from the dead, as he
was placed in the hospital morgue, thought to be dead from his burns and from
smoke inhalation, but he woke up feeling very cold and dazed and walked out of
the room, much to the horror of the nurse he encountered in the hallway.
 |
| Jonathan and his girlfriend Andrea, January 2015 |
Jonathan had seen it all at his 22 years of
age. Most notably, he had realized without a doubt that the gang lifestyle made
no sense, and he had chosen to be jumped out of the gang despite the risks this
posed to his safety. He told us “What is
the gang even fight for? For nothing. They say we’re fighting for territory but
we’re the ones who die and the territory stays here.” With his heart of gold and fearless nature,
he began counseling youth out of joining the gang. He would give a hand to whoever
was in need, and he landed a job for several years in a Christian used-clothing
store that gives jobs to former gang-members. Whenever I’d sink into doubt
about whether or not it would be possible for the many youth I work with to transform
their lifestyle, I’d think of Jonathan and he’d give me hope that it was
certainly possible.
Jonathan would go with me to speak to
groups visiting El Salvador on cultural immersion trips and he’d fearlessly
explain his own story. He’d highlight the ways in which the society makes it
merely impossible to change because police target gang-involved youth, often
killing them indiscriminately whether or not they are still involved in gang
activities. He’d explain the barriers to employment and the psychosocial
baggage that his homeboys faced and the fact that those who are seen as
victimizers are in fact victims as well.
As we chatted I asked him which name he’d
like to use in the upcoming publication of his story, and he told me he’d like
to be called “Proceres” (Hero). I asked how he was doing and he said he was ok,
but that he could hardly leave his house because “these days the police are killing all of us, even those of us who
aren’t involved in anything anymore.” I told him I knew how dangerous the
situation was, and to stay safe. He sent a thumbs up.
One week later I had a long, invigorating
conversation with a friend about the potential for working together to create
opportunities for Salvadoran youth to become involved in changing the trend of
violence and abuse in their country and writing a new narrative. As I drove
home, my mind was racing, thinking of the possibilities given this new
connection. My mind was still spinning when I got home and checked my facebook
before going to bed. I couldn’t breathe. The same black ribbon. This time it
read, “Rest in peace, Jonathan. We will never forget you.” I checked his wall
in disbelief, and sure enough… I saw the litany of messages appearing since the
news got out that he had been shot to death while waiting for the bus. I
thought back to the comment he had made on Alejandra’s wall “see you soon.” It’s as if he already
sensed that his 9 lives had been used up…
 |
| Jonathan at church with his 5-year old son the evening before he was killed |
I certainly didn’t sleep that night, but
though awake, I didn’t stop dreaming. Joseph’s blindness and Alejandra and
Jonathan’s murders enrage and immobilize me. At the same time, they urge me into
action. May these young sages, in all of their suffering and wisdom, guide those
of us dedicated to creating spaces for young people to flourish and challenge
systems of oppression. May we never tire in our efforts as we cling to the hope
that dreaded black ribbons will soon be replaced by posts of life as it unfolds.
*See embracingelsalvador.org for Jonathan’s full life story as he relayed it to us in January,
2015. The story was transcribed and edited with great care by Don Seiple and
Caroline Scheaffer.
