Vol. 78/No. 5      February 10, 2014

I spent several weeks repeating his words to myself and making them mine. Then one day images began to take shape in my mind. I made sketches and then painted them on watercolor paper as colors started to appear.

All these images had one thing in common. They recalled the unjust, cruel treatment we received from the very first day of our detention. They portrayed moments during the seventeen months of isolation we survived in the punishment cells of the Federal Detention Center in Miami—the “hole.” After I finished painting fifteen, I decided to stop. That number coincides with the number of years of captivity we will complete on September 12, 2013.

Like the environment they depict, gray tones predominate in each painting. They were obtained by mixing the three primary colors—yellow, blue, and red.

The fragments in orange represent the prison uniforms we all had to wear in that place. They represent us.

At first I thought of the watercolors as studies for works I would then do in larger format using oil. As I went along, however, I realized that in the simplicity of the watercolors there was beauty and, above all, harmony. As usual, once I started with the first sketch and the first painting, I could not stop until I reached the total of fifteen.

Our goal, in the near future, is to enrich this work with writings, poems, and other works by the five of us. In this way, we will make known that first period of our imprisonment, which was the harshest and cruelest.

It was then that those of us who did not already know them learned the words to Silvio’s emblematic song, El necio—“The stubborn fool.” Each day, deprived of communication with all others, facing conditions of brutal punishment and cruelty, we used to say with conviction—from our hearts, from the inside out—“I will die the way I’ve lived.”

April 25, 2013
Marianna Federal Correctional Institution, Florida