Abstract
The first two of the foregoing epigraphs—written by former political prisoner and Puertorriqueno visual artist Elizam Escobar—address the ultimate effects of prison on the human spirit, the desperation of prisoners within the bowels of despair,2 and the redemptive power of (all) art. The third fragment is taken from a letter generously shared with me by Texas prison minister Mamie R. Torrez, who received it from a now-deceased Chicano prison inmate, Rudy Ornelas.3 Ornelas’s confession about a visceral existence endured in prison augments Escobar’s own first-person testimony. What these snippets of verbal introspection invoke finds visual embodiment or translation in a pano, or cloth, entitled Viaje Atras [sic] Viaje (Trip After Trip; January/ February of 2008).
When you are there for a long time, you experience a form of death.
—Escobar (1994,42)
Art, then, becomes the only possibility to rescue and redeem life. Art is the prolongation of life by other means.
—Escobar (1994,49)
My triumph was only in agony. I spoke the language of anguish and made misery my closest friend.1
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© 2009 Suzanne Oboler
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Sorell, V.A. (2009). Latino Visual Culture Behind Bars. In: Oboler, S. (eds) Behind Bars. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101470_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101470_13
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