Costa, Sierra y Selva

Arnaldo (not his real name), leans forward, hands clasped and elbows resting on the arms of his chair. His knees rock slowly back and forth as he talks. He is probably in his thirties, with a broad face, anxious eyes and a military-style haircut. Under the corner of his left eye, where mottled skin creases untidily, rests a tiny blue star, perhaps a souvenir from days as a gang member. On his neck, a squat cartoon man with baggy pants and t-shirt makes an unfamiliar symbol with his hand. There are other tattoos, but I pretend not to notice them.

Arnaldo begins to update Pastor D., then turns and asks me if I speak English. He appears to be more comfortable speaking English than Spanish, and the musicality of his story, now told in the Spanglish of his native Texas, is enhanced by the repetition of phrases like know what I’m sayin’?

A few days earlier, Arnaldo had gone to court to hear his sentencing.

“I had this really bad feeling, you know, like I was gonna throw up or something. So I told the guards ‘hey, I don’t feel good. I’m serious.’ But I started breathing good, you know what I’m saying, and I felt better. And I was like, you know God, whatever happens it’s okay. So then, even the guy from the [place where it happened], he told the judge like five or six years was enough…but the judge was like fifteen years…and it was over…nothin’…just like that.”

Just like that. After the sentencing, Arnaldo had got depressed, started fighting again, and was locked in maximum security.

This is not my first visit to the jail, a waiting room for people headed in one of two directions: home or state prison. While they wait, they ruminate on the past, which, in all but the worse cases, offers more hope than the future. Perhaps this is why jail ministries are so important—the distractions and false hopes of life are stripped away, baring the soul to the rawness of its insufficiency and sinfulness.

I have not met specifically with Hispanic inmates until tonight. Pastor D. has been working with these inmates for a year and a half. He is a small, understated man, and wears a button-up shirt and acid wash jeans that don’t quite reach the tops of comfortable-looking tennis shoes. His hair is neatly combed and parted, and I guess by his persistent interjection of the words anyway and so that he is Puerto Rican. Pastor D. leads men’s Bible studies in Spanish every Wednesday night; I am accompanying him tonight to learn about the ministry and hopefully find a way to get involved. As we stand in the meeting room, waiting for the first study to begin, he tells me about the men.

“The muchachos are mostly from Mexico, yes, but we also have a lot from the Honduras.”

“Why are they here?” I ask.

“Oh, mostly immigration. The police get them for whatever reason and ask to see their papers. When they don’t have any, they bring them here and wait for immigrations to take care of them. A lot of them end up getting deported.”

“What about their family life? Are they married, single?”

“Most of them have families—most of them are married.”

The inmates arrive and come forward to the front of the room to greet us. They are wearing the orange jump suits and flip flops I remember from before, and I think about the construction teams and field workers and how, in the past, they all seemed to me to be the same person. All Mexican, a comfortable part of our landscape. Here in jail, even this shared identity seems to be taken from them—they aren’t all the same person; they seem like nobody at all.

I say hello, shake their hands, and we take seats. Time is limited, and Pastor D. doesn’t allow much for conversation before the lesson begins. As he talks about compassion, fasting, and love, I find my mind wandering. Behind me are seated eight men, each of them with names and, perhaps more importantly, memories. And all of these memories compiled together tell stories, and these stories compiled together become a history. It is a history that haunts each of them, and because it haunts them, it haunts America, too.

After the first study, one of the men talks with Pastor D. about a visit to his family. When the inmates leave, I ask Pastor D. about meeting with the prisoners’ families, relaying messages, that sort of thing.

“Most of these guys, their families don’t have telephones,” he says, “And because the families are also illegal, they’re afraid to come to the jail to visit the prisoners. So the only way to communicate is to get someone to take a message.”

Later that evening, after the Bible studies, is when we meet with Arnaldo. And when ten o’clock approaches, Pastor D. says it’s time to go. The three of us stand and bid each other good night. I am going home and Pastor D. (I assume) is doing the same. Arnaldo is going back to maximum security.