Harry Gamboa Jr. first published on ArtsEverywhere in the 

 series, edited by Matthew Stadler. That essay, titled 

, is an account of his coming-of-age in 1960s East L.A. This second essay looks at the emergence of his photographic artistic practice. The text concludes with a gallery of works spanning decades of his work.

On January 31, 1971, twenty Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies were in attack formation on Whittier Boulevard while facing a peaceful group of youths who were marching slowly along Arizona Avenue in protest against human rights violations against Chicanos in East L.A. The police pointed their rifles, shotguns, and pistols at the protesters and fired a barrage of live ammunition without warning, inflicting bodily injury without discretion or mercy. I saw several acquaintances fall to the ground wounded or lifeless. Many people were hit in the shoulders, legs, and arms. I recognized a neighbour who was strewn across the sidewalk bleeding out through a terrible head wound. The sound of bullets flying past me and then striking the flesh of others seemed to take place on a separate audio track as screams of terror and anguish subsided to almost a whisper. The brutal atrocity was one of many undocumented attacks in East L.A. during the 20th century.

I managed to run in a zigzag pattern and escaped death through clouds of acrid tear gas while getting to the next block where I found my friend John Ortiz crouched down in the back seat of my 1966 VW Beetle. Several deputies advanced forward making a brutal sweep of the area while randomly firing their weapons. I put the key into the ignition and started the engine as a volley of buckshot hit the car’s concave hood, causing lead pellets to ricochet and shatter the windshield. Glass fragments tore into the skin around my eyes while plastic/rubber lining particles scratched both corneas. The bleeding, tears, and pain made it difficult to see the road as I dodged those fleeing along Hubbard Street and accelerated to avoid a blockade at Ford Boulevard. Finally we made it to the onramp of the northbound 710, then picked up speed when I transferred over to the 10.

The continuous burst of smoggy wind that blew in my face caused streaming blood to become a crimson spray that covered much of the car’s interior. John was already smeared with the blood of others and was laughing as he used a pocket knife to etch amateurish pictures of pigs onto a stolen deputy’s helmet. He had “liberated” it from a burning patrol car that was set alight during the chaotic response to the police riot.

“Those motherfucking pigs were trying to kill all of us, but we were already born dead. Not enough guns to kill all the Mexicans. Besides, they mostly shoot themselves. Suicide is always the easy way out for those pussies.”

“John, don’t let anyone see the helmet or we’ll be targeted. You can dump it when we get to the free clinic. I need someone to take care of my eyes.”

“You’re a blind angel, man. You act like there is so much more left to see. Drop me off when we get to Soto Street.

John strapped the decorated helmet onto his head when I pulled over to stop just past the freeway offramp. He got out and spoke to me through the broken windshield.

“You look like a zeroed-out zombie with those eyes.”

He walked away without looking back, seemingly unaffected by all of the violence, the blood, and the existential absurdity of illegally wearing the semi-metallic headdress of law enforcement.

“Hey John, I can barely believe my eyes.”

The continuous bleeding obscured my vision and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. I drove cautiously until I managed to arrive safely at the Rap House Free Clinic where I often worked various freelance jobs as a Youth Peer-Counselor and as a projectionist for the weekly informational film screenings regarding pregnancy prevention, sexually transmitted diseases, and psychedelic drugs. Dr. Terence Cronin was on duty and promptly stitched my wounds to halt the loss of blood. He handed me a complimentary packet of Erythromycin capsules to ward off infection and a small bottle of medicated eyedrops. He and the several other volunteer physicians were experts at emergency care resulting from their experience as mandatory military medical service personnel in the Vietnam War. I would often have conversations with him about contemporary literature, urban lore, and film-noir.

“You are definitely hanging around with the wrong set of comrades. The blabbing KFWB radio bullshit just announced that all of you Chicanos were threatening the police and that they had to defend themselves by using force. You’re lucky not to be in a body bag.”
He offered me a worn paperback book, 

“It’s a great read but seems highly unlikely that the British, Nazis, and Mexicans would celebrate Day of the Dead with such high-octane tequila so close to my favorite two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. Maybe you like to play with fire too.”

He lit a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring towards the ceiling.

, I’ll read the novel when I can get my eyes to follow the printed word.

“You’re nineteen years old without even the slightest sliver of social status. When are you going to let everyone know why we should care if you live or die? It’s your responsibility to share your vision while you still have eyes in your head. How are you ever going to be the object of desire and not just another easy target of hate?”

He placed a small orange plastic container filled with Valium in my shirt pocket.

“Find yourself a place to rest, take two of these, and today’s nightmare will seem like a distant dream.”

I walked out of the clinic relieved to think that I might heal soon. When I got into my car, it occurred to me that I was fortunate to have recently purchased it from a family who had lost their son to the war. The car allowed me safe passage out of a deadly situation and also the freedom to go anywhere. I drove the length of Sunset Boulevard from Boyle Heights to Echo Park, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, to Pacific Coast Highway and then continued northward past Malibu to Zuma Beach. I pulled over to park at the edge of the sandy beach as the sun dipped into the ocean just before nightfall. The deep scratches in my retinas were still burning as tears flowed uncontrollably. It had been an incredibly bloody day. I wished I had pictures. I leaned my head back on the car seat and placed several drops of medication on each eye and swallowed two capsules. The burning sensation seemed to seer the memory of people being struck by police bullets. No one had expected to be wounded or murdered. My angry tears were momentarily at a safe distance from East L.A. The soothing sounds of the Pacific Ocean waves and the psychopharmacological effects of the drug lulled me into a dreamless sleep that kept me comforted through the night.

“Hey, buddy, you doing O.K.? You alive?” An elderly man was tugging at the door handle, causing my car to almost tip over.

“Barely.” I opened my eyes but everything looked foggy in the bright sunlight.

“You’ve got to move your car or you’ll be towed. They’re making a Hollywood movie and I’m not sure if it’s gonna be Linda Lovelace or Annette Funicello, but one of them wants to give Zuma Beach a mind-blowing performance. You wouldn’t want security to throw sand in your face.”

“Now that would suck. Thanks for the warning.”

The old man laughed at me as he took a sip from a small bottle of cheap vodka.

The car started quickly but was there enough fuel for the fifty-mile drive to Los Angeles State College? I was enrolled full-time there, intent on remaining as an undeclared major while performing at a nominal level to pass a few classes as a full-time student so that I could maintain my Selective Service Class II – S (Student Deferment), to avoid getting shipped to Vietnam. I was against the war and wasn’t interested in being at war in Los Angeles. I was not a violent man. The 

 bumper sticker on my VW stated my views and practice succinctly. The speeding cars, trucks, and motorcycles competed for open space on the road endangering each other in their rush to reach the freeway. The wind blowing through the gaping hole where my windshield used to be played havoc with my vision, but I managed to overcome traffic jams and reckless speed demons to arrive safely at my usual parking spot on a hill known as “Metro,” overlooking the college. I stepped onto the asphalt and was amazed by the numerous pockmarks on the VW’s sturdy metal exterior inflicted by the insufficient firepower of the brutal L.A.P.D. deputies.

Many other students managed to find free parking spaces along the winding streets and were walking down the familiar pathways that would lead us all to the main entry point of the college campus where several long-haired young people were wearing headbands, love beads, and fashionably torn clothes distributing mimeographed flyers that announced forthcoming protest actions:

The majority-white student population of the college contributed to the popularity of Students for a Democratic Society, a radical organization that often staged protests and other actions (without fear of being gunned down in the streets, as was a common police tactic at Chicano protests in the surrounding Mexican American neighbourhoods of East L.A.).

I arrived on time at King Hall for my Psychology 101 class taught by the acclaimed psychologist, Dr. Michael Wapner. He would often drink coffee and always smoked cigarettes along with half of the students who would puff away in the classroom. His manic movements and hypnotic speaking style held students in suspended animation during two hour-long lectures that delivered brilliant insights into human consciousness and unconsciousness.

“We are being consumed by the daily media meat grinder. Television is a terrible way to treat your mind, learn to be human beyond yourself. Seize the horizontal and vertical controls and you will achieve the power of perception over others.”

My bloodshot eyes and bloodstained shirt appeared to have impressed another student in her late 20’s who was sitting next to me. I recognized her as someone who was usually present at political rallies, sit-ins, or whenever students had campus-wide protest marches.

“You look like the luckiest guy in the world,” she said to me. “I’m sure that if Jimi Hendrix had some of your expertise he would’ve lived to enjoyed another day.” She held out three LSD tablets. “Maybe you should try this Purple Haze to push you into the next realm of reality.”

“No thanks,” I said. “All of my hallucinations are too real.”

“Suit yourself, free love is never free, unless I say so.”

She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth as an industrial bell rang loudly, announcing the end of class. The enticing bait of assertive sexuality and mint-flavoured lips would have persuaded me had I not noticed the glint of a badge and a gun in her handbag as she got up to leave. Probably she was connected to the dark legacy of COINTELPRO, an illegal domestic surveillance program, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, designed to entrap activists and ensure their imprisonment or disappearance. Professor Wapner looked nervous and agitated. I could sense his trepidation as he lit another cigarette.

“She was pouring it on thick. Your autonomic nervous system could have blown a fuse. Fucking uncover cops. Luckily, your picture didn’t appear in today’s newspapers. More than a dozen Chicanos have been charged with assault on police officers and other serious crimes. Better get rid of that blood splattered shirt. If there isn’t a revolution of consciousness soon, we’ll all be targeted by the police state.”

“Thank you, professor. I’ll try to avoid the spies in our midst.”

The idea of a police state was too abstract for me to fully comprehend at the moment. I left class and walked down the crowded hallway bathed in pinkish fluorescent light making everything nauseatingly off-colour while eradicating the shadows of the many nameless students. I had the momentary sense that I was invisible and everything around me was a mirage. King Hall was also a nuclear fallout shelter for general use in case of a National Emergency. The thought of being entombed forever in this brutalist structure by a thermonuclear blast was demoralizing and I was happy to exit as quickly as possible.

A bank of vending machines in the middle of the campus commons area sold junk foods and canned soft drinks to anyone with coins. I placed some dimes in the two newspaper racks for single copies of the Los Angeles 

. According to their reports, the police encountered rioters in East L.A. and they were compelled to utilize force resulting in one death and several injuries to some police officers. The black and white photographs of young Chicanos clenching their fists did not truly reveal that they were actually pleading for the police to stop shooting at us. Other pictures implied that the police were in fear for their own safety. There were no images or written text indicating the many critically wounded or possibly dead protesters or anything that would indicate an opposing Chicano point of view. I was struck with the realization that they had cameras and we did not have such a technological advantage to advance our voice to a broader public.

Pus was dripping from the corner of my eyes and infection threatened my vision despite my repeated use of eye drops. It would be unsafe to drive, so I left my car parked on the hill and decided to walk from campus for several miles along City Terrace Drive and across the hilly terrain of Hazard Avenue to rejoin the dysfunction of family life in the small house where I had grown up in Boyle Heights. When I arrived there in the early afternoon, I crawled into bed and emptied the drops into my eyes, swallowed a combination of several antibiotic capsules and anxiolytic tablets, then pulled the blanket over my head. For the most part, I remained there motionless and silent for over a week until the early morning of February 9th when the powerfully destructive 6.6 Sylmar Earthquake struck all of Southern California. The intense shaking caused a portion of the roof to literally crash down on me. I crawled free and uninjured from under the rubble and made sure that the rest of the family was safe too. I dusted myself free of crumbled stucco particles and dressed myself in my usual attire of denim pants and a black sweatshirt. My inexpensive work boots would protect me against walking over broken glass or any other sharp objects. A ballpoint pen, folded sheets of lined paper, a few coins, and my car keys were already in my pocket. I had more than twenty-five dollars in my wallet along with a valid driver’s license and the life-saving II – S draft card. I stepped out onto the street feeling reassured and confident as a survivor of yet another disaster. I walked towards Esperanza Street while looking at the structural damage to the neighborhood.

A strange sense of clarity came over me as the sun was rising. My eyes were feeling much better and were not overly sensitive to the light and cool air. The subtle range of hues and the shadows cast on the walls stood out in sharp relief. The texture of the blackened asphalt and disparate blades of green lawn grass appeared to take on previously unrecognized connected patterns between nature and human products. The obvious movements of trees in the slight breeze contrasted with the few clouds that flowed slowly in the sky. As I continued to walk, I encountered several people who were intent on getting to work on time despite the catastrophic event. I noticed their determined faces, all Mexican, with impressively combined Aztec and European traits that formed radiant dual-warrior smiles from disparate lands as they struggled through the uncertainty of late 20th-century angst.

“Hey, where you going? The earth is going to swallow us anyway. Man, my house fell down and now there is nowhere for me or my kids to sleep. The 

 will set the dinosaurs free to eat you and me. Can’t you see? I’m a poet.”

Gloria Le Meur was always walking around the neighbourhood looking for her unidentified husband whom she married when she was only fifteen years old. It had been less than a year when she had found him hanging by the neck from the flagpole in front of the library. The death was officially declared a suicide but everyone assumed it was a gang-related murder. She performed improvisational spoken-word poetry at his humble funeral then went home to shave her head, and began wearing his clothes, and often carried a portable radio that played white noise static that usually matched her state of mind. Many people believed that she was the doppelgänger of her departed spouse.

“My Mister was going to meet me somewhere, mind if I walk alongside you, you know, just for kicks?”

Her twin boys were eleven years old and they took it for granted that they would have to hunt down their mother on a regular basis. Their resilience was proven by their relentless pursuit of enterprising activities in school and in the neighbourhood. I was certain that they would be looking to return her to the safety of their fenced-in front yard.

“There is no way for me to stop you, Gloria. Maybe you’ll enjoying walking with me for seven miles in a straight line to L.A. State College. I need to pick up my car and set everything into motion. I’ll give you a ride back from there.”

We were almost at Whittier Boulevard where the Julian’s Furniture store building is located adjacent to the cemetery, an aftershock shook everything with an extreme jolt that caused a few bricks to fall off and crash on the sidewalk only a few feet away from us. A large, deep, gaping fissure opened up in the middle of Esperanza Street that stretched for more than a city block. I looked down into the unstable crevice and was surprised to see millions of wriggling earthworms.

Gloria was holding my hand as her razor-sharp nails scratched my lifeline with unexpected tenderness. Several hundred headstones were visibly swaying as the liquefaction affected the landscape that was often used as a playground or as a place for lovers to fulfill a dying wish.

“My husband, my husband, my husband…”

Another sudden major shaking of the earth caused Gloria to lose her footing. I pulled her up against me as the momentary ditch sealed itself with a loud crash that caused the asphalt surface to shatter into brittle flakes of rock and hardened tar while releasing an enormous cloud of dust that was imbued with 

 gas. There were strange lights flashing in the sky that could have been prompted by the earthquakes to form electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere. Gloria turned up the volume on the radio as we walked on Whittier Boulevard towards Indiana Street. Shattered windows, broken beams, and twisted steel were interspersed with super-sized potholes to create a surreal layer of visual cues on top of an already dilapidated environment of hundred-year-old structures. Many of the business establishments had faded painted multilingual signage in German, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Italian, and English that indicated the historic demographic shifts of various ethnic groups that had passed through Los Angeles. Everything appeared to be so vivid to me at that moment.

“I don’t want to live in a city that is shaking all of the time.”

Gloria was drifting off into a delusional, internal epic poem that might take her to a phantom place. Slight tremors were occurring at irregular intervals causing sharp, loud cracks to form on the sidewalks. We picked up the pace on Indiana Street as the sunshine became evermore intense. The radio hissed and wailed while emitting high frequency tones that frightened the birds, causing them to fly away from the trees and overhanging power lines.

“The blue jays know how to live while the mockingbirds complain. Sparrows rob the pigeons and the hummingbirds scare the evil away. Urban owls are a let-down and a crow has nothing to say. I am the canary and you are the anti-condor. Let’s soar to where the air is thin.”

Gloria waved goodbye with an implied sensuality as she blew air kisses. I could see that her devoted sons had been following us all along and were happy to embrace their mother in the midst of natural destruction and distress.

I noticed that a police patrol car was moving slowly up the street and was not too surprised when it pulled up to the curb alongside me. “We’ve been given orders to shoot looters on sight. You look like you couldn’t fight your way through a minute in jail. We’d be doing you a favour if you were in fact, a looter. You know, shoot you.”

The police officer on the passenger side was giggling.

“Real gangsters don’t let assholes like you play-act being a homeboy because they’d force you to be their readymade pussy.”

The police officer behind the steering wheel was laughing out loud.

“We should run you in just for wearing those ugly bellbottoms. Better grow up to be a real man before you run out of time.”

They both smiled menacingly as the cruiser burned rubber with screeching tires and sped off beyond my sightline at a tremendous speed. Their inverted, coloured afterimage hovered before me for a moment as I recalled the details of their taunting facial expressions and the overall lack of humanity in their meaningless pitstop. I envisioned the insignia, killer weaponry, skin texture and tone of their hands and faces, the black leather gloves as well as the metallic spectral glint from the polished chrome surfaces and plastic emergency light fixtures. The afterimage faded but not the memory. I wondered what it would be like if I were able to capture such a threatening image on film when it presented itself in the form of these two intimidating sheriff deputies.

The remaining two-hour long walking journey was uneventful as the crust of the earth settled down. I peered at the many things and places in my surroundings that had fallen or shifted from place. I was very happy to be pain-free and to have regained my 20-20 vision. The cool breeze was refreshing as I walked up to my car that had been parked in place for more than a week.

“Hey, man. Power to the people. Be cool. Let me take my things out of the back of the car.”

A young man walked up to me while he was sipping sugar-free Tab from a can. He was draped in a tattered American flag and lifted his two fingers making the peace sign. He carried himself as though he were co-starring with Peter Fonda in 

. The word “Hippie” was painted across his forehead but recent slashes across his wrists told a different story.

“Yeah, sure. My days of using the car as a public storage locker are over. Time to move out.” He reached in and retrieved two of three cardboard boxes filled with miscellaneous valueless items and plastic flowers. “You can keep my books, and everything else in that box, man. You know, gratitude, and all that. I left Boston a few weeks ago in order to escape the weight of inherited privilege, but that was before I found Nirvana, man. L.A., it’s so heavenly in a dystopian sort of way. Why the fuck would I want to read 

 when there is so much sun to live out my destiny. Caviar tastes like shit. Expand your mind dude. 

As he walked away, I rummaged through the remaining box filled with pristine paperback books and a few other items. I noticed many of the interesting titles by several Russian authors: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, 

 by Nikolai Gogol for first reading. I was surprised to discover fourteen newly-printed ten dollar bills that were inserted between its cover and the title page. At the bottom of the box was a transparent vinyl coin purse that held several small pieces of folded paper with each containing a quarter teaspoonful of white powder that I assumed to be heroin. I immediately tossed the purse with its contents into a thicket of bushes that overlooked the hill and emptied my container of Valium into a drainage pipe that protruded from the ground near the edge of a steep cliff. I placed all of the books with my other reading materials into the front trunk of the VW and left the empty box on the sidewalk. I then drove to the auto repair strip on Mission Road where I found a shop that replaced my windshield, rotated my tires, and changed the oil for less than one hundred dollars.

I spent the rest of 1971 reading Russian literature and attending classes in a sporadic fashion. Much of my time was situated on the college campus where I met many people but I was also involved in publishing and editing, 

, a limited-edition Chicano magazine that would play a foundational role in the development of contemporary Chicano art. I recruited three artists, 

, to create new drawings for the magazine while I worked with John Ortiz to write as well as to seek out writers so that many new works of fiction and essays could be included in each of the issues for volume five.

I had never previously drawn pictures but was inspired to give it a try while being surrounded by the talented artists who I had met during the last year of high school at parties or on the streets. We would utilize the garage space behind the family homes of Herrón in City Terrace and Valdez in East L.A. to draw throughout the night while talking, joking, and sharing stories. Our youthful enthusiasm and competitiveness ruled out any notion of collectivism. We would work in tandem but were keen to define our boundaries and were always alert to state our respective claim to authorship of whatever we might say or do. Humberto Sandoval would often drop by. He had grown up with Herrón and was hyperkinetic, fun, and always attuned to financial opportunities. We were the irradiated generation that had nothing to lose and much to live for despite the odds. I was born on the day of the first Hydrogen bomb test in 1951.

We knew that President Richard Nixon was especially culpable in the disproportionate numbers of Chicanos being drafted into the military to fight and die in what we considered an illegal war in Vietnam. Many of our friends were already dead or in combat zones. None of us were interested in confrontational politics but we had ideas on how to attract attention to our concerns. We wanted to return to Whittier Boulevard to create a spectacle to counteract negative media stereotypes but also to dislodge the fear that permeated our neighbourhoods after so many lethal police actions against Chicanos.

In late December, Herrón constructed a huge crucifix out of cardboard, masking tape, and wire. He invited us to smear mud, paint, and other substances on it to give it a severely polluted appearance. We carried the crucifix on the morning of Christmas Eve following the route of traditional lowrider cruising culture on Whittier Boulevard in East L.A. and then moved along Atlantic Boulevard to the U.S. Marine Recruiting Center. Herrón wore a white robe on which he had painted a bloodied Sacred Heart. His face was made up to resemble that of a 

 from the Day of the Dead. Gronk wore a green bowler hat with matching jacket while tossing popcorn at people from a large bag. I painted myself as a conceptual ghoul while wearing an actual bleached dog’s skull atop my head that was tied in place with a stream of white lace. We proceeded with our nonverbal quasi-religious procession while many shoppers filled the sidewalks. 

, a National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellow, took 

 as we walked from S. Burger Avenue to our final destination. We had already measured the doorway of the site so that the crucifix would fit in place as we shoved it in tightly at a vertical position to block entry, thereby preventing anyone in East L.A. from joining the military on that day.

The action was a success, but we were disappointed that no mass media was present to announce our debut performance. I would not become aware of Rosen’s photographs for many years but at that time wondered what we might have looked like in costume with the crucifix and how it all might in appear in context within the urban environment. The reality that we did not have a means to adequately capture imagery for use in promoting Chicano culture was dispiriting while the mass media was expending endless resources to create an intensely negative narrative that completely disregarded and disrespected our growing cultural presence. The end of the year was near and it had been an exhaustive dive into psychological, emotional, and physical stressors that served as a rite of passage into adulthood. A creative spark provided some hope for a way to lead my way into a more positive light.

In late January, 1972, I was talking with a few friends at my usual spot near the college campus library when a young female student approached and handed me an official blue summons form. I had no idea how she identified me but I was instructed to show up at the cash disbursement booth in the financial aid office within the hour.

“Don’t ask me, but somebody must really like you.”

I laughed nervously wondering how much I might owe in student fees. It took a few moments for me to be positioned at the end of the line along with forty students who were waiting for their turn to meet with the administrator.

“Hey you, that’s a summons form, you get to go to the front of the line.” All the other students looked at me with envy. I moved up front to speak to the woman sitting at a desk, talking to me through a small window.

“I’ll need to see your student I.D. and California driver’s license or birth certificate.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone walking around with their birth certificate.

“Well, that looks good enough. Please sign in ink, here and here.”

She pushed two printed documents towards me. I signed them without reading.

“Thanks. And these are for you.” She handed me an official letter that stated the three cheque totaling four thousand dollars represented a special one-time award of support for me. One cheque came from the fundraising efforts of community groups to support underprivileged Chicano students, another was from the federal Model Cities Program, and the last cheque was from an anonymous donor. A letter accompanying it encouraged me to utilize the funds to cover the cost of my college education. I’d never before been in possession of so much money. I ran to my car and drove to the nearest Bank of America where I cashed cheques for two thousand dollars, which I immediately stuffed into my pockets, depositing the rest in my meager savings account.

I called Herrón and Sandoval from a nearby payphone and asked them if they’d like to join me on my shopping trip to Henry’s Camera on 8th Street in downtown Los Angeles. They were excited and I picked them up right away. We entered the busy store that was famous for their radio, television, and print advertisements offering everything in photographic gear. I had no knowledge whatsoever regarding photography but knew that I had a unique way of seeing everything.

“So you wanna buy a camera, not just any simple thing. Well, have I got the camera for you, it is amazing dollar for dollar.”

He pulled out a camera from the glass case and ran through a couple of functions showing me how to load the film then placed the camera in my hands and encouraged me to take a few shots that would require me to manually advance the film while focusing the lens. I photographed Herrón and Sandoval.

“It’s that easy. What do you say, is it a deal?’

I pointed to a different camera that appeared to be a bit more expensive that had a separate body with additional lenses that could be attached for different visual results.

“So, you’re a professional. O.K. This here is the Minolta 101, one of the first 35mm cameras to have full-aperture TTL metering. The Rokkor lenses are made in Japan and capture light perfectly. You’ll be needing film too. The big thing nowadays is slide film, you know, so that you can project your little ideas onto big screens. I recommend a 50mm lens for everyday use and a telephoto lens when you’d like to see something closer than you can touch.”

“Great, I’ll take it. You got any film that makes it look like a movie?”

“This is L.A., and as far as I know we really are in Hollywood. We sell industrial level Kodak Ektachrome 400 film by the roll. The studios use it, why shouldn’t you take part?”

“Cool. I’ll take fifty rolls. Where can I get it processed?”

“Right here, anytime, all of the time.”

“You’ll be needing a tripod and a camera bag, that’s extra of course.”

I paid for everything with a stack of dollars.

Herrón and Sandoval were impressed and wondering where I might have come across enough money to spend it in what appeared to be an extravagant manner. We walked back to the car and put all of my camera equipment in the trunk then drove out to Santa Monica beach where we talked and laughed while drinking some inexpensive wine that I bought from a nearby mom-and-pop liquor store even though all three of us were still underage. It was a fun moment that seemed like it could last forever.

Nearly half a century has passed since that day, and I have taken countless photographs over the years in order to create a few images that have contributed to intercultural dialogue and understanding while capturing what to me are beautiful personal moments. My photographs were first exhibited in Mexico City at Museo de Arte Moderno in 1978 and the resulting photographs that I took of Herrón, Patssi, Gronk and Sandoval during the group’s Asco era (1972-1985) were introduced into the American and International contemporary art canon in 2011 with a major retrospective exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then, major museums and other institutions have included my photographs in their permanent collections and many publications have featured my works on their pages and front covers. In 2022, I’ll be serving as Director of the Photo/Media program at the prestigious California Institute of the Arts. Many intertwining relationships involving the people who are currently present while others have slipped away or vanished from recollection, have made a great impact on the visual narrative of what could be presented in an aesthetic manner or described in theoretical texts. It has always been wonderful to work with performers who effect a persona that enhance the actual lived experience of an entire era even if only for a fraction of a second via photography. Photographic images can document and define a period of time, place, and people.

United States

From Scratched Corneas to Critical Focus

Co-authored by Jennifer Ávila & Juan Martínez
Illustrated by German Andino
Edited by Alberto Arce
Translated by Andrew Hart

It’s been a long time since the twenty-one have all gotten together. A few might have already fled the neighborhood. Tonight there are three who walk quickly down the middle of the street.

They come to a corner, to one of the borders. Two flickering orange street lights and what little they manage to illuminate: a diffuse imaginary line only a few meters wide, that separates the neighborhood Cesura from the territory of the Mara Salvatrucha 13, shrouded in a deep and repellent darkness.

Two go in front, nervous as hell. Behind them Rubio tries to keep their pace steady, stumbling from the effects of the twenty beers earlier consumed. Drunk as he is, he knows the security protocol has begun.

“I’m wearing a white shirt!” he yells, cackling.

He buttons up the darker blue plaid shirt that hangs loosely over the white t-shirt he wears tight against his body. The other two also check their clothes to make sure they aren’t showing bright colors that will give them away in the darkness. The breeze, usually a relief in the oppressive heat of northern Honduras, moves the trees in the distance. Those movements play with the three boys’ perceptions as they leave a small blue house to patrol the neighborhood. The word “patrol” is a bit overstated in this case. The state police and the military patrol. In San Pedro Sula, so do the gangs and narco-traffickers… anyone with the weapons and personnel. For the rest, it’s just keeping watch. The three scared boys pop in and out of the light of the Cesura street corners, watching for the Mara Salvatrucha who may be coming to kill them.

Squinting their eyes, the three lookouts try to differentiate the silhouettes of trees from the silhouettes of gangsters. The dusty, potholed streets are jet-black at midnight, cut by vegetation breaking through at the edges. The smell of stagnant water and the chirping of insects fills the air. After a while, the sensations—the sounds, the fear—are similar to what we would perceive if we were to be submerged in a swimming pool: that little whistle behind the eyes, between the ears. Floating in a pool of black petroleum.

They stop when they get to an alley they must cross, where they will be exposed. Their bodies form an inverted L: legs vertical, bent at the waist, torsos hanging parallel to the ground. They look toward the edge of the neighborhood to guess at the identity of the black silhouettes—blacker than an oil stain in the night—moving far off in the Salvatrucha darkness.

“It’s people peeling potatoes,” says Andy, as he finishes pulling off his white t-shirt to reveal brown skin. Better camouflage. “Peeling potatoes” here means being unaware. Being where you shouldn’t be. Getting caught, for example, in the middle of a firefight.

“Must be Jehovah’s Witnesses. Those people don’t give a shit about walking around anywhere,” he adds.

The evangelists of the church—“potato peelers” by vocation—hand out bible pamphlets and wander through the neighborhood knocking on residents’ doors. They don’t realize that from here or from the Salvatrucha side, bullets could rain down on them at any time. Or worse, they do realize and believe their God will save them in the line of fire.

“The good thing is normally shootouts don’t start when people are out on the street,” Rubio explains, vocalizing as best he can.

They are three—part of a group that is forming, or is being forced to form. By now they are almost, whether they like it or not, a gang.

Even at dawn, the light doesn't illuminate the darkest corners of Cesura. Rather, it distorts them, making it difficult to recognize the streets. By day, the neighborhood remains sunken within dark boundaries. It’s one of the pits of San Pedro Sula, Honduras. A handful of streets with diffuse borders, punctuated by hotspots[1]: the dead projecting beams of light to guide the living. Translucent bars enclose the cage that has been abandoned to the beasts inside. Around this hole a self-destructive system lives and kills, working in an apparently autonomous and spontaneous way. Not to say less cruel. The fact that no one gives the order doesn’t mean it’s not happening. The fact that no one gives the order, doesn’t mean it was not a political decision made by someone of flesh and blood.

The fact that few are watching doesn’t mean the battle isn’t being fought.

Society is cruel to the inhabitants of Cesura. Society likes to show them that their lives—and the nightmares they live through—are real. That they belong to the present and not to a bad drug trip they can wake up from. The neighborhood is bombarded with a loud, monotonous, and repetitive refrain, a broken record that makes their torture even worse. They’re not dead. Not yet. So they must not forget that a world exists out there, a world they might try to run to. An escape route. They endlessly shake at the rusty chains that hold them, without pause, as they look upward towards the surface from the depths of their hole.

The constant taking off and landing of airplanes—to and from an unreachable far-off world—is a reminder to the inhabitants of Cesura. A reminder that freedom of movement is right there within site and earshot. Standing between them is a few hundred meters and a few hundred dollars, a vertical gap impossible to close. Flights arriving and departing from and towards Miami, Guatemala City, Houston, or the Bay Islands of the Honduran Caribbean.

It’s not distance or fatigue that prevents people from walking those streets. There’s another problem. You’d have to cross a handful of neighborhoods and villages that are contested territory, fought for between one, two, or three gangs that almost control them. Here the word “almost” is as important as “control”: as important as the difference between being alive or dead, or in purgatory. This is a city of borders that are not crossed without money and permission. You always have to pay. Always always. If you don’t pay, you don’t cross. You can see the other side, right there and within reach, but no. It would not be the first (or the last) time a person is murdered here for entering the wrong neighborhood, for crossing an indistinct border. In this case, “wrong” means a neighborhood controlled by a gang that is the enemy of the one that controls yours.

In this sector you walk down well-delimited streets, always truncated, fenced off by fear. Streets that may be the only means to access resources for basic subsistence.

From the sky, flying over the Rivera sector of San Pedro Sula, you can appreciate its magnificent misery. 75 square miles stretching through the Sula valley—Usula was the name of the valley before the arrival of the Spaniards— crisscrossed by infinite asphalt and dirt side streets, columns of smoke rising up from the garbage, two or three winding hills, and draped over it all a spread of little houses. From a bird’s eye view, the place looks inhospitable.

Zoom in. San Pedro Sula: the breeding ground of Honduran gangs, the neighborhoods of the Rivera Hernández sector, Cesura. Here some gangs have existed for decades. The most powerful: the savage Mara Salvatrucha 13 and 18th Street Gang, both of Californian origin. The others, microscopic in comparison, more recent and endemic, reproduce quickly: Vatos Locos, the Tercereños, the Olanchanos, the Aguacates, the Terraceños… This sector of the city, shared in part by the sister city of La Lima and encompassing fifty-nine neighborhoods, is their territory.

With such brutal and omnipresent gangs as proprietors of these neighborhoods, who would attempt to venture on foot in search of an escape, challenging all survival logic? Here, the answer from every person who has been asked that morbid question has been:

The Metropolitan Unit 8 (UMEP, in Spanish) police post in the Rivera Hernández suburb has been completely remodeled. They painted the walls and rebuilt some sections of the building. Gone is the public bathroom area in the central patio: a cataclysm of shit stuck inside a pair of wooden sheds with tin roofs, surrounded by the corpses of police motorbikes that couldn’t be repaired. The UMEP 8 goes well with the new neighborhood park, constructed right next door a few years ago, during the first administration of the current president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández.

The only thing that evokes the conditions of the UMEP 8 in, say, the year 2014, is a battered patrol truck parked at the entrance. Three bullets have punctured the body and left holes where corrosion has taken hold just above the slogan: “Serve and Protect.” The rust will end up eating it away.

The section of the building that years ago was used as the kitchen and break room for the officers, right next to the outhouses, now contains offices painted septic green, little cubicles walled off with gypsum board, reminiscent of stables. The space is equipped with a large table and seven chairs which sit off to the side. This is the meeting room where we are received by Officer Nelson Murillo, sector police chief since early 2018.

Behind the long table, the largest wall is almost completely covered with an image from Google Earth, overlaid with red, green, and blue grid lines that show the three subdivisions under the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Unit 8. The territory that Murillo is in charge of. The Rivera sector, an area of the city inhabited by 228,000 people.

“What happened here in recent years?” asks Murillo, initiating an interview that feels more like a monologue, as he flips through papers he had ready on the table. He looks at the camera and waves. “Hello everyone,” he says smiling, addressing what he believes must be the public outside of the Rivera sector.

You get the feeling that Murillo, too, believes that far-off worlds exist where things work by a different set of rules.

Between 2011 and 2014, San Pedro Sula was considered the most violent city on the planet. Or at least, the most violent in countries where homicides are registered. More than 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Since 2015, the authorities have reported a considerable drop in homicides and those who listen to official propaganda are celebrating having saved San Pedro Sula from the epidemic of violence from which it once suffered. In a large part of the city, in neighborhoods with mutable borders and gangs, the residents do not perceive the same thing. The State is still far removed.

But Murillo says: “The way we have been working for the last few years… we have saved between 30,000 and 40,000 lives. Because we came from a spiral of nearly 90 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Right now in 2018 we have between 40 and 42 [deaths] per 100,000 inhabitants. We have lowered the homicide rate [by] more than 50%,” he affirms, and shifts to one side of the map to avoid blocking the content, just like a weatherman would.

One question, Murillo: if one could explain the circumstances of the many disappearances—the thousands, tens of thousands—in Honduras—an impossible task at this point, of course—the whereabouts of all those people… Would it significantly affect this homicide rate you are currently reporting in San Pedro Sula? What does it mean to disappear in Honduras?

“Ok, look, crimes being reported is a determining factor for the investigative teams, but in Honduras the problem has been that for lack of credibility [in the police] in other times, the culture of reporting crimes has been lost. These days, with the investments that have been made, we have a way to react immediately thanks to the unification of the national police, intelligence units and emergency response teams. But the investigations into disappearances are very complex, very complex. But thanks to the magnitude of the work that we do, I think that would have a minimal effect,” Murillo explains and he continues with his lecture. “Look, in earlier times, displacements of people and disappearances due to violence were happening a little more often. [They happened] so much that there are many people that left the country and no one knows where they are. They may have applied for political asylum, they [may have] left for lack of employment, they [may have] left out of fear, the [may have] left because their parents lived in the United States or Spain… but there are many social or socioeconomic factors that determine what a disappeared person is. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a gang came along and kidnapped them and took them away. Remember that we have a monitoring system with more than 2,000 cameras in Honduras, we have a web page, and we have social networks; people are reporting crimes more these days. They are getting organized through community leaders and evangelical ministers…”

250 words that don’t answer the question. The interview has taken a strong political tone.

The takeaway: the police do their job, a “titanic” work, according to Murillo. The numbers—also according to his criteria, and in this he is correct—of people that disappear under violent circumstances are lower in comparison to the number of people that migrate from the country due to violence and the indifference of the Honduran government. The rest remain suspended in limbo, wanting but unable to leave.

The forced displacements—both internal (the majority) and external (a growing number)—to Honduras, seem to be, for the chief of police, a more acceptable phenomenon than a possible upturn in the homicide rate. Like the infamous 2014 homicide rate that attracted waves of journalists from all over the world to film San Pedro Sula’s crime scenes.

Honduras loses lives. It loses people. It loses resources. It loses attention.

“The result of the first investigations gives the idea that it’s a confrontation between criminal bands and that there may be some illicit business in the middle of it all,” declared the Vice Minister of Security, Armando Calidonio.

“The killings occurred on a football field in the Felipe Zelaya neighborhood, a populous area with high rates of violence in the northeastern sector of San Pedro Sula, some 243 kilometers north of Tegucigalpa,” published the newspaper La Prensa. The best reference they could come up with to place the location of the massacre was the capital of Honduras, hundreds of kilometers away. The entrance to the neighborhood Cesura is a three-minute walk from where the massacre took place.

“The masked killers arrived in two cars and—after drawing their AK-47 rifles—began to fire on players, referees, and fans. Before doing so, the masked men selected a group of fans whom they made raise their shirts to confirm whether they had tattoos. According to San Pedro Sula Channel 6 news, three referees and two players were killed, while the other nine dead were fans.” (As reported by La Vanguardia.)

What remained on the field that day had nothing to do with sport: daughters and wives asked—are still asking—that justice be done for their dead. Their cries were heard in the middle of the tumult of forensic technicians wrapped from head to toe in white suits, red and blue lights, bicycles strewn around on the ground, cameramen pointing their equipment wherever they saw blood or pain…

In an interview for a San Pedro Sula television channel, one of the neighbors said: “We condemn this type of massacre because we have lived it not only now. We have lived it for years…” This was the third or fourth massacre of the year in San Pedro Sula.

The owner of the little blue house where Raquel now lives, died on the football field that day.

The entrance to the property, shaded by banana trees, is a narrow alleyway that leads to a worn wooden gate. Past the gate, across the “river” of graywater that runs from the basin where they wash clothes and dishes, the space opens up into a mini-jungle: the backyard of Raquel’s house from which music blasts day and night. According to her, the music signals—at least at night—that there are people home, so that no one comes around to bother them. In the center of the yard—ruled by a vicious dog, wary of strangers and chained to a chair—rises an enormous mango tree that casts shade over everything. The little blue house, surrounded by a fence made of rusty metal sheeting and old boards, languishes among those soaring mango trees, lemon trees, avocado trees, papayas, and another five similar houses.

The Chinese food is served at a table under the shade of the mango tree. Everything is laughter. The people seem to blend in like chameleons to their earthen environment. Brown and black faces inhabit this place: they are who Subcommissioner Murillo, people around the neighborhood, even themselves, the 21 boys, in a joking tone, refer to as Los Locos de Cesura.

“We don’t want gangsters around here,” Roger exclaims, sitting in a chair beneath the mango tree. At twenty-five-years-old, he is the eldest of the group of boys that gets together at Raquel’s house. “We aren’t gangsters, man. Not panochos [18th Street Gang], not dry shit [Mara Salvatrucha 13, with a play on words in Spanish], not Olanchanos, not Tercereños, not anything. You got me? We just want to be left alone. We don’t have guns or anything. We stay in here, we don’t even leave this neighborhood except to work… those of us who work, you know?”

The others distract themselves; they have free time to spare. Raquel serves the food on disposable plates in the kitchen and Andy—her son and one of the three nighttime patrolmen of Cesura—carries them out. Jafet, the rapper and barber of the group, pounds fists with Cristian who, until a moment ago, was spraying his shirt with a water pistol. Andy’s little cousin sets the table where we are going to eat, right here under the mango tree. Rubio is making Silent nervous, who in turn pulls his hat down over his face. Rubio tells him to say something, recording with his cell phone camera and laughing his crazy laugh. Filo, a boy who speaks two or three words per day and who Roger describes as “the most savage warrior of the group,” sits down to talk with Brandon who is entertaining himself watching Youtube videos on his phone. Dany, a skinny seventeen-year-old with a big scar that runs across his face and neck, and Charro, possibly the most likeable of the group, control the sound system and rap along to songs by La Santa Grifa. “...Today I dance with death, fifteen-years-old, I was just an adolescent. I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to die, now I can’t smile anymore…” They shout the words by the singer, Yusak.

The rest: a whirlwind of children between ten- and twelve-years-old swirl around the patio. Raquel’s cousin and mother, both blind drunk, shout over the others.

Her bedroom is roofed with zinc sheeting, which means that at midday in San Pedro, given enough time sitting here, we would slowly be cooked… even with the window swung out as far as the hinges can go. A few brave birds can be heard singing from the yard. From a light post—one without light—springs a mess of cables that untangle as they run through the bedroom pinned to the walls and the boards to which the metal roof is fastened. A fan buzzes and strains to circulate air through the room.

“I’ve been living in the Rivera[2] for thirty-two years.

My sister was widowed in that massacre on the soccer field. We lost my brother-in-law there, and we lost the owner of this house too. That day the whole block was in mourning. If you came by you’d see a body on every corner, one here, another over here, another over here, around the block everyone was grieving. My sister had to go to the United States to give her children a better life. I stayed,” begins Raquel. So, she took in her sister’s three kids, among them the twelve-year-old girl who crosses the patio in sandals, bringing out food, water, beer, cigarettes, whatever the boys ask for.

Raquel continues. When she was barely twenty-years-old she fell in love. Later she would explain that Fernando, a powerful figure in the neighborhood, was a gangster. Raquel knows. She has experience. From that love, which for her was a refuge from a violent family, a boy was born, a prize for Fernando, the firstborn son who deserved the respect of the whole neighborhood. Andy, the patrolman of Cesura.

“‘Doña Olga tell Fernando he’s not taking away my son,’ that’s what I said to my mother-in-law. ‘You know he’s a boy, and they raise boys to be like them.’”

Fernando spurned her, then, for her stance towards the gangs, while Andy, by association, belonged to them.

“When he was born, the very first thing [Fernando did] was take a photo with beers, a photo with his gun… Andy became the king, you know?

Fernando used to hit me all the time. That’s why I left him.”

When Raquel managed to escape the gang house and take Andy with her, she didn’t look back. She went back to the hell that was her parents’ house. Back to her alcoholic mother. Back to misery.

“We practically raised ourselves. We as sisters had to deal with two brothers. We would give the little one bean soup in a sippy cup because we could never afford milk. My older sister and I worked as cleaner at the markets. We worked for food, and we would eat with the little ones. As we grew up, we would say to one another that we would leave for the first man who came along. We’d move on from here the first chance we go, and I think that was our mistake. I never had a birthday.”

And the first man who celebrated her birthday, who brought her a cake the day she never would have expected it, Raquel told yes, that she would go with him, even though he was much older, had courted her mother first, and was in the military.

His charm lasted about as long as it took for the frosting on the cake to dissolve on her tongue. Raquel suffered his beatings even when she was pregnant. After one of those beatings she gave birth to her youngest child, and decided to leave her second tormentor.

“I stayed in Honduras because I have three boys and if I have to run away, I run with them. I would never leave them. I used to work, but I haven’t worked for two years now because I was sick with a stomach problem and had to stay at home. But yes, I need to work because the money doesn’t go far. I have three sons, in high school studying… I can’t make ends meet,” Raquel explains. “Plus this daycare I have here…”

What is life like in the Rivera Hernández?

“Horrible,” answers Raquel, an unstable, frightened woman, letting her tangled mane of hair out little by little, and letting out a tired sigh. The children are occupied with the Playstation in the Tetris-like furniture arrangement that makes up the living room of the house, adjoining the bedroom.

“Around here you have to look after the kids every day or they get killed… SUV’s drive through, pick them up, and make them disappear,” she continues. “They don’t even respect me as a woman these days, but with my faith in God I always look after the kids. So much crime…

I wish I knew how to set them on a good path, so they don’t turn into... So that the gang doesn’t snatch them away. You know the gang always snatches kids away. And I want so much for them to keep studying so they can be someone in life, someone of good standing.”

Raquel is magnetic. The unprotected—they come to her, take refuge in her home. Almost every day up to twenty-one boys come spend the afternoon and sometimes the night. She shoulders the despair, the fear, and the trauma of this ad-hoc community. And that of the women, who—like her—have known nothing but violence.

“Some come from the neighborhoods Planeta and Kitur.[3] And others come from the Choloma sector,” Raquel adds.

“Here the 18th Street Gang broke up; here there are no gangs; here it’s just them. Their mothers have left them in the street because they like the street life. Some have been in gangs and want to change their lives.”

And why has your house become the refuge for so many people?

“The father of my children bought this house. I hadn’t come here before because I was with him, my mom lives around here. But when he and I separated, and I was alone with the children, I couldn’t pay rent. It’s so hard to pay rent, school, food… So I decided to come to this house. I painted it [blue] and everything. They told me this house was a refuge for some of the 18th Street Gang but since my parents live around here I thought: “they’re going to respect me.” They [the gangsters] came every day and out of fear I would give them water... a tortilla... and so they got comfortable little by little. They got to the point where they would come, cry, they would vent with me. And I felt bad for them. I have boys, you know? When their mothers don’t care for them, don’t give them food… they come and say to me: “mamá Raquel, give me food,” so I do. Here, we’re in a war zone because the MS13, the Olanchanos, the 18th Street I mentioned, the Vatos Locos I mentioned… all want to take over this group of boys… These kids are in danger every day. Honestly so am I with my sons… Around here they cry. Every day. These kids hide from the gangsters, from the police, from everything. I mean, there’s no life, on this block there’s no life. They can’t find any place to go. They feel at rest when they come sit beneath these trees.”

She speaks of a block where 16-year-old children are at war, because some are “pesetas” (former members who left) of the 18th Street Gang. A peseta is like a prisoner sentenced to death—the living dead. The 18th Street Gang wants to kill them, but so do the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13), because they consider them rivals. The Olanchanos too, because they are causing trouble for them in the neighborhood, attracting the attention of police. Amidst this crossfire sits Raquel’s house. A distant world, on a forgotten street, hundreds of kilometers from the capital.

“Here the police and the military come and kick them, and if you get involved,” Raquel raises her voice, speaking with rage, “they say to you ‘shut up! You old bitch. You don’t want me to put a bullet in you too.’ It’s sad for me to see how the fathers of those kids do nothing. I don’t know what to do.” She adds, laughing nervously, “I buy food for the whole month. But after seventeen days I have no more food. My ex-husband sends food only for me and for my kids, but how can I tell him I have twenty-one sons-of-bitches holed up here asking me for food…?”

Could it be that these twenty-one boys are forming a new gang?

“No. At least, not as far I know. I tell them: “if you’re gangsters, don’t come here to me. Don’t speak to me, because I have sons…” These are kids that left the gangs, that want to change their lives, but since people have already seen them in gangs they aren’t trusted. These kids are growing up that way: no one loves them, they look at them like cockroaches, they can’t go looking for work. I tell them, ‘look at my Andy, he studies and works. Look for a job.’ They tell me, ‘we can’t, we’re already burned.’”

Being “burned” means that you’ve been seen “collaborating” with one of the gangs in Rivera Hernandez. It doesn’t matter which gang, your particular affiliation, or your location. Someone can assume you were doing something that you may not even have been doing. Or you could have simply not done something that was expected of you at a given moment. Not greeting someone. Turning down the wrong street. It is a difficult stigma to get rid of. In many cases, in San Pedro Sula, living in a neighborhood controlled by a gang closes nearly all of the doors to employment when you leave your streets of origin behind. If there is any possibility that a person belongs to a gang—and this includes people from entire neighborhoods—no courtesy is given.

Andy, Brandon, Silent, Dany, and Filo are all sitting on the same bed. The overgrown grass in the patio grows is to hip level. Since last night, they’ve been hiding in a precarious space of questionable security; a secret stash house for arms and people, surrounded by a broken down cinder block wall covered in graffiti, the classic area RIPs, dedicated to a Mario and to a Moi. Clothes hang from a cable that traverses the patio from corner to corner. They sit in sandals without shirts, wet from head to toe, tense and nervous and at the mercy of a feeble fan that moves as slowly as the digestion rate of a desert animal accustomed to the burning heat. They swallow from the fear, the adrenaline, the waiting, forced to make difficult decisions without few options. In the other corner of the yard, beside the wash basin, Roger is refreshing himself by pouring buckets of water over his head.

Looking from the street, the hideout is a dusty house littered with trash that looks like it’s about to burst into flames, ignited by the midday sun.

The military police patrol the area insistently, looking for those responsible for the shooting that left a body in the street a few hours before. In their street, in their territory. According to Raquel, it was the man who collects bottles and cans for recycling. He was the father of members of the Mara Salvatrucha in the adjacent neighborhood. She speculates that the Cesura boys shot him for two reasons: as a personal attack on the Salvatrucha and because they believed that each time he came into the neighborhood collecting trash the man was taking information from the center of Cesura back to the enemy neighborhood.

The Cesura boys say that the man was killed by three stray bullets. Three. On the other side of the border, in the Salvatrucha neighborhood, the shooting is interpreted as an open declaration of war.

“Little motherfuckers! You can suck my dick you piece of shit. Where you at? Where’s your crew, motherfucker?” Psychological war through WhatsApp audio messages on Andy’s phone. “We came up yesterday!” shouts one of the Salvatruchas from the adjacent neighborhood. “What’s up, where’s your crew? Come on down. Come down, we’ll be right here at the mango tree.”

“Come on! You’re gonna hear what this rifle sounds like, motherfucker. You think we’re kidding, you shit. We’re everywhere. The Mara Salvatrucha. A couple of weak little girls! That’s all you are, motherfuckers.” Another gang member joins the festival of insults and threats. “You’re gonna see the Beast in the streets. The Salvatrucha. The Mara Salvatrucha…” At the same time, the other one shouts, “We’re gonna chop you up into little pieces of panollo.[4] You’re gonna meet the Beast.”

Despite the onslaught of threats, the boys feel confident leaving the hideout once the police have left. Andy is on the phone and shares the backseat of the car with Silent, while Roger acts as copilot and plans the tour along the border of Cesura. They stop for a moment.

What by night was just two streetlights in the distance submerged in petroleum, takes a more lifelike form up close and in daylight. It’s a contradictory landscape: a bucolic side street, bright-colored houses juxtaposed with arid desert vegetation or rainforest thicket. Damaged houses abandoned by families threatened or extorted by the gangs.

Honduras

Los Locos de Cesura

Once a day, a shaft of light passes through the slit of a window above a small mattress and a bed frame of poured concrete and diffuses upon an achromatic wall inside a 12 x 7-foot cell. The spartan scene contains a dusty TV bolted to the ceiling, a half-painted canvas mounted on an easel, and a loose sheaf of sketches scattered across a concrete desktop. Here lives Christopher Dennison, the first inmate at ADX Florence administrative maximum facility (ADX Supermax), "the world's most secure prison", to be granted permission to paint in his cell.

Dennison’s cell is outfitted with a television that offers a carefully curated selection of mainly educational and spiritual programming, but he has no access to internet or email and is allowed one 15-minute phone call per month on a secure, monitored line. The magazines and newspapers that he and other inmates in his unit read are delayed by weeks to prevent information deemed potentially sensitive to national security from reaching certain prisoners. For the same reasons, content that might incite violence among inmates or retribution against guards is heavily redacted or completely censored. Mail sometimes never arrives.

Inside ADX Supermax solitude is unceasing, space is confined, sound muted, and touch forbidden. Who you were before you entered ceases to exist. The most trivial interaction with the outside world is a luxury supreme. Inmates communicate through shower drains, sinks, or any other connective architectural tissue that binds them. Some play chess by whispering their moves through the pipework, flushing toilets to muffle the sounds. Most interactions, though, are fleeting—the momentary, clandestine brushing of fingertips through the metal grating of a fence.

ADX Supermax sits atop a mesa where the rolling plains of central Colorado meet the foothills of the Sangre de Christo mountains. The facility is flanked by thirteen concrete and glass control towers linked by 12-foot-high walls topped with razor wire, while the perimeter is more covertly monitored using laser technology, motion sensors, remote-controlled doors and pressure pads. ADX Supermax is often referred to as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” and it was designed to house the most violent, cunning and well-connected male inmates in the United States prison system.

Dennison is serving consecutive life sentences for crimes that would have carried a lighter term had he not agreed to sign a plea deal protecting his wife from prosecution. He was transferred to ADX Supermax not for his original crimes, but because he's a bona fide escape risk.

After transferring to ADX Supermax, Dennison gained a reputation as a model inmate, and few years into his term he was selected to participate in a test group for a therapeutic arts program called Creative Arts Platform (CAP) run by Justin Reddick, a professional artist and religious services assistant at ADX Supermax. The budding arts program had shown promising results with inmates in lower-security facilities, and Dennison would take part in the first trial conducted in a maximum security facility.

He committed himself to the CAP program, and over the course of some months gained the trust of the warden, who ultimately granted Dennison permission to receive art supplies and paint in his cell. Today, he works almost exclusively in solitary confinement, preparing his paintings to be exhibited in public. He has become the first professional artist of ADX Supermax.

Just a few hundred yards from Dennison’s cell in the supermax unit is Florence High maximum-security prison, where another CAP participant named Kieron Webber is 33 years into a life sentence for a crime he committed when he was 19 years old. Webber has been in the program longer than anyone else, having honed his craft as an artist after nearly two years in the program. Like Dennison, he has become a professional artist. Although they do not know each other—the choices they made decades ago as civilians suggest they never will—they are the most accomplished CAP artists.

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