CHRISTMAS IN PRISON

This is a translation of the article: Navidad en Prisión

There is no doubt that there is nothing more sad than Christmas in prison. These holidays who serve to bond families, to celebrate around a manger, to reminisce the better times of our lives or hold each other in mourn of unconquered sufferings, take another dimension when in prison, denied from the most important asset after life: freedom.

The drama of prison affects equally he who is incarcerated, his family and those who battle for his freedom. It can only be understood by those who have walked or are walking that dim labyrinth.  

Days pass by slowly in prison. For the inmate hope dilutes amongst dreams of liberty and the reality of a process with no end whose sole law is that one of deferral, leaving with no sense codes, verbatim, doctrines that serve only to illustrate long speeches by lawyers whose language has nothing to do with reality. 

In prison the fight is survival with some dignity, sending optimism to loved ones, who are battered by skepticism and impotency. The prison environment is hard and hostile; distrust reigns;  bonds of friendship that can trespass the bars and walls of the inhospitable prisons; violence strides threateningly though dark intricacies.

Uncertainty the most serious of feelings. That is why, spiritual help fills the emptiness of prison to make it bearable the way of imprisonment.

When there is no sentence, one waits in vain the realization of the audiences that never happen on the expected dates. When the time is given the 'benefits' become the fuel of the fight; and when there is no hope whatsoever of liberty because of how strong the crime of the wicked impositions of justice, the only thing left is to make an interior world that is lived by the strength of faith and the entirety of a family that helps to carry the burden.

In this Christmas day  we shall think of our prisoners: those who strayed away from the right path and can have the chance to amend; those who never had another choice and where pushed to crime; those who were weak and succumbed  to bad influences because of an environment prone to all sorts of social deviations; and to those; who simply are there because they suffer unjust persecution from those in power who exercise control in their own benefit, with the deprivation of freedom of its political adversaries.

Let´s remember then our prisoners, raise a prayer for them, let´s vow for the cease of this penitentiary embarrassment, unmitigated condemnation for any government who treats cruelly and inhumanely a portion of the citizens that live in the marginality of the penitentiary sub-world.

I was in prison and you visited me. Mathew 25:36