77.-on-identity-on-revolution.pdf
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Or Ye Matty ity,

On. Revkioe

oe “Anessy by i

ae konrde underground eee


Original writing by komrade underground,
May 2021

Artwork by:
Jose H. Villarreal, Kevin Rashid Johnson,
and @cemicool_draws

Formatted and Printed by Nightowl Zine Distro
Font: Calisto, size 14, 1.15 spacing

Anti-copyright
Free for all prisoners
On Identity, On Revolution

“In reality, who am I?” — Frantz Fanon

‘ho am I? I have so many answers to this ques-

tion. Then, at the same time I have no answers.

One thing I do know is that most days, my con-
tradictions speak louder than my affirmations. Some days
Lidentify with my beliefs, and ideologies; other days, I'ma
gangbanger from an Afro-Caribbean/Latin American
hood—policed by militarized gang unit SWAT teams—in
the so-called united states. Both these answers are true.
Both of these people are me. I’m not very good at writing
about myself, The mirror is so hard to face when you are
as confused as I am, confused as to where I fit in this move-
ment, this world revolutionary struggle.

T’'m confused about the color of my skin, confused
about culture and race, confused about how loud I should
be, what I should write, how radical I am. These confu-
sions make the mirror harder and harder to look at. But, I
wanna try. I have been pushed and motivated too by a lot
of comrades to write this reflection. I used to be so much
better at writing, but this past year I lost that touch, that
skill, that dear friend. I remember I used to love to write. It
was my refuge. This past year, however, I had hundreds of
pages, years’ worth of poems and ideas and notes stolen
from me by the pigs—probably now attached to some com-
puter file in a federal building somewhere.

Since this loss, my writing feels frantic. My pen
hand anxious. I feel anxiety in each word, wanting to get it
out: my thoughts and my ideas, my story. I’m fearful that
when I finish this piece, the thought police will swoop in
and add this to their collection—my collection, of me. So,
I apologize if you have ever loved my writings, and now
feel like this is not me. Because it is me, years later, having
served over a year in solitary confinement right now, with
no end in sight. After being placed on strip (that is when
the pigs take all my clothes and property as a punishment),
after losing a partner, after losing my mind a few times. Af-
ter being sprayed with a few bottles of chemical agents. Af-
ter losing comrades, after gaining and meeting comrades,
after finding love again. After losing and changing so many
of my philosophies, and gaining new perspectives. And
even after wrapping a sheet around my throat. I’m going to
try and write about all of this.

It will probably be a series of blogs and essays and
conversations. I'm even thinking that I will have to flush
every word that I write down the toilet, every single day.
I’m worried that I will no longer have this tomorrow. Will
it even exist? Will it ever get transcribed? Will anyone ever
know who I am? Does it even fucking matter?

This essay is about me—the contradictions I face.
The things I am learning. This is the bloody savage in the
mirror. This is not going to be a chronological account of
my life, but a very scattered view. And hopefully by the
end, you, I, we have a picture of who Lam. But please don’t
hold your breath, because we might be even more confused
at the end of this piece than we were at the beginning. So
walk with me.



‘ave you ever felt like an impostor? I never
H= what impostor syndrome was up until

recently. I’ve felt like I was a liar in my skin.
My skin. So let me back up. I was born to a non-Eng-
lish-speaking Colombian mother and a liberal hippie
Trish white father in Los Angeles, California. My
whole life I was raised around my Colombian fam-
ily—a huge family. Some undocumented, some mar-
tied into this “Amerikkkan dream” to eventually leave
the so-called united states again, but all Colombian as
fuck, whatever that means. My white father always
made sure that I knew I was ethnically Latino, to be
proud of that culture. That is, up until the divorce, an
extremely ugly battle that pitted me and my sister
against each other, forced to pick sides.

It was either be “Latino” and Brown with my
mom and stay in the same hood I grew up in, or it was
be white and live with my dad on, what felt like, the
other side of the world. I was 10 years old at the time,
and chose my mom and my friends. And my dad held
that against me for most of my life. We lived well for
a year from the money after the divorce my mom got,
but my mom’s lack of English and lack of an “ameri-
can education” had her out of a job. We ended up
moving to the apartments, which I loved: an Afro-Car-
ibbean and Latin American hood of me and the ho-
mies. This is why I stayed, right?

In the hood, growing up within a fusion of Latin
American and Afro-Caribbean represented cultures
and gangs, I, like so many, considered and believed the
various understandings of Latin American/Latinx,
Hispanic, or Chicanx was a race. The so-called Brown,
race. My whole life, I saw and thought that being Co-
lombian meant being Brown. And when I say my
whole life, I mean a whole 30 years of it. In my neigh-
borhood, we all had curly hair, Afros and braids, all
spoke broken Spanish that our mothers hated; when
the pigs came they would cuff all of us, take all of our
bandanas, jump on all of us. And together we formed,
or started to believe a form of Brown force. I thought
“Brown” meant “Latin-American diaspora.” I
thought it meant “not Black, but not white. Just every-
one else. Me and the homies."

Getting locked up a few days after turning 17,
being sentenced to life, I did what most young, Latin
American, Black and Brown man-children do: join a
prison gang. I have always been in neighborhood
gangs of young Latin America and Afro-Caribbeans,
since I was about 11 years old. So, it seemed like this
is what I was supposed to do: join the biggest Latino
gang at the time. I was embraced—after a test of heart
and a few missions, of course. This is where I started
to become radicalized. This is where the ideology of
Brown force, a unified Latin American front, started
to really set in.


few years ago, I started to get on Twitter. I
As to be invited to radical conversations
because of my radical posts. I joined a pris-
oner-led organization of radical minds and started
learning about the revolution in depth. Comrades
started to support me in my views and helped hone my
radical theory. At this point of my prison sentence, I
have already suffered years of torture, physical and
mental, by the pigs that run the prisons, Was thrown
on SHU units (heightened level of security and surveil-
lance in confinement for extended periods at a time)
because of alleged leader position of rank. Studied
George Jackson and Che Guevara. Supported the
Gaza Strip and Cuba. Was anti-imperialist as fuck. I
started to give shape to my ideas, such as “abolition of
the prison-industrial slave complex,” but at this point,
Talso learned that Latin American or “Latino” was
not a race. Was not the Brown race that I believed in
for so many years. That the “Latin American” iden-
tity—created by the European colonizer—lumped
tribes, countries, and races together, that left no room
for self-determination or meaningful lived experiences
within the southern hemisphere of Turtle Island, and
the displaced Third World people in North America.
Also, I started to realize that we—the “Latin
American” diaspora—are not all on the same side
when it comes to political ideologies as well. Where I
believed Brown and Latin American meant actively
fighting white supremacy, the colonizers and imperi-
alism, I started to see this was not the case for all Latin
American folks.
I guess, low-key, I knew this. I can’t tell you
how many of mi hermanos were anti-Black. So many
sounded like white supremacists, their whole family
hated Fidel and Che, and the socialistas, comunistas.
Claimed their Spaniard conquistador heritage. It was
so confusing for me because I had to call them my
brothers, but our beliefs were so different. Except for
when a race riot breaks out in the prison yard, then
everyone knows what side they’re on. Shit, these days,
I don’t even know if that term “race riot” is correct.
Because in prison, Latinos, no matter what race, have
always stuck together. “Mi Gente.” This is what I be-
lieved Brown was in the first place. Yet even given
such revelations, I still identified as Brown. I sup-
ported Black/New African liberation fronts, Black
Marxists, and Black anarchists from a Third World
Brown struggle standpoint. I was proclaiming to be an
internationalist with Third World goals, and a leader
in the Brown force movements inside. I was anti-colo-
nial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-
whiteness, with a bunch more anti’s to throw in there.
But I’m sure you get the point.

Now, at this point I have been held for a year in
confinement, a year of repression—this time not for
my alleged gang status, but for my radical politics. It
has been a year of being trapped in a cell, with maybe
20 hours of sunlight in 13 months. I don’t know if it’s
the mirror on my wall or the mirror in my head that
started to whisper that I am not Brown. That I have
never been Brown. That I am the same light skin dude
taking up more space than anyone fucking needs, that
every word that I’ve written was a lie, that if the com-
rades see you now, you will get exposed, that you are
an impostor that never needs to write another word or
do another interview. That you need to just go back to
gangbanging, because you might just be everything
you claim to hate. The movement does not need your
voice. And this vortex in my head continues deeper,
and darker with every thought. I was at a point in my
life ready to give up everything I was working towards,
because I did not want to take up space where I didn’t
belong. However, before I do anything rash these
days, I bring my ideas to some comrades who I hold
dear that have helped me form my radical ideas, and
who have constantly supported me; as well as bringing
these thoughts to my partner who is a Black New Af-
tikan and Afro-Caribbean revolutionary comrade.
And I was bombarded with so many questions to help
figure this out. This “Who am I? Where do I fit in?”
Questions about my ideas of race, color, culture, polit-
ical views; questions about Latin American xenopho-
bia in the so-called united states, the Latin American
diaspora and indigenous cultures. Some comrades ex-
pressed the same conflictions, and some just told me
to shut the fuck up. Or even one time: “I have never
looked at you like a white boy, stop tripping.” And all
of them wanted me to write this. To write this down. I
don’t know if this is what they were expecting, or if
even it makes any sense. I don’t know if I've figured
any of this out.
0, who am I? Let's try this again. I am an anti-
S colonialist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-

white supremacist gangbanger. I am a radical
politicized prisoner, organizing and fighting the beast
with every breath. I am an Abolitionist. A supporter of
the Black Liberation New Afrikan struggle. I am a
Third World, Brown, Latin American, mixed, Colom-
bian revolutionary. And maybe after a year in the hole,
I might be the lightest shade of brown acceptable, but
I know after 33 years, no one has ever told me that I
was not Brown, or asked me to stop saying that I was,
or that I am. I’m going to end this with something that
T have to remind myself of constantly: just like every-
thing else in the carceral state, even the mirrors inside
tell lies.


The summer is upon us, and Mother Earth is already lighting fires. We
see the uprisings in Colombia, the massacre of poor indigenous people,
by the imperialist dogs and fascist pigs. We see the sacrifice of our people,
the oppressed, fighting a militarized force, backed by the power-hungry
US goverment. We see the people of the third world, in solidarity, t0-
gether, fighting back. Fighting the oppressor, literally fighting for their
lives and here in Amerikkka, many are asking, how do we show solidar-
ity?

The summer is upon us, and the bombs are lying. The Gaza strip, the
‘most militarized, open air prison in the world-is on fire. Palestine, in a
war against the oppressive Zionist Israel (another fascist state backed by
the united snakes), since before I was alive. A war for self-emancipation,
self-determination, and most importantly a literal war for freedom and
life. And again, here in the so-called united states, we wonder, how do
swe show solidarity?

The answer is, we must also fight. Fight the oppressor. We must fight
the most militarized spaces in the so-called united states. We must begin
cour attacks on the carceral state. Jaithouse Lawyer Speaks, has put out
«call 0 all the rue abolitionist and freedom fighters in this wicked coun-
ny, to stand in solidarity with the comrades, freedom fighters, and abo-
litionist, who are held captive by the empire. To fight the beast we must
light the match of abolition and actively fight the carceral state. Organ-
ize, agitate, prod the beast, and this time, be prepared for the beast to
prod back. Fires are being lit all over the world, the third world, by our
eople-the oppressed. I stand in solidarity with my ancestors in Colom-
bia. I stand in solidarity with my spiritual-revolutionary ancestors in
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and in solidarity Task you to choose
10 fight, this summer on Aug 21 and Sept 9. Fight the injustice system
ofthe united states. Fight for the most oppressed ppl in Amerikkka. Fight
with fire and revolutionary love, Ler’ fight alongside of Colombia, Pal-
estine and all oppressed ppl ofthe world.

The summer is upon us, so let's heat this shit up!