50
BEFORE LA SOMBRA started our association, he was already very involved with the battle for liberation of our people,” Armando Medina said. They were at a corner table in the cafeteria, Armando surrounded by Rafael and three other young Puerto Rican prisoners. “That’s what landed him in the cárcel in our homeland. When he was there, he realized it was the same system as on the outside, only in the cárcel they didn’t hide it no more. That’s one useful thing about being here, hermanos: it shows you real clear what this country thinks of you. ’Cause we all know, it ain’t so different in here than it is on the street. How they want to keep us in cages, beat us when they feel like it, keep us away from the good things they keep for themselves.
“La Sombra understood that no one man could stand up against injustice. He formed our association at El Oso Blanco, dedicated it to brotherhood, and to defending against the abuses of the prison. La Sombra was murdered in El Oso Blanco, but the association only grew bigger and more powerful.
“The association is now bigger in Nueva York than it is in our homeland. There’s hundreds of us here. The warden, the policía, they going to call us a gang. If we were white folks with money, they’d call us a political party, hermanos, but ’cause we poor and brown, they call us a gang.
“We not no gang. One hundred and fifty percent corazón. That’s what we have. Heart, my brothers. Heart. Every eye that is closed is not asleep. Every eye that is open is not seeing.”
Rafael understood that Armando was offering a well-rehearsed sales pitch. He looked around at the other young men who were listening to Armando’s spiel. He was surprised how rapt they all looked, like eager students seeking to impress a favorite teacher. Rafael understood the hunger: for protection, for power, for something to do in the midst of the overwhelming boredom and drudgery of prison.
Armando had approached Rafael a few days ago, right after Rafael had gotten out of the punitive segregation unit. Armando was again sitting down across from him in the cafeteria.
“Luis told me how you got sent to the bing,” he’d said. “’Cause of a shank.”
“Wasn’t my blade,” Rafael had said.
“I know it wasn’t. I told Luis he can’t be getting you in no more trouble like that. I know you could have said something to the CO, that a*shole Ward they got running gang intel. But you kept your mouth shut, did the thirty days, and didn’t cause no trouble. Took what came at you like a man.”
Rafael said nothing, just looked at Armando.
“They got you back working with the laundry, right, doing setups?”
Rafael nodded. “I want to be working in the kitchen, but they won’t let me do that.”
“You been cooking up sandwiches on the iron? That shit’s better than anything they serve us out the kitchen.”
Rafael smiled. Making grilled cheese sandwiches by placing them in a brown paper bag and then running a clothes iron over it was a Rikers staple, and indeed they were better than most of what the kitchen offered. “Yeah, we do that. Not exactly like cooking, but it’s something.”
“Laundry can be like the mail around here, good way to move stuff around. You already did us a solid, though, not snitching out Luis on the shank. I’d like you to hear what we can do for you, hermano.”
Rafael had been a little surprised that Armando had come back to him, given that Rafael had shrugged off his first approach. But that had been before Rafael had a deputy warden on his back, before he found himself accused of yet another thing he hadn’t done.
Armando turned to Rafael now, breaking through his reverie. “How about you?” he asked. “You understand that we are all fruit from the same tree?”
Rafael hesitated, not sure how to answer this. “I’m proud to be Puerto Rican,” he said.
“That’s something, but not everything. You smoke, hermano?”
“Cigarettes?”
Armando laughed, turning to the others. “He smokes something, just not cigarettes. We got that too. The Association provides for the Association. I say it like that because the Association is its members, and we are the Association.”
Armando made a quick gesture, his hand palm outward, the index finger crossed in front of the middle finger. The guards were trained to watch out for gang signs; getting caught could get you put in the bing.
“So how we join up?” the young man next to Rafael asked.
“You got to follow the seven steps. You come talk to me later, any of you who wants to have brothers for life.”
As Rafael stood to leave, he found Armando standing next to him. “Will I see you later, hermano?” Armando asked.
Rafael understood all this talk of brotherhood for what it was. He knew what joining a gang would lead to; the question was whether he still had any choice. “I got to think on it,” he said.
“Nobody survives in here without his brothers,” Armando said, putting a hand on Rafael’s shoulder. “It’s important to be part of something beyond yourself.”
“I hear you,” Rafael said.
Armando smiled. “Struggle, share, progress, and live in harmony,” he said.
“Amen,” Rafael said.