The Soul’s Soldier

He hung there, like the history of America, who lynched innocent souls for no purpose, he too was lynched. By his own hands, by his own misery, he gave into the cards he dealt. He killed to kill himself.

The paper I received, read:

Mr. Jimenez, Angelo.
Time and Day of death: Approximately 3:25 a.m. on
June 3rd, 2010.
Location: Sing Sing Correctional Facility. 254
Hunter Street, Ossining. 10563.
Cell Block: D, Gate: 14.
Cause of Death: Suicide, by way of hanging and
strangulation.

I was asked, if I desire, to pick up his belongings, which will be held in storage, at the prison house. So I drove the gray road, with the naked trees and pebbles on the side where grass perhaps once laid there. When I arrived at the gray Victorian castle, I was directed by a guard to gate 23 where property pick up exists. I stood at the gate, which seemed like forever, but probably was a total of ten minutes waiting to be led in. Officer Rudney escorted me to the table, where I was to sign a release form, listing all of his valuables.

1 book
1 journal
1 toothbrush
1 rosary

I apologize for your lose, he robotically stated, and handed me the gray and salmon colored box, which had a piece of tape on the side labeling it “Jimenez, A. # A3125D9.”
I lifted the box, which seemed awfully light for someone whose entire life exists in this assembled piece of cardboard. I walked back out, down the road and to my blue car. I put the box in the front passenger seat, like I was placing my brother’s dead body next to mine. I walked around the front of the car, opened the door, sat down and slowly shut the door closed.
I lifted the top off the box and in it were the two books I signed off for. Aside from the books, there was the tooth brush and the rosary; our father’s rosary. The rosary, as I remember our father telling us when we were kids was “solid gold kids, nothing but pure de oro macizo.” And when I was 14 years old, the Soldados Latinos[1] came to the city and began to recruit Latino men like Angelo to wage war in hopes of resuscitating their souls. It’s funny because Angelo had more life in him then any teenager I had ever met since then, but in June 1984 he enlisted in the Soldados Latinos and it was as if he sold his soul for an idea that was merely fictional.
Our mother died in March of 1991 and Angelo was allowed to attend the funeral. He was escorted by four officers, in his dark green one piece suit, handcuffed and leg-cuffed. Angelo, then twenty four years old, looked frail and emaciated. His soul, then already dead was never brought back to life. That day, he died spiritually with our madre. However, Angelo always cried to me when I visited him, saying that he begs god for his time to come, and wishes he would have died that night instead. He knew he killed and had accepted his actions. What he couldn’t believe was that he was sold by the same people who promised him salvation and protection.
I lifted the hand made journal that I am figuring Angelo made on the many hours he had free. On the first page, he wrote:

May 8th, 2010.
If you are reading this it is because my time has come. I sit
here each day contemplating if I should leave the beat of my heart in the hands
of mysuperior or if I should take action on my own. I have aged quicker then
anyone I have ever seen in my life age and I feel as though my legs resist life.
I lay in this cell each day reading the one book I own, given to me by madre and
pray that I do not awake the next morning. I have learned to write from the book
I read, and have learned to live by the book with which I sleep with it each
night under my pillow. I am no longer, a soldado latino, but rather a soldado de
mi alma. I am serving my own soul justice by not giving into my own misery. I
have to live with my
mistake.

-Angelo

He wrote beautifully, he began to write the day after he met my children. They were 14 and 16 and I knew they were ready to comprehend what they were about to see. After a long attempt in requesting us visiting in a room as opposed to between a glass wall, we received approval. Sadly, it was the first and last time they got to see their uncle.
I held the book, which madre gave him, when she visited him for the first time. Unlock Your Soul was translated from Spanish to English. Written by Juan Alberto Santiago, a spiritual reviver—mother gave it to him in hopes that it will guide him in the tough journey he was facing that first month of his life sentence. In it, madre wrote notes for Angelo. Perhaps it was to give him a piece of home in each reading or perhaps it was because she worried with every passage she read. One line read on page 52, “mistakes are bound to occur, but it is how you over come them that will make you the person you are for the future.” Next to it, madre wrote in dark purple ink to Angelo, “mi hijo, nunca abandonara la lucha.” She feared he would give up, she wrote variations of these messages trough out the book. I suppose, after she passed he began to answer her back. Next to some of her pleads of staying strong and not giving up he wrote back to her saying, “Mi Madre, I miss you.”
Angelo was a lost soul, and gave into the devil’s worshiping at a young age without realizing. By the time he had matured and knew right from wrong, it was too late. In his last entry in his journal he wrote that his constant struggle to survive had a light of hope. Sadly, he wrote, he doesn’t see it anymore and that if his superior gave him the opportunity to go that night then he would take the hint. He took his life, the same day he was brought into this world. He stated a week earlier in his writing that he wished he could reverse life and take back even being born. He feels he had disrespected papi by following the Soldados Latinos and killing an innocent man. He denounced his affiliation to the Soldados Latinos after a year in confinement and realizing that they sold him to the same people he serves each day in these prison cells.
Angelo was a lost soul, but he found himself that night he burned all the plastic he had in his cell into a long piece of string. He found his soul when he tied it around his neck and connected it to the bar above his bed and then slowly walked off into the air and into the arms of our madre.
Descanse en paz. Mi Hermano, Mi Ángel.

[1] Established in 1978 by Cesar Mendoza. Mendoza was a mix of Columbian, Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian decent. He believed that every Latin man who had come from any Latin background had to serve in the Latin army that he established. With it, you have to kill those who hold back Latinos from prosperity, you had to adhere to the specialized laws and regulations of your commander and forever be loyal to your Latino heritage.