Readings

raúlrsalinas and the Jail Machine: My Weapon Is My Pen

by Raúl Salinas, edited by Louis G. Mendoza

University of Texas Press, 344 pp., $22.95 (paper)

In the stir for breathing air …

If he’d been a soldier man

Shooting gooks in Vietnam

If he was the CIA

Selling dope and making hay

He’d be free, they’d let him be

Breathing air, like you and me.

– from “John Sinclair,” by John Lennon

1972 was the year John Sinclair was released from prison, with the help of John Lennon’s lyrical protest, “John Sinclair,” blasting the unreasonable 10-years-for-two-joints jail sentence and forever immortalizing the Detroit poet/blues singer. During that same year, Austin poet/Resistencia bookstore owner Raúl Salinas was released from prison after 12 years in and out of four of the most brutal prisons in the country … for drug offenses.

However, the subject of raúlrsalinas and the Jail Machine: My Weapon Is My Pen, a collection of writings produced by Salinas while in prison and edited by Louis G. Mendoza, is not, as it might be, the injustice of Salinas’ situation. Mendoza doesn’t tout “it ain’t fair, it ain’t fair.” In fact, little of the work is dedicated to the exact nature of his crimes. Instead, Mendoza directs his focus toward the human element caged behind these bars. As stated by Mendoza in the introduction to this book, “The most important purpose served by the publication of this collection will be its contribution to an increased understanding of the human potential that lives behind the walls of prisons.” But even more poignantly, Mendoza asks, “What does our current political economy of incarceration say about the nature of the freedom of which we would deprive of others?”

The collection is divided into four parts. The first section, “Salinas’ Journalism,” catalogs a career Salinas began and excelled in during his incarceration. Through Salinas’ published works, which include profiles of other talented inmates acquainted with Salinas, Mendoza implores his readers to discover exceptional, artistic humans with much to offer to society, culturally and critically. These men have done wrong, by society’s standards, but like Lennon, Mendoza asks his readers to look beyond their convict or ex-convict status and acknowledge their contributions as assets to the common wealth.

The second section, “Flying Kites to the World: Letters, 1968-1974,” which dominates the collection in length, includes letters exchanged between Salinas and friends, family, politicians, and activists. These dialogues expose readers to the many moods and faces of Salinas the prisoner, as well as his signature Chicano, bilingual writing style.

The third section, “The Marion Strike: Journals From ‘El Pozo,'” documents the history of the Marion Strike, a prisoner-guard conflict and subsequent work-stoppage and strike between prisoners and officials that occurred at Illinois’ Marion Federal Penitentiary in 1972. Finally, the fourth section, “Post-Prison Interviews,” includes two interviews conducted with Salinas following his release from prison, one in 1974 and the other in 1994.

Though undeniably trite, the latter half of the collection’s title, My Weapon Is My Pen, is a fitting description of Salinas’ experience in jail. With fists curled around whittled-down, poor-quality pencils, Salinas used his words to bring about cultural and political change within the prison system, to give voice to the often-discriminated Chicano people, and to decorate his cell and those of his inmate brethren with the beauty and intellect of his poetry.

The articles, images, interviews, and letters collected in this book document Salinas’ metamorphosis in prison, from rebellious pachuco to formative journalist and activist for rights of prisoners, Chicanos, and, later, Native Americans. Salinas, however, is most noted for his transformation into a poet. His most acclaimed poem, “Un Trip Through the Mind Jail,” which first appeared in the Leavenworth prison newspaper Aztlán de Leavenworth in 1970, and is reprinted in its original form in this work, has garnered him recognition all over the nation. Mendoza wisely chose not to sprinkle this collection with Salinas’ various personal poems, as that might have taken away from the intention of the book, but he did well to include “Un Trip Through the Mind Jail” and perhaps should have even included an easier-to-read version of the poem.

In raúlrsalinas and the Jail Machine: My Weapon Is My Pen, Mendoza has created an intriguing history of one of Austin’s longtime political and literary contributors, as well as a valuable case study of the “intellectual prisoner.” And in keeping with Salinas’ embodiment of the Chicano spirit, the book represents Chicano culture and language, blending English and Spanish throughout the text. Though it’s no hit pop song, Mendoza’s portrait is a sincere tribute.

This article appears in August 4 • 2006.