[Announcer] Funding for this program was provided by ITVS, Diversity Development Fund, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Fund for the Arts with major support from the Ford Foundation; the City of Austin Cultural Arts division; and by Humanities Texas.

[gentle music] [jarring music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Texas, it's a white man's country.

Had he come here with a bullet, he'd would've been shot.

He made his choice based on survival.

You can manipulate language, turn people into action, but you cannot harm them or they'll be shot.

♪ ♪ [Raul] Can you check out my arm?

Yeah, which one?

[Audience Member] Both of them.

- They say he's got a eagle tattooed on his arm.

Be on the lookout.

He's a dangerous poet and he's got a mean weapon.

It's a pen.

♪ ♪ I developed as a writer in prison.

Up until 1972, I had never written a poem outside of a prison confinement.

To understand my situation where I was and what the hell I was doing there and how I got there and how in the hell I was gonna get out.

La Loma, neighborhood of my youth, demolished, erased forever from the universe.

You live on, captive, in the lonely cellblocks of my mind.

[machine rumbling] [machine squealing] [machine rumbling] [machine rumbling] [machine squealing] [machine rumbling] [ball banging] [machine rumbling] [Driver] So we're about to cross the divide, right?

- We're about to cross the DMZ... [laughing] or the MZ, I should say, there's a cop shop, the Militarized Zone.

That's the house where I grew up at from age of seven to about 12.

Neighborhood of dilapidated community hall, Salón Cinco de Mayo.

Hijos del Independencia.

Emphasis on allegiance to the tri-color, obscure names: Juarez and Hidalgo, their heroic deeds.

No one listened, no one seemed to really care.

All my schoolmates lived in all these houses here when I went to Catholic school.

Some became priests and nuns and some became nomadic children of the streets.

And there was a nice club with a nice jukebox, boots, blue lights.

During the '50s, that was a sight, I mean we were, [chickens clucking] [laughing] we all wanted to play alto saxophone 'cause that's what Charlie Parker played.

Neighborhood of groups and clusters, sniffing gas, drinking muscatel, solidarity, cement hardening, the clan, the family, the neighborhood, the gang, NOMAS.

- Were they just-- - Oh no, no, no, no, no.

They were just social gangs of youth hanging out.

No, there was no politics to them at the time.

The politics was, you know, confrontational politics, but not defined.

[Interviewer] Coming back later, you're trying to find solace here.

- Oh no, I was coming to pick up two caps of medicine someone had left under a rock for me.

[upbeat music] - [Interviewer] So your old elementary school became a drop off for drugs?

- Yeah, ♪ ♪ but I was a sick poet that day.

♪ ♪ Neighborhood of Reyes' Bar where Lalo shotgunned Pete Evans to death because of an unintentional stare and because he was escuadra, only to end his life neatly sliced by prison barber's razor.

Duran's grocery and gas station Guero drunkenly stabbed Julio arguing over who'd drive home and got 55 years for his crime.

Raton: 20 years for a matchbox of weed.

[machine rumbling] No lawyer, no jury, no trial.

I'm guilty, you're guilty.

[ball banging] We're all guilty.

[ball banging] Indian mothers folded arms across their bosoms saying.

[ball crashing] [Raul speaking Spanish] Well, the world that I was in had no longer anything to do with this, except that the memories were there.

[machine rumbling] [wall crashing] ♪ You got to accentuate the positive ♪ ♪ Eliminate the negative ♪ ♪ Don't mess with Mr.

In Between ♪ Those sounds of Mercer, Woody and the Duke ♪ Couldn't make it without you ♪ ♪ Don't get around much anymore ♪ [intriguing sax music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Ray Charles came to play and I was on parole and I heard that a musician had kicked his drug habit who was playing with Ray Charles.

And I thought, well I'm glad that my friend is off drugs.

I'll take him some marijuana.

And I went with one of the most notorious street kids in town and the cops all knew him and they called out to him and he ran and I ran and I had the stash and so I got sent to Huntsville.

I got a 15-year sentence.

You feel just powerless against this machine.

I mean, my God, what the hell do I do?

Kafka's "The Colony."

So I left prison after five years and I didn't create anything but a baby, which I left behind, which bothered me tremendously throughout my prison stay.

And I got to a different level of the drug trade.

And after two years out on the streets, I found myself in prison again.

And this time I was sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary for eight years.

♪ ♪ It was actually at Leavenworth, learning from others there inside with me helping to sustain the soul and the spirit through these times that I realized what it was to be a poet.

Modest Mexican maidens dancing polkas together across splintered wooden floor, the careful scrutiny by curbstone sex-perts eight and nine years old.

"Minga's bow-legged, so we know she's done it, huh?"

It was an out of mind, out of body dream time experience that I just went out of it and I began to write the poem.

And when I came out of my cell Monday morning, I had a rough complete poem of "A Trip Through The Mind Jail."

Raul, hey man, [speaking Spanish] all right.

I'm Raul too.

What you gonna do now?

That's what I want to hear.

TYC?

[juvenile] No, TDC.

- [hissing] [speaking Spanish] 18.

[speaking Spanish] You better write to me about it.

Tell me about it.

There's many different places to live and they're saying, "Write about living on an island."

And I said, "Well, write about living in the barrio."

[laughing] [soulful music] [Interviewer] What happens to Raul, the street dealer, to becoming Raul the poet and politically astute?

[soulful music] - That's a hard question.

I think that that individual died in there.

[Prisoner] The pain, the stress, the worry, the constant dragging on your soul, dragging you down the same way a hooker has to drag herself home after walking in some six inch heels, trying to turn tricks, after being beat up by a man who [crying] constantly beats you and belittles you and glorifies you all at the same time.

- I don't know if it's permissible or not, but I'm gonna go hug her.

I gotta hug you.

I don't know if it's against the rules or not.

[Prisoner] Thanks.

- So it was growing up, but I had some incredible teachers.

Ramon Chacon, who first introduced us to the writings of Frantz Fanon.

He was so disciplined about his studying and his wanting to change and his determination to not be a convict.

Raphael Cancelmirando, an independentista, he taught me about internationalism and how to be revolutionary is to be human.

He said, "Today your world ceases to be your own.

It belongs to the people."

- ♪ Baby girl, I can't be your man ♪ ♪ Maybe one day you'll understand ♪ ♪ How much our love is true ♪ ♪ Baby, I just want to be with you ♪ ♪ But you ♪ [Raul] Chicanos and the Puerto Ricans and the Native Americans and the Blacks within the prison struggling to be free.

- ♪ Baby girl, I want do things right ♪ - We did a work stoppage in Leavenworth, closed the factories down.

Then they locked us up, we burned the cell block down, they put us in the hole and we destroyed the hole.

And that's when I was shipped out to Marion Federal Penitentiary, which was a laboratory of sorts for political dissidents.

[Group Member] A lot of people think, well they, they committed a crime.

Now they're using the law to accuse the prison system of committing a crime.

- Tough tacos, as my mother would say.

[group laughing] I would dare say as I do in most places that I go, that in this room there is someone who has a loved one, a relative, a distant cousin, a neighbor who is in prison.

I dare say that there is.

I spent a lot of years in prison.

That's why I know and that's why I wanted you to do that because it's very painful to do.

My new book is all about getting out.

[Inmate] Everybody tells you all the time, "Oh, you're never gonna change.

You're never gonna come up.

You're never gonna come out."

- There was a lot of honesty that we were trying to impose on each other.

The Puerto Rican nationalists were political prisoners.

I wasn't.

And I survived this, I've gone this far.

Once we get done with the interview, maybe I'll hang up my gloves.

[Interviewer] Well, I think we'll do the interview for five or 10 years.

[group laughing] - But [laughing].

[interviewer laughing] [jarring music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know why you took half of Mexico?

We take a square block and you act like we took, kidnapped your mamas.

♪ ♪ We know what we want.

Writing letters, pushing, let him out.

Gotta get him out.

You gotta, he's gonna have a job.

He's going to, teach poetry at University of Washington 'cause... mi amigo, Raul, yeah.

[upbeat music] Well the poeta lands in our midst.

I mean, you know that guy.

[speaking Spanish] He's got a jaw that like, you know what?

Don't mess with me.

I got something to say.

This is who we are as a people.

This is the nature of our oppression.

[Roberto speaking Spanish] Edgar Allen Poe, I don't know, Shakespeare.

[speaking Spanish] What about that one?

God, here's our poet.

Here's the guy that speaks to our soul.

- My poetry was already well known by the time I got out, at least "A Trip Through the Mind Jail."

People were waiting for me.

- He had everybody beat because he wore a half of a handcuff, no [speaking Spanish].

I mean the guy's flashy the guy, you can't ignore him.

No matter how tall, nothing, he's impossible to ignore.

You know, "Here I am."

[Raul speaking Spanish] [Raul speaking Spanish] Much less give a damn.

A good damn about street corner born forlorn fugitives of the total jail.

Hail pachuco!

[crowd indistinctly yelling] I'm here today in opposition to the Klan marching on the streets of Austin.

I support the Brown Berets and the Black Citizens Task Force.

And I felt that as a responsible man of conscience, I had to come out here and express that outrage.

[disturbing music] ♪ ♪ [soulful music] I came back to Austin.

Some houses remained, others have been removed.

But Jesse Ledesma, they still live there.

♪ ♪ When we first moved here, right here on this corner, there used to be a mule barn, right down that corner there, [laughing] a mule barn.

So you can imagine what it was like.

Neighborhood of my childhood, neighborhood that no longer exists.

Some died young, fortunate, some rot in prisons.

The rest drifted away to be conjured up in minds of others like them.

For me, only the now of this journey is real.

♪ ♪ Neighborhood of my adolescence, neighborhood that is no more.

You are torn pieces of my flesh.

This was my main lifeline to the world.

So it was a sense of belonging, I belonged here.

It was identity.

This was my community.

This is where I came from.

And all through here, all my aunts and uncles lived, all these houses here on both sides.

La Loma, Austin, mi barrio, I bear you no grudge.

I needed you then, identity, a sense of belonging.

I need you now.

So essential to adult days of imprisonment.

You keep me away from insanity's hungry jaws.

Smiling, laughing, crying.

La Loma, this is the street that embodies the poem, "Trip Through the Mind Jail," 'cause when I talk about you are torn pieces of my flesh, it has to do with that out of-- out of mind, out of body experience I had or that dream that I was on a tour, had a tour guide just like we are right now.

And I was showing 'em the street where I had grown up and I began to run up the street and the wind hittin' my face and I was crying the closer I got to my aunt's house.

And then I started taking my clothes off.

And then as I was running up the hill and then my skin, my tattoos, my body, I started just stripping, trying to get up to the top of that hill where I knew my aunt lived.

♪ ♪ My Loma of Austin, my Rose Hill of Los Angeles, my West Side of San Anto, my Quinto of Houston, my Jackson of San Jo, my Segundo of El Paso, my Barelas of Alburque, my Westside of Denver, Flat, Los Marcos, Maravilla, Calle Guadalupe, Magnolia, Buena Vista, Mateo, La Seis, Chiquis, El Sur and all Chicano neighborhoods that now exist and once existed somewhere, someone remembers.

[soulful music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience clapping] [soulful music] Any questions?

Comments?

Objections?

Criticisms?

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided by ITVS, Diversity Development Fund, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Fund for the Arts with major support from the Ford Foundation; the City of Austin Cultural Arts division; and by Humanities Texas.

[gentle music]