Comité de Soutien à Fernando E. Caro

Voici le dernier article que Fernando a écrit :

If you want to understand people, listen to what they say. If you listen long enough, you will know what they value most. When you share life-changing moments, you touch other people profoundly.

What we say defines us. Certainly, much of what I say comes from experience. It is also fueled by being able to imagine. Relying on magic for things to happen in my favor, is folly.

Not being out there in the real world, I can only imagine what my life would have been. Asit is, my life revolves around day-to-day living on death row.

What I say reflects much of what I have experienced, in here. Only my undiscarded sense of moralty bonds me to what I was taught growing up. Longing and nostalgia color my imagination. In a place like this, a little bit of « what if » can make the difference between feeling melancholy, or moving on.

Surviving is not enough, on death row. One needs to maintain sanity and self-respect. To be conscious of the fact that, to lose your moral values, is to become insticinctal! Living like an animal that reacts! Instead of being able to seek compromise and solutions, it leads to despair!

Humans are adaptive, and change can be benefical. We are capable of making our own choices. The wrong choices can cost us our sense of responsability. Fortunately, my sense of responsabolity is intact. When I give my word, I keep it!

How does one survive on death row without a sense of responsability or morality? One gets shot or thrown into solitary confinement away from others. This has happened here before! Sometimes, the mind-set of a death row prisoner cannot adapt. Are they hopeless cases? I do not know. They are, however, human beings and their lives are as valuable as everyone else's!

All of us on death row dream of walking out the front gate, and leaving hell behind. I have imagined this myself many times. What I cannot imagine is how I would « feel »! That, eludes me everytime.

No-nonsense reality keeps me from stepping over the line into fantasy. It is best to rely on what I can see, and use my imagination to comfort my psyche!

Fernando Eros Caro,

July 2014