He has taught classes for sick children.
He was a teacher in hospitals and in centers with disabled children.
Because?
I have always found it important to reach out to those who cannot come to me. It is also the reason why I have taught classes for twelve years in prisons.
Tell me.
When I started I was a young teacher, I had very fixed ideas about what society was, good, evil. Working with prisoners opened my eyes to the complexity of human nature and personal trajectories.
What did you discover?
They weren’t monsters, they were like me, sometimes we take a bad path, we make bad choices, and we have a hard time controlling our impulses.
You were dealing with criminals who had murdered their own family.
Yes, among them 18-year-olds who had murdered their parents. My first reaction was stupefaction, before meeting them I imagined them to be monsters, but once there they seemed to me the same as my students at the university.
Don’t our actions define us?
I did not understand what could have happened to them to commit those horrible acts, the patricides and matricides were intelligent people, but for me it was very important to stay in my role as a teacher.
And what did that imply?
Don’t reject them or show too much empathy, stay neutral. Many, after class, had the need to talk to me about what they had done.
Why do you think they did it?
They were looking for some kind of apology. Sometimes he came out of prison full of hope for humanity and other times depressed at the seriousness of some crimes and the impossibility of finding a solution so that these things would not continue to happen.
Did it affect you?
A lot, especially with the younger ones, kids between 14 and 16 years old who had committed rapes and murders and who seemed not to understand the seriousness of their actions, and who considered me an enemy.
What don’t you forget about your conversations?
After years in prison, the inmates told me that they no longer dreamed of life on the outside, only of life in prison. Some no longer had desire or erections.
What was life like there?
I worked in a preventive detention center and the conditions were very difficult. Time does not pass the same as it does outside, it seems to stretch infinitely, and people live cramped in very small spaces.
Does prison have its own morals?
Yes, I often taught classes exclusively to rapists because the other prisoners do not want to be with them and attack them. Rape among prisoners is less accepted than murder.
Does the prison reflect the world?
Almost all ages are represented: babies with their mothers in their cells, the elderly, teenagers. Throw down all the statistics, the stereotypes, the columns of reassuring figures. It does nothing but reflect the world. The prison changes with him.
What smell do you remember?
A mixture of sweat simmered by the breath of hundreds of crowded men who only had the right to shower once or twice a week. As soon as he got home he put everything he wore in the washing machine as if he needed to forget.
What sounds?
There the sounds were very important, the noise of the keys, the bars that the guards touch to check that they had not been cut, screams, televisions on 24 hours a day… They are very characteristic noises that no one forgets.
Are there fashions in prison?
The tracksuit with socks and pool sandals was the prisoner’s new uniform. The purchasing power of the prisoners was seen in whether the model they were wearing was in fashion.
Was the outside world enough for them?
By not exposing themselves to the outside world, there was a lot of neglect, which is why in the female part of the prison there were hairdressers and beauticians so that the women continued to take care of themselves and their self-esteem did not collapse.
Describe your feeling of the place.
The prison resembled a large factory that manufactured nothing, only time consumed, annihilated. The inmates seemed like strange workers, without machines, but they obeyed guidelines and schedules.
Tell me how you started your classes.
Good morning, gentlemen, he said, and shook hands. The new ones handed it to me with shame, distrust or disgust. The veterans included an infinite number of human things in the gesture. There was a lot of life in our handshakes.
