A year is little time compared to the six years and six months that have already gone by, yet many things liable to affect our situation could still happen in the time that is left.
The nearness of freedom thrills us and makes us think about projects that we want to continue or begin. It makes us long to see and talk to friends and comrades—those loved ones closet to us who have stood by us during the adversity of these years.
But our emotion is contained because in observing and reflecting on the political, economic, and social situation in the country and the attitude of the current government towards social unrest, we conclude that the legal certainty provided in a document dictating the beginning and end of this illegal, unjust sentence is not enough to make us rest easy.
We need to keep on resisting in prison and struggling for our freedom outside the walls because we can’t discard the prospect of some dirty trick or legaloid ruse aimed at prolonging our imprisonment and condition as hostages of a government seriously questioned with regards to its ineffectiveness in resolving the tremendous national problems that we face, as opposed to its effectiveness in selective, licensed repression against social organizations and activists.
It’s not excessive to repeat that whatever the conditions may be—whether we’re (physically) farther away or closer to our loved ones, whether we have more or fewer possibilities of creating something (writing, painting, drawing), one certainty sustains us and impels us to refuse to give up and, above all, to refuse to fall into despair: we will resist.
Now we’re facing months, not years, and each one that goes by will be a small personal battle to stay serene and be patient, but there’ll be a larger battle outside the walls to spread the word about the case and to make sure that the excitement about seeing us free doesn’t turn into a kind of apathy: “Well, they won’t be in there much longer anyway.”
We don’t know what might happen this year (which is both long and short at the same time); we don’t know whether or not the threats that have been made against us for years will be carried out, whether or not the hostility against us inside or outside prison will increase. But we do know that we will never back down in our efforts to live with dignity, in keeping with our values and principles, and that we will do our best to be true to them until the end. Up until now there’s nothing that’s convinced us of how (supposedly) wrong it is to struggle for the transformation of our country for the benefit of our people—a people that has been exploited and oppressed for dozens of years.
Our place is at the side of this people that is organizing and struggling for its rights, and that, by breaking its chains seeks to build its destiny, its future, at the cost of the slight, fragile security granted for being an indifferent, submissive people.
A year of struggle and resistance from prison, one more in which, embraced in solidarity by many organizations and individuals, we’ll be victorious, come what may.
One more year before returning to harbor.
Ever onwards towards victory!
Prisoners today, forever free!
After six years and six months in prison, masters of our freedom:
Prisoner of conscience
Antonio Cerezo C.
CEFERESO #1. Almoloya de Juárez. Edo. Mex, February 2008