Mentions personal use of Mandela. Mentions personal use of Gandhi. Mentions personal use of Martin Luther King.

Transcript context

…What was it like living without a mirror? Well, it was interesting to look at my face after more than three months without knowing what I looked like. I had grown my beard, and then my beard became a symbol to other prisoners. I was isolated in one of the buildings. The prison where I was — they had two buildings. In one of them, there were between 400 and 500 military prisoners, and I was in the other building most of the time by myself. I was taken to a place where I could see the sun once every three, four days, very early in the morning. I had a beard. Other prisoners started to grow a beard as a sign of protesting against the regime. There was a point where many of us had grown the beard, so the beard became illegal. In order for me to see my lawyer, I had to shave, and the other prisoners were not able to have a beard. Prison is a very intense experience in many ways, but it can break you or it can make you stronger. I was very conscious of that because I prepared myself for this experience. Six months before I was taken to prison, there was a warrant for my arrest, and that gave me an opportunity to read about the experiences of other political prisoners. I read the story of Mandela, of Gandhi, of the brief periods in prison of Martin Luther King, and of many Venezuelan political prisoners. There was one thing that was very clear in all of those testimonies, which is that they need to have a routine. Since the very first day, I was very self-conscious of having a routine and knowing that my battlefield against the regime was taking place in my head, in my heart, and in the capacity to maintain myself with a strong soul. I was very conscious and disciplined about going about my routine, which was basically praying, reading or writing, and doing physical exercise. I did that with spartan discipline every single day, and that’s what kept me very focused during my time in prison. How much trust was there amongst the prisoners?…

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