2//2 “When I found out my daughter had been raped by him something inside of me snapped. I went up to him and I asked: ’‘Did you rape my daughter?” He answered: “Yes, I did.” It is hard to describe how I felt but everything around me became blurry. I lived in a rust. I could no longer feel anything and the only thing I could think of was: “He is going to die.” With the help of a friend, I drugged and I killed him.
When you kill in the name of your country it is justified. When you kill out of revenge you go to prison. I never tried to get away with what I did. I didn’t want to get away with what I did. On the contrary, I waited three weeks for my arrest. I knew what I had done was wrong and that I would get arrested for it. I have been punished for what I have done. I was sentenced to prison for 12 years. I hurt myself, I hurt my daughters and I killed a man. What I did, I regret but at the time I was so desperate and I felt no other option. When I got out of prison I started to write down my story as a way of coping with everything I had been through. At some point I would only write at night so no one would see me cry. In my life I experienced physical pain but that is nothing compared the mental pain I have experienced. There is no doctor, no medication or other remedy that can take that pain out of your soul. Still I refuse to see myself as a victim and I take full responsibility for what I did. I’m a grandmother now and I take good care of my grandchildren. I found a wonderful husband and somehow I made it through these 52 years of my life. I became an artist and I wrote a book, I paint and I write poetry. My artist name is LaReina which means the Queen in Spanish. It is a name the South American women in prison gave me. They gave me that name because they saw me as a strong mother, a Matriarch, a Queen who survived in a kingdom of misery. Every since I came out of prison I have been carrying that name with pride.“