By Ivan Mejia

SAN DIEGO -- A non-profit organization in California is promoting art as a mode of expression among Hispanic inmates in the U.S. prison system.

"Pinto Art" is an initiative of the Chicano Mexicano Prison Project to promote art in prison.

The inmates use what they have available to them in jail to express themselves artistically, and thus some of their paintings are made on handkerchiefs or throwaway containers.

"The promotion of art in the prisons seeks to get prisoners to use drawing and painting to send a message to the entire Latino people about what is happening in prison," CMPP coordinator Ernesto Bustillos told Efe.

"We believe that the prisoners can be better teachers for young people, because they can tell them what (being in prison) means with the aim of keeping them away from the dangers of gangs and drugs," he added.

Founded in 1993, CMPP is an organization whose aim is to denounce the conditions in which Latino prisoners live in the United States and prepare the way for their reinsertion into society via art.

"Many or all of the Latinos who are prisoners (are there) for economic reasons," said Bustillos, who each year organizes an exhibit including many of their paintings.

Monica Bernal, a CMPP representative, said that the organization four times per year distributes in the prisons a publication entitled "Las calles y la torcida" with the aim of promoting political education in the prisons.

In addition, once a year, the group sends an invitation to the prisons for the prisoners to donate their artwork for the exhibit that has been set up at high schools and community centers in San Diego for the past 15 years.

On Saturday, the San Diego public could come to the La Raza Cultural Center, where they could see and appreciate 84 works of art created by the prisoners. Later, the exhibit will go on display at other, as yet undetermined sites.

"What we want is for people to become aware and learn about the artistic talents of the prisoners and that they get rid of the idea that the only place they deserve to be is in prison," Bernal said.

"The prisoners who are inside have a lot of talent that we see in their work," she added.

Also participating in the annual expositions are people who have been released from prison after serving their sentences.

Arturo Singh, 76, told Efe that during the years he was behind bars in the California penitentiary system, he learned how to draw and paint "to pass the time."

"This year I'm participating in the exposition with six drawings," he said. "And one of them is titled the execution line, which is a skull with its hands up that I made to show the boys who see the drawing that if they keep doing bad things that's what's waiting for them."

Another of the works by the former inmate depicts a man wearing a Zorro-like mask walking across a roof and carrying a bag in his hands.

"I made that drawing inspired by a friend I knew in jail who we called 'El Gato' (the cat) because he hit jewelry stores by going over the roofs with a rope," he recalled.

"He was in prison several times, including in San Quentin, and he died at a very old age," he said. EFE