Not Enough Space:
25 Years Behind Prison Bars
Not Enough Space presents the story of two Puerto Rican fathers, grandfathers, community organizers and self-taught artists. Carlos Alberto Torres and Oscar López Rivera are Puerto Rican poltical prisoners serving disproportionately long prison terms for their beliefs in favor of Puerto Rican independence. Throughout their over 25 years of incarceration, they have been separated from their families and have grieved the deaths of their parents alone. From 1987 to 1999 (in Marion, Illinois and the “Administrative Maximum (ADX)” unit in Florence, Colorado) Oscar withstood 12 years of psychological torture, locked in his cell in complete isolation for 22.5 hours per day.
Despite the harsh and inhuman conditions endured, they remain men of dignity, hope, and aesthetic sensibility. Not Enough Space presents the human side of these two individuals and how their judicial case was distorted by the media. The exhibit also showcases how, both, Oscar and Carlos, have discovered art as a means for their self-development and self expression from their conditions of confinement.
Not Enough Space is presented through the efforts of National Boricua Human Rights Network (NBHRN) and local organizing committees. The exhibit brings attention to the case of these remarkable men in the hope of changing public opinion and ultimately ending their inhumane treatment and unjust sentences.
Not Enough Space is a community curatorial project of the Puerto Rican community of Chicago that toured nationally and internationally in 2005-2006: Chicago and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; Philadelphia and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; San Juan, Ponce, and Mayagüez, Puerto Rico; Boston, Massachusetts; and Los Angeles and San Francisco, California.