Marcus Andrade* was 20 years old when he killed a man. It was his first felony, and he went on to serve 19 years for several more crimes. He is not proud of his record, but, now seven years out, he has found a redemptive purpose for his life.

Andrade moved to Las Cruces from Mexico and began attending school when he was in the first grade.

“I didn’t speak English,” he said. “Spanish is my first language. I had a rough time at first. I got a lot of: ‘…go back to Mexico’ stuff from kids. They would harass me and throw rocks at me as I walked home. It was then that I got into my first fight. I guess fighting kind of turned into a bad habit.”

While still young, Andrade’s parents became devout Christians. It was a belief and lifestyle that ended up having an adverse effect on him.

“My whole identity, my whole life, everyone in my social circle and everything I knew was about Christianity. There came a point when I realized that I didn’t believe anymore. It was like believing in Santa Claus—I wanted to hold onto it, but there were these doubts.”

The conflict festered and finally found itself into a dream.

“I felt like I was in this fluid world in my sleep. I was attached to what I can only describe as a throng of grapes. The thought ‘I don’t believe’ came, and I felt like I had been clipped and was floating into space. At that moment I knew I was at odds with everyone I knew and that I would never be accepted again because of my differing beliefs.”

Andrade admitted that he thinks a lot (probably too much), and, in this case, his questioning reinforced the sense of isolation he felt as a child. The alienation intensified in prison.

It is an environment where institutionalized rules are not always followed, sometimes subsumed to inmates’ do-or-die codes, where privileges have conditions and personal items are leveraged by staff to keep inmates in line. Within the affiliations overlooked, internal loyalty is paramount.

Andrade avoided the gangs, but he was quick to interject himself into fights, often to defend the weaker person.

“I’d be the one that would say: ‘Hey, bring that to me.’ There are a lot of bullies in the world,” he added.

As a result of his willingness to stick up for others, he was viewed as a leader by others; a position he did not seek out.

“I did it because I wanted to keep my guys out of trouble.”

One December Andrade found himself cuffed, face down in the snow. He had tried to negotiate between his guys and the ruling gang, but he was unsuccessful. A fight broke out in the gym, and the prison was put on lock down. Shortly after, he was sent to another facility.

Transfers were common, used in large part to keep inmates apart. People came and went. Alone in his cell, Andrade remained alert, in case a friend or relative of the man he killed should show up at the same facility.

At one point, he did do time with an uncle of his victim.

“I had to sleep with one eye open, and I learned to know where he was at all times,” Andrade said.

Suspicion followed him once he left prison. So did loneliness and a lack of a social network. Each had the potential to sabotage his life on the outside, but combined, they led Andrade to a dark place.

“When I got out this last time I thought I was prepared. I guess we all think we are different. I was startled with the thought that, at one point, I actually wanted to go back to prison. It was scary. I had spent every day thinking ‘I can’t wait to get to the free world’ and then I got out and, within months, I was stressed and wanted to crawl back into my cell and shut the world out. I had my routine that I was accustomed to. That changed.”

He focused on trying to interact with others. Given his self-assuredness, it is difficult to imagine that Andrade would have difficulty, but he admitted that, internally, he was still at odds with himself and, deep down, afraid of people.

“I wanted a family so bad. I met a girl and soon she was pregnant. We split up and got back together and are back together again. We’ve gone through a learning curve. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve had to adjust to. But now my resolve is there. I’m not going to walk away from my family.”

As he settled into a domestic life, he became deeply affected by what was going on around him.

“My sisters were working 40 to 50 hours a week and barely getting by. I saw their despair, and I started to see it everywhere. That pattern was repeating itself in everyone I knew. I started to think that there was no end game. It seemed like we were all just being given enough rope to hang ourselves.”

Andrade would feel anxious one day, depressed the next. On a Fourth of July evening, it all came to a head.

“I had been fighting with my girl. I wanted to take myself out. Everyone was at a fireworks show. I kept thinking: ‘What morons. They are celebrating…what? They can’t see that they are captives, here in the ‘land of the free.’ We are being mass-marketed to on a daily basis and it affects your self-esteem and development, especially if you can’t get the stuff. [Big businesses sell us a] product and then move on to the next person. You have the stuff, but still have the void. We are being herded like cattle and are unaware. You may be Angus, but you are really just prey.’”

Andrade eventually put aside his outrage and concentrated on working and studying. He went to NMSU where he took engineering classes and joined a service fraternity. He found a job but was laid off after getting hurt.

He spent time reading. He picked up a book by Michael Reynolds titled “Garbage Warrior.” It was a book about Earthship architecture. It put Andrade on a path.

“I had done some electrical work and knew about photovoltaics,” he explained. “When I was in prison work release, I was on a solar project out of Albuquerque. I was offered a job after I got out, but I wanted to stay in Cruces.”

Wanting to learn more, Andrade took his family to see an Earthship in northern New Mexico. Unloading the car, he was startled when he heard his young girls yelling in glee.

“It was 5:00 at night and about 20 degrees outside. I joined them at the door and felt the heat coming out. The girls started running around the house in bare feet and muscle shirts. It wasn’t just warm; it was quiet and peaceful.”

When he returned to Las Cruces, he started reaching out to people interested in sustainable building. He eventually hooked up with a couple building an Earthship between Tularosa and Alamogordo. He volunteered, traveling once a week to the site offering his physical labor and construction expertise.

Fiddler’s Green, the first project by Foxhole Homes envisioned by Ryan Timmermans and Ted Brinegar, is now a model of sustainable living, built for homeless vets.

Not only did Andrade feel connected to the project of building an Earthship, the idea behind it became personal. By helping veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Andrade was able to recognize it in himself.

Sebastian Junger, in his new book “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging,” writes of PTSD and its prevalence in returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. On a primal level, PTSD is an appropriate response to danger. Feelings of anxiety prime the body to fight while depression keeps that fervor in check. While appropriate to specific and short-term fear, people react in different ways, with varying intensity and over many periods of time. As such, according to many experts, the term “disorder” is a misnomer.

Citing several studies, Junger contends that relationships forged by troops are an integral part of the conflict experience. Many of these relationships are life-changing and life-affirming. Veterans often look back on war with nostalgia, focusing on friendships made in the worst of situations. It is a relationship based on loyalty, reliance on one another and cooperation that becomes a brotherhood. Studies show that for many, the most traumatic experience for a soldier is the death of a buddy.

The nostalgia soldiers feel translates into a longing for closeness and a group identity that a shared and horrific experience engenders. When personal survival depends on the survival of the group, a lone wolf represents a threat. Isolation is viewed as an aberration and contrary to survival.

The problem for social scientists is that a soldier need not witness such an event or even participate in combat to experience PTSD. This incongruity is what led Junger to consider that PTSD is something more than the experience itself. Researching different cultures and warrior traditions, he concluded that the society the soldier re-enters holds the key.

Unfortunately, today’s American society is becoming more fragmented and insular. People bury themselves in their smart phones, communicating with others by texting, even while in the company of friends a few feet away. Families carry on daily activities often not knowing their neighbors, and personal gain is valued over the collective good.

Rather than embracing the veteran back into their community, acknowledgements and cleansing celebrations from the brutality they endured during war are few and far between. Not knowing how to respond, people not familiar with war sometimes choose not to talk to veterans about their experiences. Veterans, in turn, often remark that friends act as if they never went to war in the first place.

PTSD, in this view, is a crisis of connection upon re-entering society, similar to what Andrade voiced about his experience upon release. The difference is that Andrade was thwarted in developing the types of relationships that soldiers remember and rely on. When he was released, he was again alone and isolated.

His strategy became to look outward for possible connections that he could apply to his own life.

“We’ll never have everything in common,” he said. “But there is basic stuff that we all have in common. We all need to focus on those things.”

He is currently working on another Earthship near Akela Flats.

The mundaneness of pounding dirt into tires, as well as consulting with other like-minded builders and dreamers has energized him. The task of finding a way to fit in has been combined with a need to atone for his moral transgression.

Andrade now looks out and down at what lies at his feet as well.

“I have a deeper understanding of how to connect with others through my relationship with the earth,” he said. “Take iron, for example. It is everywhere even though we aren’t always aware of it. It is in the nails I pound, in the dirt I use to build. More importantly, it is in our bodies. It is in our blood. We need it, and we nourish ourselves with it. It is the umbilical cord that keeps us alive.”

It is, in short, one of the things that connects us all.

“I remember the smell of the blood of the man I killed. When I work [building with earth] it reminds me that I still have to make right by him.”

Even with a newfound purpose, Andrade has bad days among the good. During times when he feels down, he tells himself that, despite the mistakes of the past, he can still contribute and make a difference. Working with others is becoming easier. He has found a group with a shared commitment, in this case, to sustainable building and has turned it into a model for renewable living in the desert of southern New Mexico. It is a model that includes compassion and reliance on others, much like ones formed in the deserts of the Middle East and manifest in Andrade’s outlook born from his experience at Fiddler’s Green.

“They don’t want to just house veterans,” he said. “They want to help people to heal. I had PTSD. I wanted to fit in. I didn’t feel connections with people, but, lately, it’s been the opposite. I’ve been meeting more and more people and they are encouraging me. I realized one day driving around that I’ve been fortunate or lucky to find people like me.”

His journey brought him in touch with people who know what it is like to be outliers, wanting to fit in, people who are trying to make their way after surviving nightmarish conditions.

“Slowly I’ve been coming out of my shell,” Andrade said. “I don’t want acclaim. My story should not be glorified. I’m mostly embarrassed to talk about it. I’ve made a lot of changes, and things are getting better. I had to learn that we are all connected and how to go about dealing with people. Now, I’ve given myself meaning and as long as I can do something for even one person, I’ll do it.”

*The interviewee’s name was changed in respect of his family.