Julio “Alex” Zuniga ends the messages he sends from his prison cell with the signoff “Solidarity forever.” He sometimes includes a postscript with music recommendations, leaning toward vibey alt-pop and indie—a somewhat surprising mix for the self-described anarchist activist. He prefers to be called Alex, but many of his contacts inside and outside of prison know him as “Comrade Z.”
He’s the man people who have been at the Memorial Unit (formerly called Darrington), a 1,610-bed state prison in southeast Texas, point to when asked about organizing on the inside. Like everyone else locked up in Texas who is physically and mentally able, Zuniga, a 44-year-old from San Antonio, was required to work without pay while housed at Memorial, near the unincorporated town of Rosharon, from 2018 to 2023. He tended livestock and labored in the agricultural fields, where he’d cut weeds and harvest carrots, cabbages, and onions. Before these fields were owned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), they were plantation land worked by slaves.
While he grew up on the South Side of San Antonio, Zuniga spent some of his youth in the rural outskirts of Laredo. This was the extent of his previous exposure to agriculture, but he took to farmwork somewhat easily. “I love animals, and I love playing with dirt,” he told the Texas Observer in a March interview.
