A Single Frame

I decided to take some vacation to visit my relatives in Nicaragua.  I hadn't visited the country for 13 years.  We came as a whole family in 1999.  Since then my mother has mostly returned on her own.  In 2008 my sister, Jessica, did a research trip based on a theology class she took at LMU.  We have both been inspired by my aunt's story due to our participation in the annual protest of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning to commemorate the assassination of the Jesuit priests at UCA in November by students trained in their program.  That's how I learned the US trained Nicaragua's National Guard that killed my aunt.  In Jessica's theology class they briefly mentioned Fr. Ernesto Cardenal and the Gospel of Solentiname from Nicaragua so she desired to come to do some interviews and study further.  My mother accompanied her as a guide and translator and she also learned a lot more details about her sister's involvement in the Sandinista uprising.  Now that I was going on my own a few years later I wondered if I should use this as an opportunity to really investigate my aunt's story.

Unfortunately, I didn't really come prepared for any such project.  I was too busy with work and life to get myself ready by studying things beforehand and figuring out what kind of information I wanted to pursue.  I decided to let it all go and not bring any specific objectives to my trip.  I just wanted to be with my family.  I wanted to see my aunt and uncles and spend time with my cousins.  It was just about being with one another.  Basically my week was filled with food, drink, music and dancing, all enjoying the company.  It was wonderful.

I did make the point to visit the memorial on the hill where my aunt fell to the National Guard.  I thought that would be the extent of my experience of her.  Standing on the ground where she stood, capturing the land and air.  I had seen photos from when my sister visited and images of the memorial is all over the tribute blog I found.  I was still surprised to see it.  Knowing the art on the murals didn't take away from being there.  It wasn't what I expected but I'm not sure what I thought I'd get from being there.  I gained no new info, but soaked in the imagery.

It was another image, however, that I was not expecting to find that captured my intrigue and fascination.  On my very last day in Nicaragua, while waiting at my cousin's house in Managua, we went through old photo albums.  I looked through tons of pictures of my family's youth.  There I truly discovered a gem.  It wasn't within the album pages but a loose picture.  In it was my Tía Nordia, my Tía Alba, who passed away from cancer a few years ago, my mother and my Abuelita.  It wasn't a posed portrait but a candid shot that captured the charm of the moment.  They were listening to my mother say something and she happens to be the only person in the picture who is still alive.  All the women looked beautiful.  It was perfect.

I knew instantly this picture was important.  I wanted to keep it so bad.  However, I knew I couldn't take it away from my cousin because it was such a beautiful picture of her mother.  I snapped my own picture of it.  I wanted to know more about this moment.  I suddenly knew that if my journey searching for my aunt's story would come to fruition in a book/screenplay or movie this scene had to be in it.  I want to see this frame reincarnate on screen.  This single frame held so much within it.  I want to convey that emotion and allure.  Interestingly enough, the photo that both my sister and I carried of our aunt during the SOA protest is from this same day.  She's wearing the same dress.  I've also seen other pictures of my mother in this blouse.  I never knew it was from the same day.  Suddenly I had a behind-the-scenes glimpse of these women and their interactions beyond their familiar posed portraits.

This is the way my mother remembers my Tía Nordia.  This is how she was when she left her.  Before she cut her hair, before the weight of the war was really etched in her face.  As my mother was heading to the US to study, her sister gave her photo of herself to remember her.  It was the photo taken from this same day of the group picture.  I knew already I was interested in exploring that good-bye. I want to show that painful handing off of the photo, the same photo that would find its way to the gates of Fort Benning.  Now I know I must also recreate the moment of taking that picture in the first place.

I feel truly blessed to uncover such a special picture and really hope to take advantage of this discovery and put some meaning behind it.  I know I traveled to Nicaragua to visit my family, but I feel finding this photo was part of my purpose from coming.  It has given me a renewed interest in this journey, to finding the personal side of this terrible part of history.  I aim to understand the story better and I will strive to do it justice.  It is impressive what the power of a single frame can do.

Comprehension

So I've come to the realization that I need:

1) a more comprehensive plan to approach this project, and 
2) better overall Spanish-language comprehension.

I have several books and movies to explore but I haven't really figured out my plan of attack to get through them.  I may have started with the hardest resource first, which slowed me down.  After embarking on a frustrated google search after some teasing from a co-worker, I indadvertedly discovered a blog in memory of all those who died during the Nicaraguan Revolution at Hill 110.  This includes my aunt.  I suddenly had before me more specifics surrounding her death than I ever had before and became increasingly interested in learning more.  This led to several follow-up questions to my mother and other relatives.  The blog is not updated that often but I would peruse its pages searching for any mention of my aunt.  The name Nordia only appears among lists of the dead.  One day I noticed the blog referred to a book that was published that chronicles the final days of those involved in the battle on this hill.  It became my mission to find a copy for myself.

It turns out the book is not available for online ordering and isn't for sale anywhere within the United States.  There is no digital copy I can access.  Using the World Catalog I was able to locate libraries that held a copy, which were mostly universities.  The closest thing to me was Stanford or Berkeley. I applied for a library card at the Burbank Public Library and requested an inter-library loan to get this book.  Stanford said they couldn't find it but Berkeley was going to send it.  Weeks passed.  I waited for over a month or two.  Finally Burbank gave up and went to the Library of Congress.  Eventually the book came my way and I made sure to photocopy each of its 104 pages to keep it with me always.

Since this book deals precisely with the victims of Hill 110 and not just the overall revolution, I put it at the top of my priorities.  However, the challenge is that it is written entirely in Spanish and I haven't really exercised serious reading-comprehension skills since my junior year at South Hills High School in 2000.  I figured with my basic Spanish and a little help from Google Translate, I should get by somewhat okay.

I was dismantled by the first sentence.

La Dirección de Patrimonio Histórico de la Alcaldía de Managua, se complace en presentar la primera edición del libro "Colina 110 Insurrección Los Laureles y Masacre GN", del autor Arnulfo Agüero Aguilar.

The word that stumped me was "alcaldía" so I looked it up.  Google Translate defined it as "mayoralty." I didn't expect to be confused by the English word as well.  I had to look up the English meaning. How could I not understand the English?!  Apparently they both just mean office of the mayor.  Why did it have to be that complicated? I pretty much surrendered after that first sentence and lost my momentum.  This was not a good way to start.

I've decided I really need to work on my Spanish skills more seriously than before as well as develop a program to keep myself in line to push through all the material I have.  I thought starting a blog would keep me publicly accountable, but apparently I'm not much of a blogger after all.