Tacaná
by Antonio Rodriguez
portfolio special mention call 'URBANAUTICA INSTITUTE AWARDS 2020', 2020
Category: Memories and Traditions
Tacaná is a small border town in the high mountains of Guatemala. It means “fire inside the house” in Mam, mayan language spoken in the region. Three years ago I metaphorically met my grandfather. I never had any reference from him. A familial secret was accidentally revealed to me: my grandfather was exiled in Mexico. He has fled from Tacaná, his hometown, due to his political involvement during the Ubiquista dictatorship in Guatemala 1931-44. Why was the dictatorship persecuting him? What kind of violence did my grandfather face? Why was his identity document disrupted, the only one which is preserved in the Guatemalan official records? What did the repressive apparatus of the State set in motion to depoliticize his existence, also to envelop with impunity everything around him in a cloud of fear and darkness? Those questions never were answered but also they led me to start the project Tacaná, a personal need to explore through a photographical perspective, what is idealized and the self-censorship of memory to evoke a story that refuses to be told: the brutality of dictatorship and exile.
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Categories:
-Representation of Conflicts
-Memories and Traditions
-Anthropology and Territories