Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Destruccion por un remolino del aire Xocomeel del Lago Atitlán / Destruction from a Vortex of the Xocomil Winds around Lake Atitlán (detail), 2014, oil on canvas
The offer to help document a shared existence that transcends geographic, physical, and spiritual borders felt like a call to action—an opportunity to lift voices, or rather to allow the stories we tell about ourselves to shine brighter. . . . As you will read in these narratives and hear in these interviews, we are never in the margins of our own stories. —Jennifer De Leon
Influences from Latin American culture are still present in my family, and we find ways to reconnect with the Mexican part of our identity. . . . This portfolio is, among other things, a way for people like me to better understand the system of diaspora that led our families to move to new countries and form new cultures. —Ben Black
While there are pieces centered on cultural loss (the fact that the portfolio was almost entirely written in English is evidence of this), there is a reclamation of identity that takes readers beyond the U.S.–Mexico border and into the mercurial neighborhoods of El Salvador, the mythological underworld of the Aztecs, and the uncertain school grounds of a Panamanian landscape as lush as it is volatile. —Esteban Rodríguez