Nicaragua Portraits

This portfolio documents my rediscovery of a place I left behind.

It is March 30, 2006 and I am sitting in my seat on the plane uncomfortably. My hands are sweating and I can’t stop wondering what I was thinking the day I booked my ticket to Nicaragua. I was born there. I grew up there. However, at this moment, I calculate that I have not stepped on Nicaraguan soil since I left, illegally, almost seventeen years ago.

Back then, Nicaragua was very different from what it is now. The Sandinistas party was in power, and the conflict between government forces and a group of rebels, known as the Contras, was still lurking. To escape political oppression, my family started a plan to move to the United States. My mom was pregnant at the time. I was the oldest of soon to be five kids and, at 18 years old, I was the only one not allowed to leave the country. My age required me to enlist in the military to fight for the Sandinistas. My dad and one of my brothers left first and I remained in Managua with my mom and the rest of my siblings. In April 1989, after considering what my future held in Nicaragua, I decided to escape. I accomplished this by crossing the northern border of my country, a war zone at the time, into Honduras, where I met my dad and brother. Eventually we all reunited in Miami and began a new life. I left Nicaragua without saying goodbye to anyone, not a word to friends or family. I just vanished. We thought it was safest that way.

On March 30, 2006, my cousin Guillermo picked me up from the airport and we drove to Masaya, half an hour from the capital Managua where he lives and where I would be staying during most of my visit. I clearly remember laying on the bed of the spare room that night. I had no idea what to expect. I had such strong feelings of apprehension about reconnecting with my old neighborhood and the friends and places I left behind. I originally planned to stay one week, then during my first night, I seriously considered leaving the next day. There were so many feelings left unresolved. In the days that followed I came to discover that my anxiety was unfounded and, in the end, I stayed for a little more than two weeks. When I left, the feeling of apprehension had vanished and the feeling that I had left with was about when I would return.

The pictures in this portfolio represent a small fraction of my encounter with my birth country and the family and places I have almost lost sight of during the past seventeen years. Everything had changed so much that most places were difficult to recognize. I passed by my old house where I grew up and where my uncle now lives without noticing that it was my old house. I visited the town of Granada, where I was born, and the small Village of San Miguelito, where my father and his family were born. The images are mostly portraits of my family and the things I saw in these places where they live. Some of the pictures are of family members I had never met before while others are of individuals that have known my family for years. Some of them were even able to recognize my dad’s expression in my face. These family members and friends were very ecstatic to see me and share their lives with me. It was a great experience.