Their Names Were the Same as My Neighbors’

It was a typical morning. A young man carefully inspected the carrying case for his precious

Misen Chef Knives before leaving for work. A woman placed her lunch in her handbag and checked to see if it was her. METROCARD was in its side pocket. A middle-aged man smiled as he studied his knotted tie in the mirror, a technique he had never mastered, yet on this day it was almost perfect.

A grandmother prepared breakfast for her husband and two adopted

grandchildren. He showered for his job as a janitor in Tower II. The

children looked for their school backpacks.

A young bride moaned as her husband kissed the Scorpion tattoo on

her left shoulder. He asked repeatedly that she call-in sick.

A distinguished-looking man checked his watch before boarding the

train from Morristown to Lower Manhattan He smiled as he mentally

counted down the forty-five days until his retirement.

Several firemen wolfed down fresh rolls, scrambled eggs and bacon

before their early morning inspection of corner fire plugs that were

frequently vandalized.

Traders studied overnight trends and responded to future market

activities in the Hong Kong, Paris and London exchanges over cups

of hot coNee.Two brothers celebrated their jobs as sous chefs at the tallest

restaurant in the United States and began making final preparations

for a private breakfast gathering of one hundred early morning

guests.

A woman hesitated to phone her sister who would be on the subway

She had forgotten to give her the list of groceries they needed for

tonight’s supper with visiting friends.

It was a typical morning.

Within hours everything changed. The assumed sense of national

and personal security we all had grown to expect from our leaders

was gone.

A week after 9-11, a friend who lived in the Village called me with a

story from her neighbor next door. This neighbor related that his

girlfriend, working for a Japanese news service, had witnessed

Hispanic and African family members being detained, arrested or

denied entrance when they arrived at the pier on the Hudson River

that served as The ONicial Missing Person Information Center. This

was not a story any national nor foreign news networks wanted to

cover because any negativism would be considered unpatriotic at

this time of uncertainty.

A plan developed. The solution was for a San Antonio publication to

assign me as a stringer. With my experience in digital file transfer

and the Internet, I could get this story to services that might want to

dig deeper. When I approached Tino Duran, owner of La Prensa, he,

Minnie, and his son Steve agreed. They designed and created a laminated press ID card with my photo and his signature that

designated me as an official La Prensa photographer. I arrived in

New York with a SONY Mavica camera and two boxes of 20 3-inch

floppy disks.

Upon my arrival, my request for the required NYC local press

credentials with NYPD and Federal agents were not successful. La

Prensa did not appear on their lists as an official journalist

publication; only as a social, cultural, neighborhood newspaper. I

was denied entrance to gated police areas surrounding Ground Zero

and the official family reunification sites.

During the following days I wandered through Lower Manhattan still

coated in deep dust, and began to study the thousands of

handwritten, xeroxed, and printed flyers posted on any available

surfaces. On street signs, telephone poles, bus stops, mailboxes,

dumpsters, fences, and windows, families had placed appeals

pleading for information about their missing loved ones. Every

posting triggered imagined scenarios of each missing person and

those moments when it still was a typical morning.

Names jumped from flyers to my eyes as I begin to see the great

number of names that were similar to those of my family and my

neighbors in San Antonio. Were these long-lost cousins, extended

family connections, the children or grandchildren of brothers,

sisters or cousins related to my grandparents? Were those distant

relatives?

When I returned to San Antonio, La Prensa devoted a centerfold

spread of images from the collection. Centro Cultural Aztlan

included a looped video sequence embedded into an altar for the2002 Dia De Los Muertos exhibition in their gallery and Elaine Ayala

did a special on-line presentation of selected images for the 20th

Anniversary of 9-11. Today, at this benchmark of twenty-five years,

with the assault on Latino contributions and presence in the cultural

landscape of this country, we share these sixteen photos with you.

Beautiful people with beautiful names.

It was a typical morning.