Projects
About
Contact
Hernández is a first-generation Salvadoran American photographer of Nahua descent from Los Angeles, California. Trained initially as a historian, he earned his B.A. in History, Cum Laude, at the University of Nebraska. While at Nebraska, Hernández wrote his honors thesis on La Matanza of 1932, one of El Salvador and modern history’s most violent episodes in the 20th Century. Through the framework of ethnicity, race and social class, his thesis explored the concepts of anti-Indian and anti-communist sentiments along with the genocide against the indigenous communities of Western El Salvador. Further, his work scrutinized the concept of mestizaje as an instrument for cultural and social control in the nation-building process of the country. Subsequently, he moved on to earn his M.A. in History at Texas Christian University (TCU). He earned a Graduate Teaching Fellowship at TCU to continue studying La Matanza. Hernández was awarded the Boller-Worcester Research grant to travel to El Salvador for research in 2013. While at TCU, he participated in an assortment of oral history projects throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, documenting the labor and civil rights movement from the Black and Latino perspectives. His specialty includes El Salvador along with U.S. Latino/Borderlands history. He is self-taught photographer, picking up his first camera while in journalism class at Marina Del Rey Junior High in Los Angeles. His creative process involves examining primary archival sources and secondary literary sources in efforts to shape context and to recover historical memory. He bases his paradigm on visual ethnography seeking to understand how his subjects understand the world through their perspective. In all, Hernández seeks to define the emblem of the Salvadoran experience––a multifaceted undertaking despite the small territory––through his written and visual work along with creating works that empower Salvadoran culture and identity.
Gear Used
Fujifilm X-T30 I
Fujifilm X-T5
iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 16 Pro Max
“In the shadows of Aquino (2024)”
In January 1833, after many years of abuse, negligence, and despotic plantation working condition, an indigenous Nonualco worker by the name of Anastasio Aquino initiated a rebellion against the hancendados (elite land owners) of the Jiboa Valley. Considered one of the most fertile places in the entire territory, Spanish colonizers exploited the Jiboa Valley for an agricultural economy grounded on cotton, sugar cane and most importantly indigo. Inextricably intertwined to the colonial economy, included a debt peonage system that kept both indigenous and mestizo laborers knotted to the plantations. The hacienda system was imperative to both the Spanish colonial economy and political systems, serving as a primoridial company town that offered schooling to those who were fortunate, company stores along with religious and spritual services through the Catholic Church. Anastasio Aquino became indignant with the hacienda system, with the unjustified arrest of his brother being the catalyst, culminating in organizing hundreds of Nonoualco and mestizo workers to overthrow the elite criollo (Spanish) landowners. His rebellion was triumphant taking siege and holding power in present-day department of La Paz and San Vicente, in central El Salvador.