I have been on a life-long journey exploring and defining my own culture and identity and what it means to be Salvadoran, along with deconstructing this concept. With such, I formally introduce you La ultima de los nonualcos (The Last of the Nonualcos). The Nonualcos are what make up my ancestral bloodline, on my father and grandfather’s side. We are a people of volcanic and kindled origins where we have traversed the dense verdant mountainsides, valleys and rivers—of what is now central El Salvador—stewarding our lands since time and memorial.  

This project documents the many years spent with my great aunt, Tía Genovina, my grandfather’s oldest sister. As an indigenous woman born in the early 20th century, she did not learn how to read or write, as oral traditions were passed down to her from our ancestors. This was customary for many indigenous women of her generation in El Salvador. Thus, this was an imperative calling for a historian and photographer as myself to document her stories and wisdom utilizing an oral history paradigm ( I thank my graduate school colleagues and advisor Max Krochmal for teaching me the ropes). Not only do I want to make this a piece of family history but want to position this work within the milieu of Salvadoran national history. This work will ultimately contribute to a visual ethnographic body of El Salvador more specifically, the central El Salvador region in the hamlet of Comalapa, La Paz, El Salvador. Marked by the Iztepeque (San Vicente) volcano, Jiboa Valley and humid coastal plains that stretches South to the warm waters of the Central American Pacific Ocean.