THE MOST FAITHFUL

I got the name of this series from the nickname Spain gave the island of Cuba back in the 1820s. "La Siempre Fidelisima Isla", which literally means "The Always Most Faithful Island", is an appropriate nickname still to this day (not to mention, ironic considering it was ruled by Fidel for over half a century). Cuba is a wonderfully complicated place on the brink of change which reminds me of my childhood, growing up in Honduras in the 1970s. A foreign place to me today - Honduras has become unsafe, contaminated by crime and lawlessness. This series is the beginning of a larger exploration on what it felt like growing up in Latin America. The immigrant experience is peculiar in the sense that one yearns to return to a distant place that exists only in our memories. Familiar. Warm. Safe. Very much missed, but fundamentally, a different home.