Hernandez - All They Will Call You

It began with a job I landed back in 2001. I was hired to travel into the rural parts of the San Joaquin Valley to meet with various communities and listen to their stories. As part of the job my supervisor required I submit weekly write-upssnapshots of people Id met, or stories Id heard along the way. The problem was that I was a terrible notetaker, and by the end of each day Id heard so many stories that Id forgotten most of them. I needed a way to remember the details. It was for this reason that I bought a handheld audio recorder.

Around that time, my grandfather, an aged campesino, was admitted into the hospital. Fearing the old mans time was up, I went to visit him that day. When I arrived I found him asleep in a dim, cold room, alone. As he slept, I felt emboldened and got physically close to him in a way I never had before. I leaned in and observed his face, marveling at the toughness of his dark flesh, the way his eyelids appeared like sheets of leather draped above his high cheekbones, and how breath skidded in and out of his slightly parted lips. It was in that moment, while observing my grandfather, that a thought occurred to me. This old man, to whose seed I owed my existence, was the last living grandparent I had. He was the single thread connecting me to my past. I was floored by this realization. Beyond the fact that he was born in Brownsville, Texas, and had been a migrant farmworker since the age of ten, I knew very little. Surely he was more than just the stern-faced Tejano who would criticize us grandchildren for not speaking fluent Spanish. He was living history. And the details of his life were suddenly a matter of urgency. In that moment, alone with my grandfather, I pulled my recorder out and decided Id wait there until he woke.

Thirty minutes passed before he began to stir. With both eyes shut, he reached for the IV on his wrist and gave it a tug. He scratched at the stubble on his face, and then, as if sensing my presence, opened his eyes. He found me sitting at the edge of his bed. Mijo, he whispered. His voice was gravelly. I handed him a cup of water. He took a drink. His hand trembled. Qu haces aqui? He was surprised to see me. I didnt bother with pleasantries. I wanna hear about your life, Grandpa, I said. He stared at me with a blank expression, unsure if I was being serious. It was an unusual request. But then he responded, in English, as if hed been waiting for suchan opportunity. Okay, he said, placing his cup on the bedside table. He scratched at his chin again. I have some things I want to tell you

What followed were not the details of my grandfather that a person would ever find in hospital files, on his birth certificate, or in any hall of records. No, these were the rememberings that by the old campesinos understanding made up the very core of who he was, his DNA in testimony. It was there, in that quiet, dim hospital room, clutching my small audio recorder with its tiny red light on, listening to my grandfather speak, that I went from using the recorder for its practicality to transforming it into a tool for gathering stories. Or rather, as a way to ensure that certain stories were never lost.

It is in this spirit that the telling of the plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, and how the song of the same namewhich carried its message the world overhas been uncovered after nearly seven decades. While the telling itself is true, its loyalty is not to people of fact but rather to people of memory. Which is to say, all of us. In this way, its inevitable that some rememberings will contradict other rememberings. If several people witness the same tragedy and offer opposing accounts, whose version is the most accurate? In this case, perception is truth. And how reliable is fact anyway when the official documents themselves have been proven incorrect, beginning with the names of the passengers? Officialness too has its inconsistencies. To stumble upon a plane crash is to stumble upon the fragmented and broken shards of stories, and to have faith that from these clues our own glaring humanity offers enough light to fill in the unknown. The facts of what occurred on that day are not, nor have they ever been, the purpose of this book. This telling is not interested in the calculable details, but rather the testimonies themselves, from the people whose lives were touched directly in incalculable ways. How a tragedy and a song had a profound and lasting effect on the people who lived it. And though memorys propeller turns with embellishment, guesswork, and even reimaginings, this telling is rooted in years of investigation and interviews with the surviving families and friends I was successful in locatinga search that required traveling six decades back in time, to numerous cities, ranchos, and barrios, in three countries, three languages, with limited resources, and only a single shred of old newspaper as the clue. In the end, of the thirty-two passengers reported to be on that airplane, I managed to locate the families of seven. But as youll find, the total number of lives changed on that cold winter morning of January 28, 1948, was far greater.