Tacaná is a small border town in the high mountains of Guatemala. In Mam, mayan language spoken in the region, Tacaná means “fire inside the house”.

Antonio started this project three years ago, when he metaphorically met my grandfather. He never had any reference from him. His family accidentally revealed him a secret: his grandfather was exiled in Mexico. He has fled from Tacaná, his hometown, due to his political involvement during the Ubiquista dictatorship in Guatemala from 1931 to 1944.

Why was the dictatorship persecuting him?
What kind of violence did my grandfather face?
Why was his identity document disrupted, the only one which is archived in the guatemalan official records, so that he can no longer be identified?
Thinking differently can be the trigger that starts the repressive apparatus of the State to systematically eliminate my grandfather?
Also to envelop everything around him in a cloud of fear and darkness?

Tacaná emerges from Antonio’s personal need to explore through a photographical perspective, what is idealized and the self-censorship of memory to evoke a story that after 80 years refuses to be told: the brutality of dictatorship and exile.

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