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My Design Fundamentals class at SCC last fall pushed me to find out about my uncle. I knew the story, at least at the time I thought I knew the story. During my research and investigation I found out that I really didn't know anything at all. In fact, I was rather oblivious to everything.

My art teacher assigned us a final project: to create a series of work (at least 3), which tied together. The theme could be anything we wanted. At first I had absolutely no idea what to do. I worked on an abstract charcoal series, but found it to be more of an exploration than anything else. Finally I decided after looking through some of my mother's old photographs that I would do a series on my uncle: he has the most amazing eyes.

When I told my mother what I was doing she gave me a manila envelope containing scraps of old newspapers, old photographs of the family, and various other documents that related to my uncle's disappearance. I had never seen any of these things. I didn't know that my mother had written to congressmen about her brother's situation. I didn't know that after my uncle's disappearance my grandmother's house had been raided by La Guardia. I didn't know.

And it was when I was reading a large feature on my mother and uncle in the Davis Enterprise that a sudden sense of despair and sadness hit me.

Initially, three men grabbed Vargas as he walked along the street, witnesses related. When he resisted the others joined the trio, and the men began hitting him with the butts of their guns.
They tied Vargas' hands behind his back, gagged him and three him inside the van, then drove away. - The Davis Enterprise

It may have been the feature's cartoon depictions or the manner in which the article was written, but I was suddenly stung with the harsh reality of things: my uncle was gone. I may have never met him, but he was a person. And we shared the same blood. Perhaps that's what got me, the realization that not only was he real, but he was also my mother's brother.

At first I started compiling a book of dates and facts. Visually mapping out the actions of my mother's family and also important dates during the war. I immersed myself in the time period trying to understand.

I'm still trying to understand. I listen to stories that my mom tells about her brothers and sister. I'm trying to find out who he is.

Imagine

You're thirty-one-years-old, a successful doctor El Salvador. It's December and you're glad to be off work to go do some Christmas shopping. You cross the street. You think about what you'll get each of siblings. You smile at a few people passing, but otherwise seem absorbed in your thoughts. You don't even notice the group of men holding machine guns, afterall they're as common on the streets now as stray dogs. And then everything changes.

Three men have surrounded you. Before you know it they've secured your arms behind your back tightly. You struggle, dropping your medical bag. Another man walks over. You keep resisting.

The last thing you see is the butt of a an M-16.

People from your office and those who witnessed this abduction later tell your family that the men continued to beat you until they were positive you wouldn't get up. Your family learned that these men bound your hands and legs, gagging you so when you awoke you wouldn't be able to call out. How many people watched as they tossed you in the back of a truck, like a bag of garbage, before driving off? Regardless, every single person looked down and kept walking, praying that next time it wouldn't be them or one of their loved ones.

The people you love don't know where you are. They try desperately to find out the answer to the biggest question of all: why? Why would they have taken you away? Government officials are contacted, as friends and family search for you. But you're gone. We don't know where you are, we just pray - and hope. And after twenty-five years, we still hope that somewhere you're alive, that you're safe, and that someday you'll come home.

You've become one of the desaparecidos, the dissapeared. A collective group that were abducted during the Cold War throughout Central and South America during times of revolutions and civil unrest.

Carlos Vargas is part of this group. He was adbucted in December of 1981. This blog is about him; about me finding out about him. This is about a man and his family. It's also about a time period many people have forgotten and which few will ever forget. This is about a girl finding out why she never had the chance to meet her uncle.