For the first time, some weeks ago, I walked the Black Heritage Trail to record footage for Historias de Boston. Thoughts of heritage, history, and above all the ceaseless movement of people (here I mean folks of color) from one setting of Home to the next drew me into a sweaty (it was above 80 degrees), troubled haze. Gentrification surely characterizes the recursive condition of displacement so many folks encounter in Boston and elsewhere. But the word, one that tends to be thrown around without vigor, like a lumpy couch pillow, misses a less scrutable happening. A word so draped in sociologicalness, gentrification makes cold what to me seems as hot as bloodstreams. Historicized interpretations and reason present the (lower-cased) history of a place seem so petrified and museumicized when the matter of losing one's sense of home seems so vividly human and sad.

The Charlestown Navy Yard and its tall neighbor the Bunker Hill Monument mean nothing to me. My parents' parents' parents' parents' parents (...) were most likely nowhere near the original Puritan colonies when the men at Bunker Hill defended whatever they took to mean freedom. The Navy Yard, which seems to have a historical collection of ships, docks, and History, can't hold a candle to Melville's Pequod, the latter depicted by its interpreter as much more than a vessel, much more than a symbol of American Patriotism, and filled with all walks of American life (and by American I don't just mean White Puritans though there were a few notable ones). When I think of seafaring battles and nautical militaryness I think of the many, many young high schoolers (like myself back when) that were visited by Army or Navy recruiters during lunch and promised signing bonuses and a better rank because of our ASVAB scores. I think of the military as presented as a decent way to get somewhere in life for the many of us that didn't have many possible somewheres. And I think that if it's such a good deal then why do so many black and brown faces enlist their lives to the cause of Nationhood when so many of the pearly and wealthy don't when it's their idea of Nationhood this Nation cares most about it.

In about a week I will venture to the Harbor Islands off the edge of Boston for yet another first encounter with History. I will wonder whether those shrinking lands are mine, whether the history I will be told is my history, knowing well that by asking such questions I'm expressing an implicit doubt. They might very well be. My parents are Mexico-born and I'm Texas-born, but I'm no stranger to these Massachusetts Bay streets and I've been through this country's many airports and cities, seen some of its horror and some of its beauty. The History that lives around here might very well have a home in my mind and heart. It might very well run through my blood. Indeed, I do hurt when I think about this country's past, the hurt it's encountered. Yet why do I feel so uncertain about its relationship to me? It might do with the largely White lives and backgrounds of its uniformed interpreters (not to mention this country's so-called leaders). It might, it just might. — But I consider this perspective limiting, if not always being proved wrong (in the best of ways) and boring (in the most defeating of ways). I find it comes down to the vacuous stories empty of people (and not a token person or some statue destined to be taken down but people, lots of them, all of us). I think of the lines of thought and questions cut and left like orphans to float on a merciless sea, the sea of this American History.

Agency: National Park Service

Program: Latino Heritage Internship Program (LHIP)

Location: National Parks of Boston