Fragments

Sometimes you hit blank walls. The mid- to late- twentieth-century archives here are of notoriously mottled quality, and sometimes all you can find are tiny fragments, a notecard or a loose sheet alluding to some now-hazy event. Too often the information you want is simply gone, torn away, discarded, unrecorded. Even when there is a richness of documents, it can be near impossible to piece together the original picture. Even after last week's breakthroughs, I wonder whether I will ever really feel as though I understand the story I am telling.

(Last week's incredible experience discussed here: http://todoescuautitlan.blogspot.com/2010/07/historia-viva.html)