More Connections

Victor 'Cuba' Hernandez

I first met Victor Hernandez on December 26, 2011. I was driving north on US 285 toward the Colorado border. I turned east onto the Taos Plateau toward a cleft between two rocky hills. A figure came walking toward me. He greeted me in Spanish, his only language it turns out. I responded in kind, and we shook hands.

Victor told me he fled Cuba in 1965 and had been herding sheep for Alfonzo Abeyta since 1975. He said he had commandeered a boat with a big pistola after escaping prison. He and his compañeros fled to Florida where they picked oranges. Then three of them got jobs tending sheep in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. He told me was born in Santa Clara just outside Havana though the map shows Santa Clara in the center of Cuba nearly 300 miles east of Havana.

I asked Victor how many sheep he was herding on that December day. He told me, “600.” Later I learned that it was 375 and that Victor couldn’t read, write or count. Moreover, he didn’t let facts get in the way of a good story.

As I spoke with Victor the skittish sheep spread out up the cerro, chomping on sage and eating snow to quench their thirst. First I photographed Victor on the flats near his metal campo or then walked up to the herd on the hill. When I walked back down to Victor’s campo a pick-up truck arrived with firewood and stores for the week. A stocky gentleman in his seventies named Alfonzo Abeyta asked, “What are you doing here?” There was distrust in his eyes. I told him I had seen the sheep from the road and came to take a look, that I was a photographer from Taos and was fascinated by the scene of Victor and the sheep on the plateau and by Victor’s movie worthy backstory. Alfonzo referred to Victor as the Cubano or Cuba.

I went on to post several blog entries and two magazine articles about the Abeyta’s timeless story of family, faith and life from the land. I hoped to understand the magnetic pull of that hard life and followed Cuba and the sheep for the next six years. I wanted to understand their timeless story of family, faith and the land.  Thirteen years later I appreciate even more their unbreakable connection to Mother Earth but am no closer to understanding it.

James Iso

In August 2014 I attended the pilgrimage at the Heart Mountain Internment Camp near Cody, Wyoming. I wasn’t sure how appropriate it would be for a non-Japanese to attend an event. But the historic site’s executive director told me, ”It’s absolutely appropriate.”

And it was and much more.

The participants in the pilgrimage were as impressive a group as I’ve ever encountered. From elderly former internees to their great grandchildren, they were energetic, warm, accomplished people to a person. Somehow those qualities underscore how tragic and indefensible the imprisonment of 110,000 Japanese Americans was.

At the opening dinner I was seated with Ron Akin, the Veterans Affairs Commissioner in Wyoming along with two former internees including James Iso of Roseville, California. During the evening’s presentation I overheard Commissioner Akin tell someone at the table that Mr. Iso had served in all three wars. That would mean WWll, Korea and Viet Nam.

The next morning I met James Iso. Our conversation went something like this.

I told him, “I overheard at dinner last night that you served in World War Two, Korea and Viet Nam. Is that even possible?”

He replied, “Absolutely, not always in uniform but always in the military.” 

Mr. Iso went on to say, “We shortened the war by two years. Everybody knows about the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team but some of us served in other ways. We translated Japanese communications, broke their codes and planted misleading information. In one case our forces won a major battle when the Japanese commander acted on the false intelligence we created.”

I asked him how old he was. He answered, “I’m eighty.” I was incredulous because James Iso was not eighty years old by any subjective measure. He was bright-eyed, engaged, smart and incredibly charming. The term “role model” is bandied around indiscriminately but James Iso was one. I was in awe of the man.