For the past three years, college history professor Joe Alvarez has been restoring headstones at the San Fernando cemeteries to honor those he calls 'los olvidados,' the forgotten ones.
A 2019 image of the grave marker for Adalberta Amaya at San Fernando Cemetery No. 2, which inspired San Antonio college history professor Joe Alvarez to clean and chronicle grave markers for his Instagram account, @sanfernando2stories.It's a sunny afternoon at San Fernando Cemetery No. 2 as Joe Alvarez points out the occasional shimmering white headstone among the many dark and weathered markers of the West Side burial ground's oldest graves.
It’s a private mission some may call a perpetual Día de los Muertos, the upcoming Mexican holiday that celebrates the lives of lost loved ones with colorful altars and sugar skulls, lots of food and drink and even picnic-like visits to their final resting places. A headstone for Helen Pearl Zepeda is pictured in San Fernando Cemetery No. 2, one of hundreds of headstones that San Antonio college history professor Joe Alvarez has cleaned and shared stories about on his Instagram account, @sanfernando2stories.Since launching @sanfernando2stories in 2019, Alvarez estimates he’s cleaned and researched more than 1,000 grave markers.
“I think for every story I do the cleaning is the easy part,” he said. “Each story takes at least four to five hours, but I enjoy doing the research.” Her short life and accompanying photo struck a chord with the historian, so he took a photo of the marker and searched for Amaya online. There he uncovered her fate with the headline, “S.A. Woman Dies From Burns.”
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