Once Twice

Having spent all their money on their son Ricardo’s college education—only to have him go off to Papua New Guinea on a rescue mission of planetary proportions, Juan and Maria Lopez now faced bankruptcy. With the future of their other four children in the balance, the couple had no other choice but to put up 5,000 hectares of ancestral land for bidding in the town’s annual land auction. They wanted to hate their eldest child, but could not do so. They wanted to him to feel the anger of generations as much as they wanted to protect him from it. This was simply how things were.