Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
Luis was sixty eight years old. Originally from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, he had lived in the United States for decades, building a life in New Jersey and working as a painter and in construction. To his family, he was a father and grandfather, someone who called across distance, visited when he could, and loved watching his six grandchildren open the Christmas gifts he had chosen for them.
His daughter remembered him through ordinary, tender things: the meals she cooked for him, the baleadas he liked, and his love of soccer, especially the Honduran team Marathón. These are the details that make a life whole. Not a case number. Not a press release. A man with favorite foods, favorite teams, children, grandchildren, and people waiting for him to come home.
After he was detained by ICE, Luis was transferred to the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in California. Within days, he told his family he was vomiting and having pain in his stomach and chest. Later, he said he was tired when he walked and short of breath. His daughter urged him to ask for medical help, but by the time she learned he had been taken to the hospital, he had already died.
His family did not get the chance to say goodbye. His daughter said she wished they had been told he was hospitalized so they could have been with him at the end. Instead, Luis died far from them, in custody, after weeks of telling them he did not feel well. This portrait is for the life that existed before that loss: for the father, the grandfather, the worker, the soccer fan, the man who should have been held by his family, not remembered through the circumstances of his death.
For the clearest detail and strongest finished piece, I recommend using cardstock and a cutting machine. (Check your local LIBRARY for one in their “Maker Spaces”) Cardstock provides the stability needed to hold the fine lines and structure of the design. You can download the black and white image directly from this site or access the full set on the Cricut website under the What Remains Collection. These templates are free to use for personal and community projects, but they may not be sold or used for commercial purposes.
To download the PNG file, click on the black and white image, open a new page and right click to save on to your computer. Alternately, you can visit the collection page on the Cricut website for all the files here.