Last Train Out with Ana Parra: Memories without borders

At the beginning of 2025, Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio put out a new album, “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.” Benito, known to most folks as Bad Bunny, did something magical in his new album, weaving in lines about breakups and clubbing with a melancholy, but joyous, tribute to his home, Puerto Rico.  

It only took one listen to know the album was a masterpiece. As soon as I played it, I knew that it would be canon, for not only Latin American music, but all music. It took me on a whirlwind emotional ride - one moment I was dancing while listening to “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” and the next moment, I was crying to the titular song, “DtMF.” 

But I’m not a music critic. I’m a writer who tells stories and one of my favorites is my parents' love story. Growing up, one of my favorite pastimes was sitting down in my parents’ closet and going through plastic bins of pictures and letters. The letters were love letters from my father to my mother. Letters from a newly arrived immigrant to New York City written to his fiancé in her small town of Rionegro, Antioquia in Colombia as he counted down the days until they would meet again. There were other letters, dated after my parents were married and my father had to return to Colombia without his wife and infant son, who remained in the States. Those letters were filled with worry for a young family living in limbo, unsure of what the future would look like and where it would be.  

While I love words the most, the pictures were my favorite. My parents in bell bottoms, reunited when my mother arrived in the United States. The young family reunited when my father returned from Colombia. The young family in 1970s New York -- a handsome husband with his dark, wavy, full head of hair and beautiful wife with her long, waist-length hair. All smiles in their small apartment. All smiles at friend’s houses, dancing with fellow new New Yorkers. All smiles holding their first child with no idea of what is to come. 

There were more pictures in that bin. Eventually two more daughters came along. One of them, with a pair of drooping cheeks (that would be me). And, while I loved seeing baby me, I loved the young family the most. Maybe it was the sepia tones, or the fashion, or those naive smiles, but the pictures made me nostalgic for a time before I was even born. I understood the hope my parents felt at that moment when they left their homeland for a brighter future, and I felt the warmth of the gift they wanted to give us, something beyond what they could even imagine in that instant when the flash went off. Their audacity came through in every snapshot and it made me feel as brave as those two young lovebirds in the picture. 

“Debi Tirar Mas Fotos” means “I Should’ve Taken More Pictures.” The pictures Bad Bunny speaks about are of the people he loved. He sings about how he should have hugged them more often and given them more kisses. After the album was released, people made their own tributes on social media, posting pictures of the loved ones they had lost. Many of the people posting were children of immigrants or immigrants themselves and while my parents are still alive, it reminded me of the pictures of my immigrant parents. The pictures I loved so much as a child.  

The song and the album are ultimately about memories, both those we can see and touch in pictures and also a collective memory that has written stories for so many of us. It’s a story about the loss of your homeland and family and also one of forming a new community while holding onto your roots. 

Lately, thanks to Benito and the Internet tributes, I have felt the weight of that collective memory as I move through my day. The feeling has been floating around me like a storm cloud in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Unlike Daffy Duck or Yosemite Sam, I welcome my cloud to stay. I want it to take me to 1970s New York to see two young people, in love, posing for a picture and ready to write their story. I want to feel the warmth they feel and tell them that what they are creating is a masterpiece. 

Contributor Ana Parra is an executive for CommunityWorks, a nonprofit loan funder committed to financial equity. She lives in Greenville with her husband Ian and has two sons. A proud daughter of immigrants, Ana says she believes storytelling and listening to stories is how we learn to value everyone and create community.