Sofía Alas Morán
Displaced
Prompt: The project involved picking a site with a history of displacement and creating a layered map that uncovered the stories and histories that were hidden or forgotten about that place. The goal was to go beyond a traditional map and use mapping as a research tool that showed multiple perspectives and how the place changed over time. The final result was a map that challenged the official history of the site and brought attention to the people and things that were left out.
This piece maps displacement across El Salvador caused by gang violence, a cycle born from Civil War displacement. The entire country is rendered as wounded, scarred skin. Bold ink marks represent how MS- 13 and Barrio 18 branded the landscape through territorial control. Glass shards mark sites of massacre and peak violence. Red thread represents displaced lives: families fleeing extortion, youth avoiding forced recruitment, communities destroyed. The thread breaks the frame because displacement radiates outward into diaspora, into cycles that never end.