Projects /
LopezDuarte.org
A bilingual family archive — tracing the López Duarte family's route from Ario de Rosales, Michoacán, through Tijuana, to San Diego.
What it is
LopezDuarte.org is a family archive, in Spanish and English — the two languages the family actually talks in. It holds the family tree across three generations, the migration story told in three chapters (Ario de Rosales, the border crossing through Tijuana, new roots in San Diego), and the photos and anecdotes that until now lived in phone galleries and one tía’s memory. It’s built around the family’s pillars — “Mamá Linda” (Herlinda Duarte Reyes) and Salvador López Álvarez — and it’s deliberately unfinished: relatives contribute by WhatsApp, and the archive grows as the pieces arrive.
Why it exists
Every family has this archive scattered across a dozen phones, and every family assumes someone else is keeping it. The route that made everything possible — a family leaving Michoacán and ending up in San Diego — was one generation of forgetting away from being gone. I wanted one durable place where the memory lives, in the language each relative reads best, while the people who remember are still around to correct me.
What I’m responsible for
Building it and curating it. The site itself is developed with AI-assisted workflows — I design the structure and direct the build the same way I do for client work. Day to day, I collect what relatives send over WhatsApp, write the history chapters, and keep the tree honest — confirmed relatives only, no folklore branches. The family supplies the material; I’m the editor, translator, and person who gets the dates straight.
What I’ve learned
- The site matters less than the conversations it starts. Relatives I haven’t heard from in years are sending photos they forgot they had, because now there’s a somewhere to send them.
- Confirmed beats impressive. I keep unverified branches out until they’re checked. A smaller true tree is worth more than a big speculative one — genealogy rewards saying “I don’t know yet.”
- Building for family is a different client. No brief, no deadline, every stakeholder emotionally invested — and every correction is a story I get to hear.
Status
Active — a living archive. Registered relatives and story chapters grow as contributions come in, and there’s more material waiting in family group chats.