Who were you, Coronel Ramón Bravo? The curlicued bronze plaque behind me at Recoleta Cemetery states you were born smack in the middle of the 19th century and left us the year after World War I began. It lists your part in the campañas of Paraguay and Entre Rios and various combates. But it doesn’t say what made you laugh and cry and tremble with rage. Beneath your straitjacket uniform, who were you? Who was in your heart as you set off for battle? How would your family have described you? Did you see close friends die in combat? What kept you awake at night? What fed your soul?

You become real to me here, stepping out of the stone, veins and wrinkles and all. I feel you have come to tell your story in some way, to be remembered, as you glide ghostlike between two worlds.