Who Was Tío Alejandro?

Growing up, Jesse Alejandro Cottrell never knew exactly how his uncle and middle namesake, Alejandro Mendoza, died, but he did know that the Guatemalan government murdered Alejandro. The story went that in the 1970s, Alejandro was involved with the leftist guerrilla rebels fighting the country's oppressive authoritarian regime, a regime that eventually killed him for his activism. But a couple years ago on a visit to Guatemala, Jesse heard another story of how his uncle died that challenged what he knew about his family, his uncle, and his own name.